Ben Hamilton

If you prefer banal symbols freighted with meaning to plot, Nicola Barker is your woman

A review of In the Approaches, by Nicola Barker, a blurb-writer’s nightmare

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issue 07 June 2014
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  • In the Approaches

    Nicola Barker

    Fourth Estate, pp. 512

Readers familiar with Nicola Barker’s hyper-caffeinated style will be surprised by the almost serene first few chapters of her latest novel. It’s 1984 and we are in Pett Level, Hastings, a marginal location even by Barker’s standards (previous novels have been set in Luton, Ashford, and the Isle of Sheppey), and a well-travelled man named Franklin D.

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