I saw Darkmans recommended and then found out oh hell it's #3 and scrounged up the first two. I don't know anything much about the author or her books. I approached this one gingerly and as issues of severely disturbed mental health and then childhood abuse emerged I got a bit more tentative about it. But it grew on me and did not cause me to fling it away in disgust. I liked the ending and will try the second book. The language is clear and well thought out. I cannot relax with these characters but I do want to hear what happens next. ( )

This book cannot be trusted. It lures you in by being ostensibly a British comedy filled with endearingly eccentric characters and funny dialogue and then, once you are completely drawn in, begins to peel back the layers and to bit by bit reveal the darkness that lies at the core of all that apparent quirkiness. But then, the novel keeps you on your toes right from the start, beginning with the way it presents a parade of apparently unrelated characters, sending the reader to hunt for clues on how they might be connected, to scower the novel for hints, which are collected and then arranged in more or less meaningful patterns – much like one of the novel’s character’s does with shells he finds on the beach.

It is not just the relation of the characters to each other that is a puzzle but also their relation to themselves – I’m not sure how to even refer to two of the novel’s main protagonists, as they exchange names at one point and the novel and everyone else calls them by their new name from their on, as if they had indeed become the other person. But it is not as easy as that, because they both have a past that sticks with them even after the name change. And it does not help that those histories also have to be pieced together by the reader from scattered scraps and throwaway mentions - and remain so to some part even after the end of the novel, not every thread is neatly tied up by the finale. Or that is how it seemed to me, maybe I just need to dig deeper, search more thoroughly, try out different patterns…

Eventually, everything converges in the somewhat unlikely location of the Isle of Sheppey in Kent; everyone is brought together for a grand finale, and things get quite dramatic, there are even gunshots fired. At the same time, nothing is really resolved, but each of the characters have had their inner selves revealed to each other and to the reader, have been laid wide open. The catalyst for that, Jim/Ronny (not to be confused with Ronny /Jim), however, even though we find out some things about him and even though he is in some respects the most vulnerable of all the novel’s protagonists, remains largely a mystery even by the end.

Wide Open is a novel that is both very funny and deeply disturbing. Interestingly though – and this, I think, is what makes this novel special – it does not follow the strategy of making us laugh at something essentially horrifying in order to enhance the horror (like, to just take the first example that enters my mind, Catch 22 does). The funny and the frightening connect in a quite different way in Wide Open, or rather they connect by not really connecting at all – the quirkiness of the novel’s characters, their lovable oddities conceal the darkness underneath, a world of hurts received and given, of mental scars and unresolved trauma, of a potential for cruelty and violence that can burst forth every moment given the right provocation. But even as it lays bare its characters’ dark core, the novel still remains very funny, containing lots of genuinely comic dialogue and not shying back from outright slapstick humour either – in a way, the horror here is as deadpan as the humour.

All in all, it makes for a very disconcerting, at times even positively uncomfortable reading experience, also a very unique one. I can’t really think of anyone to compare her to - maybe Robert Walser, but in a very remote way and mostly due to his works inducing a similarly unsettling sensation in me. This was the first book by Nicola Barker I have read, and while I wouldn’t say that I exactly liked it, I found it very intriguing and will likely be reading more of her work.

I just didn't get it. That's two of her books and didn't get either??? ( )

I loved this novel as I was reading it -- not so much when I finished. Barker is an extraordinary stylist and writes wonderfully quirky characters.
But the plot seems to fall apart -- partly drawn from TV psycho - crime dramas, it can't seem to transcend TV expectations. I think I'll try Barker again as her writing is so good, but I hope her plotting becomes better. ( )

While in the genre of magical realism reality is magnified or distorted, surrealism presents the reader with a larger than life, absurd panorama. Superficially, the plot of the novel is very simple, although it is told in a hilarious manner. Throughout the book, the story is larded with clues that reveal the chute, however, in first time reading, these clues are hard to read for their real value. A second time reading highlights these clues, and shows how the reader could have known about the highly peculiar main character from the very beginning. What seems hidden is actually out, in the open all the time. The main idea appears enclosed in the story, but it is actually very clearly there, wide open.

Nicola Barker often presents very ordinary, socially lowly positioned characters in her books. In her debut novel Small Holdings that was a gardener in a project for the unemployed, in Wide open one of the characters, Ronny, has a similar position, although weeding is replaced here by spraying toxic herbicides, while his brother, Nathan, leads a leeway life in a lost-and-found department.

The novel presents a number of themes and motives, such as the contrast between the city and the country, and almost parallel to that, the contrast between life and death. Perception, looking at things, is important throughout, such as regarding the question whether Luke is an artistic photographer or creates pornography. This focus on perception also compels the reader to perceptiveness, and keep an eye open, wide open, for details. For example, by looking at shoes -- sandals or shoes (p.71).

Another important theme in the novel is identity. When Ronny meets Jim, at the beginning of the novel, this meeting seems entirely coincidental. However, the reader soon discovers that this meeting is not a matter of chance, but apparently very intentional. In fact, Jim enters Ronny's life with great deliberation, and his actions are aimed at assuming Ronny's identity, to which he first appropriates some of his possessions and then his name. There is a quite clever, but rather transparent ruse, about Jim's origin. Where does he come from?

A very important clue, literally, is contained in a box, which belongs to Jim. The characters in the novel do not know what is in the box, but this fact is slipped to the reader on pp. 108-110. An exhibit in a glass case. What is in it is very important to Jim. He wants to protect it from exposure, because, as he says, “I saw myself in him.” (p.110). However, to the other characters the box is just there, “just another part of the furniture” (…) It was right there, wasn’t it? Margery had brushed up against it several times and had even gone and laddered her stocking on a protruding staple. Yes. So she had been fully aware of its sudden materialization, surely?
Surely. Yet Margery didn’t think to enquire about the box. She simply let it ride. There are no secrets here, Nathan thought, righteously. No secrets. It just fitted. The box.
And inside? Inside? (p.110)

Margery is Nathan’s wife. She is a naturalist, who explored the inlands of a faraway country and its tropical forests for years, sure to be on the track on a great discovery, a great unknown animal, a great pale ape, which is characterized by a distinctive physical feature, particularly on its feet. She believes it to be hidden in a cave, a pitch-dark cave. Most of the time she seems to be groping in the dark. She also wants to protect her creature from hunters who want to destroy the cave and kill it.

Wide open is characterized by Nicola Barker’s typical style. The story is racy, and hilarious, with a lot of humour, including a trademark scene in which Sara rocks herself to an orgasm (chapter 15). Still, this type of humour works very well in short stories, but in a full-length novel it becomes very tiresome after a while. A distinctive feature of Barker’s work is to shock the reader; In Wide open the element of the paedophile father seems a bit obsolete. There is no clear function, other than to add to the ridicule, and shocking effect of the book. ( )