SOURCE: "The Suffering Classes," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4719, September 10, 1993, p. 21.

O'Faolain is an English-born Irish novelist, short story writer, and critic. In the following favorable review of The Eye in the Door, she describes the novel as "an original and impressive achievement."

Pat Barker's sequel to her dazzling and disturbing Regeneration (1991) has as much scope as that book, greater buoyancy and an equally impressive ability to anchor major issues in the experience of her real and invented characters. Set in the spring of 1918, it shows the English psyche under pressure after four years of war. The first lines give the tone:

In formal beds beside the Serpentine, early tulips stood in tight-lipped rows. Billy Prior spent … moments setting up an enfilade, then … seized an imaginary machine-gun and blasted the heads off the whole bloody lot of them.

Myra stared in amazement. "You barmy bugger."

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