THERE is an energy to Nicola Barker's writing that takes the breath away.
THERE is an energy to Nicola Barker's writing that takes the breath away.
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The Yips by Nicola Barker Fourth Estate £18.99 Reviewed by Hugh MacDonald
It is akin to stepping on to a rollercoaster and plummeting through a finely constructed edifice without knowing what awaits around the next bend of dip.
The Yips is the most dramatic existential novel set in Luton. Its cast of characters includes a golfer with an empathy bypass, a cancer survivor who has defied a terminal diagnosis, a lippy student, an environmental worker who cares deeply about the world but does not mind a spot of kidnap, a tattooist with agoraphobia whose specialist field means she works, er, intimately with women, a vicar enduring a personal crisis and a mother who was once hit by a golf ball and craves sex while speaking in French. It may be the other way round. There are other extravagantly drawn characters. This, then, is not a meticulous study of gritty realism.
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