Clear: A Transparent Novel
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
On September 5, 2003, illusionist David Blaine entered a small Perspex box adjacent to London's Thames River and began starving himself. Forty-four days later, on October 19, he left the box, fifty pounds lighter. That much, at least, is clear. And the rest? The crowds? The chaos? The hype? The rage? The fights? The lust? The filth? The bullshit? The hypocrisy?
Nicola Barker fearlessly crams all that and more into this ribald and outrageous peep show of a novel, her most irreverent, caustic, up-to-the-minute work yet, laying bare the heart of our contemporary world, a world of illusion, delusion, celebrity, and hunger.
Nicola Barker
Nicola Barker is one of Britain's most original and exciting literary talents. She is the author of two short-story collections: Love Your Enemies [winner of the David Higham Prize and the Macmillan Silver Pen Award] and Heading Inland [winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize]. Her previous novels are Reversed Forecast, Small Holdings, Wide Open Behindlings and Clear, the last of which was long-listed for the 2005 Booker Prize. Her work is translated into twenty languages, and in 2000, she won the IMPAC Award for Wide Open. In 2003, Nicola Barker was named a Granta Best of British Novelist. She lives in London.
Read more from Nicola Barker
Darkmans: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Clear: A Transparent Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Cauliflower: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Three Button Trick and Other Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Behindlings: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Clear
Related ebooks
Atlantic Hotel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Prisoner in the Caucasus Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Transit of Venus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHere Are the Young Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Constance: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Walk On The Wild Side Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJane Eyre Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sadness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSweet Undoings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlaythings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhite Ravens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another Life: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5girl thing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSet-Point Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLady Windermere's Fan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jakarta Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Voyage to India Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Garden of Trees Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cat's Pajamas and Witch's Milk Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Made-Up Man: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tales of the Art World: And Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Sister's Hand in Mine: The Collected Works of Jane Bowles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Antichrist Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Frankenstein Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWieland; or, the Transformation: An American Tale Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Pillow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Oranging of America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFox Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fortunes of Richard Mahony Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Year of the Gadfly: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The King James Version of the Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outsider: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anonymous Sex Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Good and Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cabin at the End of the World: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Candy House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Clear
44 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great book, just what I needed. One of her lighter books and good fun. Ignore the haters . You don't need to think too deeply. Have some fun and take a chance on a bit of Barker.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The activity in [Clear] is focused around a real event - a 2003 stunt by American illusionist David Blaine who stayed in a transparent box, suspended from a crane near to London's Tower Bridge (this photo shows both the box and the crowds who gathered to watch him). This book was written shortly afterwards. Generally, I don't see the point of super-contemporary references in novels - it's as if you're acknowledging that your book has a short shelf-life. But here, what the book is actually about is how people reacted to the stunt, so it doesn't seem as dated as I had feared - the book could actually have been about a fictional stunt. That said, even though I'm a big fan of Nicola Barker, I am not sure how much substance there is to the book. It's narrated by a young man, Adair, who works near to the Blaine event but starts off just going there to pick up girls - and consists largely of a series of conversations between Adair and a few friends - his uber-cool landlord Solomon and Solomon's on-off girlfriend Jalisa (both of whom have slightly different political/racial takes on the Blaine situation) and a mysterious but strangely attractive woman, Aphra, who has a more personal reaction. The conversations touch on the role of art, how people respond to the outsider or the other, the nature of celebrity. Kafka and Houdini crop up as people who have inspired Blaine (apparently the idea for the stunt came from a Kafka short story, 'The Hunger Artist').As usual, I loved the energy of Barker's writing, and I rather enjoyed these conversations because they are the sort of conversations I have with my friends, although these guys bullshit even more than me and my friends do. But I would have liked to hear more from all three of Adair's friends, and especially Aphra, who starts off an intriguing character but ends up more or less a collection of quirky behaviours without a real personality.I wouldn't recommend this book if you haven't read Nicola Barker before - only for the already converted.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Clear by Nicola Barker is a seriously profound novel about contemporary Britian, which can be read as a criticism of the rift between the establishment and the common people. An important element in the novel is the stunt of David Blaine, who was sealed inside a transparent Plexiglas box suspended at 30 feet over the south bank of the Thames. The stunt lasted for 44 days during which the 'hunger artist' drank water but did not eat. While the story does have Kafkaesc characteristics, the theme of Barker's Clear seem less related to Kafka's story than to the BBC News comment beginning with the words "if his endurance test is real rather than an elaborate illusion". Barker's novel, entitled Clear has the unsubtle sub title of being A Transparent Novel, as if the author worried that the hint at transparency might be overlooked. In the novel, onlookers speculate whether the performance is real or a trick, and wonder whether or not the artist is secretely fed or receives dietry sustenaince. The novel seems to suggest that politicians are like the artist, suspended in a glass box high over their commoners. The 'glass‘ box creates the illusion of total transparency, at which the crowds at first marvel and later lose interest, which is one of the themes of Kafka's story.In the meantime, the novel's portrayal of some of the onlookers may leave readers startled. They are not the typical British subjects of the official media, which are perhaps as fake or illusiory as the one in the glass box. Instead, they are a culturally diverse and colourful group, typified by a lifestyle characterised by a quest for authenticity and naturalness, as illustrated by an interest in real, unadulterated food, with natural colours and natural flavours.The organic, natural and multivarious nature of society, so different from what the media portray as the mainstream, is reflected in the use of language, which like society seems to have evolved.Clear is a thoughtful novel for a hip generation.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The question this book raises for me is: what is wrong with writing that simply tries to be as sharp as it can be, recording every microsecond of thought, every slight nuance, every nearly imperceptible shift in intonation, every second guess, doubt, and revision, every shade of introspection, self-reflexivity, and self-awareness? What can go wrong with writing that tries to keep up with manic consciousness?Reviews in the Guardian and the Observer say that it's not clear whether Barker should have written an entire novel about a magic trick performed by David Blaine. The assumption is that it's too thin a subject for a novel. But the novel is about thinness. One reviewer is closer to the mark in complaining that Barker's voice is cold, that she doesn't take emotional risks, that she controls her characters so much that there's nothing to engage the reader. Again, that's true, but it's also an expressive value. What bothers me about this book isn't its supposedly overly trivial subject matter (what could that possibly mean, after "Madame Bovary") or its supposedly unemotional, disengaged characters (what could that possibly mean after Oulipo, after Beckett, after Stein). What bothers me is that the supposedly scintillating, mercurial dialogue (which all the reviewers praise) isn't interesting.The book opens and closes with praise of the novel "Shane." Here's the end of the book:"And it ends:"'He was the man who rose into our little valley out of the heart of our great glowing west and when his work was done rode back whence he had come and he was Shane.'"Observe the total lack of punctuation."(Jesus H. How'd he ever get away with that stuff?)"Not even a comma after 'whence he had come'? Or a dash?"Man."Is Jack Schaefer some fuck-you, balls-out writer or what?"I'm omitting the italics, which are everywhere in the book. This kind of rapid-fire, apparently spontaneous, apparently stream of consciousness narrative is fairly continuous throughout the book. Each successive brief paragraph is like an apostrophe, directed not at the reader so much as at an immediately previous version of the narrator himself, as he compulsively comments on his own previous thoughts, and revises and sharpens his own ideas.This kind of writing is intended to be clever, sharp, witty, unexpected, fast, and entertaining, and I think it is also intended to ring true to something like inner monologue of a dissatisfied, twitchy young urban male in London. For me it isn't any of those things except twitchy. There are many other versions of continuously self-doubting, cross-cutting inner monologues. Among contemporary authors, for example, there is Mark Leyner. But Leyner is more linguistically versatile, faster, and sharper. The twitching voice in "Clear" is ticcy, like Tourette's. Leyner is more genuinely driven and often believably hysterical -- it's hard to imagine him stopping, which isn't necessarily a virtue, but it does make the act of writing compulsively about compulsive thinking itself a more persuasive.*Incidentally -- although nothing in a novel is incidental -- there are moments of the deeper purpose and belief reviewers found missing. At the end, Blaine's magic performance (it's the one where he was suspended in a glass cube for a month) becomes compelling for the narrator:"...he's holding it together. In fact he's finding himself again. Little by little that necessary transition is taking place--from sitting-duck to superstar, from total access to none."And later:"He changed (I need to believe it)."These are brief glimpses into something "deeper," even if it is only vacuous superstardom. It seems, at moments like these, that the narrator -- and the author -- can only permit themselves the very briefest moments in which they speak unguardedly about things they really care about.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I finished Clear by Nicola Barker on Friday, having only started it on Monday. As I usually read only while on the train two and from work, this is pretty quick. I’m a fast reader, but don’t read too much when at home in the evenings. Not books anyway; I read ridiculous amounts online, but tend not to grab the book out of my bag.This novel was pretty damn good, I have to say. The background is London at the time of David Blaine’s Above The Below endurance event, and in fact Blaine becomes a major theme throughout.The basic story is about a random meeting between a guy and this random girl, and how she begins to take over his life and his thoughts. She’s weird, very weird, but he isn’t exactly 100% on the straight and narrow either.This is the first book I’ve read by Nicola Barker, but I’d heard that she was a very unique writer with her own style. And it’s true, she’s unique. Thankfully, it’s accessible. For me, at any rate. She has constant asides in parentheses (you know, to illustrate further thoughts) and has big, half-page breaks for dramatic effect.I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one, even if it’s a little too much style over substance. Not by too much, but the story could’ve been a touch stronger. As it stands, it’s still worth picking up.