Darkmans - Nicola Barker

[NotQuiteCockney]

I got this because it was in the 2007 Booker shortlist. Wow! I'm only a couple of hundred pages in, but it's so well-written. Interesting style and characters, but still very readable. Sometimes it reminds me of David Foster Wallace, but better.

Anyone else a fan of hers? What are her other books like?

i have had this on my to read pile for a looooooooooong time . i do want to read it, but it's too heavy to carry around & i read alot on the bus on the way to work. will save it for a holiday i guess. i have read her previous books and enjoyed them.

I was wondering about this one. I've read her short stories, which I really enjoyed.

I have it in paperback. I'm steaming through it, so much so that I've not bothered trying to read the papers this weekend!

This is a particularly impressive thing, given that I've got an operation on Wednesday, so am stressed and unfocused. Oh, and her style is not the most straight-forward.

I'm about halfway through now, and still v impressed.

i have the hardback, hence offputting... hope the operation is ok.

I pretty much never buy hardcovers for that reason.

Op should be fine, it is very very routine, but every op is bloody scary.

i am such a sucker for new books. they make me happy.

operations are horrid. think how happy you'll be after .

I loved Darkmans. Read incredibly fast. Behindlings has a similar sort of feel to it, perhaps not quite as funny.

I wasn't crazy about Clear though.

Have meant for a long time to try and track down whatever it was she wrote that the extract in Granta's Best of Young British Novelists was taken from, as that was gripping and I wanted to read more...

I finished it while in hospital recovering from a GA. I'm not sure the surreal bits were ... helped? by that.

But I did really like it, and will probably reread it.