Another World, by Pat Barker

Almost by chance, I read a few of Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy books last year and found them unexpectedly good. So when I found Another World in the Oxfam Bookshop in Uccle recently I bought it.

It was a disappointment. She returned to her First World War theme, but indirectly through the memories of an old man who is, himself, only one of the charachters of the book. But all the characters are shallow and undeveloped, and the book ends up being an uncoordinated clutter of clichés without a convincing central plot. Even the dénouement, when it finally comes, is a damp squib, because by then the reader (well, this one anyway) has long since stopped caring.