Pat Barker's tenth novel,
Double Vision, is representative of her more recent novelistic concern with middle-class lives and current affairs. This novel's overriding themes of vision, memory, crime and war, and the role of the artist may be seen, however, to develop the broader purpose of Barker's writing thus far: that is, to address and attempt to understand social trauma. In this novel, Barker explores the ways in which global crimes such as the war in Bosnia and the war on terror inflect the reception of crime closer to home – assault, robbery, and delinquency. The novel may also be read as a metacommentary on the role of the artist: the ethics and aesthetics of the representation of violence. Barker uses metaphors of vision and memory to make clear the ways in which one's view of…
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Citation: Gildersleeve, Jessica. "Double Vision". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 September 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13134, accessed 19 December 2024.]
