Lizas England (Paperback)

Barker seems intent on investigating the end of a woman's life in The Century's Daughter and, in this respect, she does an admirable job. Set in working-class northern England, The Century's Daughter is not a provincial book, however, but seeks to embrace the grand tradition of political fiction instead.

Set in 1984-85, the book deals with the final year in the life of its protagonist, Liza Wright, who is the same age as the century, almost to the second. In this sense, The Century's Daughter is reminiscent of Salman Rushdie's Mignight's Children, a book that follows the lives of a group of babies born at the stroke of midnight on the day of India's independence. While Midnight's Children, however, focused on the politics of Indira Ghandi, The Century's Daughter focuses on the politics of Margaret Thatcher, a woman Liza is vehemently trying to forget.

One of the things I found most charming about this otherwise flawed book was the fact that Barker wisely eschewed any attempt at glamour, fast-paced adventure, wealth, adultery and all the other trappings that many readers of today's "commercial" fiction seem to demand. This is a book about the beauty inherent in everyday life, and that is, to its enormous credit, one of the story's strongest points.

Liza, who is now eighty-four, lives with her old parrot, Nelson, a mere four miles from where she was born, in the ramshackle row house she has occupied since 1922. Decrepit, unsafe and surrounded by the squalid Clagg Lane housing project, Liza's home is now scheduled to be torn down. This sets the stage for the entrance of Stephen, a twenty-nine year old social worker who is sent to persuade the very reluctant Liza to move into a nursing home.

The conflict centers on Liza's recalcitrance. When Stephen tells her she would have other elderly people around her in the nursing home, Liza tartly tells him that people her age don't make friends.

Predictably, Liza remains in her row house and she and Stephen become the best of friends. Liza's story is engrossing and it does reflect the century's own misfortunes. Liza Wright has lived an English working woman's life with all its attendant restrictions and woes. The daughter of an angry mother who bore a total of fifteen children, Liza seeks an early escape from her life at the age of seventeen. It is an escape, however, that doesn't lead exactly where she expects it to.

Although Liza, herself, can, at times, be a persnickety but charming elderly woman, The Century's Daughter is more often than not filled with dreary stuff: babies being born into misery and squalor; elderly people dying alone and in filth; the all-pervading dampness so redolent in northern England; the endless cups of tea meant to ward off the chill. To her enormous credit, Barker tells her story with vibrancy, optimism and life. So much so, that Liza, despite her precarious health and dreary circumstances, is a much more optimistic character than is Stephen, who is really not fully-fleshed out.

Despite his rather wooden quality, it is Stephen who is bestowed with the book's most poignant moment as he attempts to find a working phone when his father, Walter, is hospitalized.

I found the writing in The Century's Daughter to be rather uneven at best and jarring at worst. At times, Barker seemed to be rushing her story and at other times she seemed to gloss over things we wanted to know more about. Many of the book's scenes are arbitrary and the ending, in particular, is totally out of keeping with what went before.

The Century's Daughter has its moments, few though they are, and the best thing about it, I think, is the author's unbridled energy and enthusiasm. While I would not really recommend this particular book, I definitely would not write Barker off. She is obviously a woman with talent.

The story began with a charming premise, a young male social worker, meets an 84 year old woman who must be moved from her home, where she has experienced the greater part of her life. She is virtually the last occupant in this neighborhood of memories and wraiths. Her memories are all she has left of what has been a long and painful life. Her sole companion is an eccentric Parrot, which again could have been an interesting facet/a nice aside to the story. The social worker Stephen is characterized as being gay, unlike the World War I trilogy when a main character's lifestyle was a central part of the story, a character trait that was a large part of what defined him, in this book it was meaningless. If it had merit it was far too subtle for me to grasp.

The book's failing is that many stories within the book, or metaphors that are memorable, not only appeared here, they also appeared verbatim in the other books I had read, or were so slightly changed as to be nearly indistinguishable. World War I experiences are related here and then in the trilogy, metaphors that are memorable, again appear here and again in the trilogy. It does not happen once or even 5 times, but many times. The result is this reader kept thinking about the other books I had given such high marks to, but I now know I was reading recycled ideas from an earlier work.

The exposition of Liza's life, and the shifting back and forth to present day, and the life that is Stephen's is clumsy at best. Far from being seamless, they are incongruous, jarring, and prevent any sort of cadence from developing for the reader.

Stephen's relationship with Liza pretended to be the Grandmother to this young man who had come into her life to serve bad news, but became someone she was fond of in spite of the change he represented, as Grandmothers tend to do. However, the end of the book while not predictable, makes a mockery of all that has gone before, destroys the structure of what had been written, and is so out of character with the balance of the book as to be absurd. The actual event will leave you with strong feelings about many people and issues, but none that would bring you back to Ms. Barker's work, were this the first you had read.

This is book number 5 for me, and the first 4 I still enthusiastically recommend.

On this one, pass.