Union Street
by Pat Barker
‘I have a very distinct memory of being on a family holiday in a caravan in the mid 1980s, when I picked up a book that was sitting on the side, in the sun. It was , and my mother said, “She lives near us,” referring to Pat Barker. That comment was the first time it ever became apparent that people like us, people like me – a comprehensive school boy living in the north-east of England during the time of Thatcherism and high unemployment – could not only consider being a writer, but could actually write about the place that they came from. It seems obvious now, but the realisation that writers can come from was hugely significant. Then when I finally read the novel years later while on a sunlounger in Turkey – an incongruous place for
