Noonday
About this audiobook
A new novel from the Booker Prize–winning Pat Barker, author of the Regeneration trilogy, that unforgettably portrays London during the Blitz and reaffirms her place as a top-ranked British novelist
London, the Blitz, Autumn 1940. As the bombs fall on the blacked-out city, ambulance driver Elinor Brooke races from bomb sites to hospitals in order to save the lives of injured survivors. She works alongside former friend Kit Neville while her husband, Paul Tarrant, works as an air-raid warden.
Once fellow students at the Slade School of Fine Art before the First World War destroyed the hopes of their generation, they now find themselves caught in another war, this time at home. As the bombing intensifies, the constant risk of death makes all three reach out for quick consolation. And into their midst comes the spirit medium Bertha Mason, grotesque and unforgettable, whose ability to make contact with the deceased finds vastly increased demand as death rains down from the skies. Old loves and obsessions resurface until Elinor is brought face-to-face with an almost impossible choice.
Completing the story that began with Life Class and continued with Toby’s Room, Noonday is both a stand-alone novel and the climax of a trilogy. Writing about the Second World War for the first time, Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of London into electrifying life in her most powerful novel since the Regeneration trilogy.
About the author
Pat Barker was born in Yorkshire and began her literary career in her forties, when she took a short writing course taught by Angela Carter. Encouraged by Carter to continue writing, she sent her fiction out. She has now published sixteen novels, including her masterful Regeneration Trilogy, been made a CBE for services to literature, and won the UK's highest literary honour, the Booker Prize. Her last novel, The Silence of the Girls, began the story of Briseis, the forgotten woman at the heart of one of the most famous war epics ever told. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Costa Novel Award and the Gordon Burn Prize, and won an Independent Bookshop Award 2019. The Women of Troy continues that story. Pat Barker lives in Durham.
Juliet Stevenson is a narrator who is recipient of the AudioFile Golden Voice Award. She has won the prestigious Audie Award and numerous Earphones Awards for her narrations. She is a British actress on stage and screen and notably a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. She has also appeared in popular films such as Bend It Like Beckham and Mona Lisa Smile. She was honored as a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. She received further recognition when she was nominated for several BAFTA Awards, and she earned an Olivier Award for her role in Death and the Maiden.
Stephen Boxer is an English actor who is best known for his role as Joe on the BBC One soap opera Doctors. Aside from television, Boxer has had starring roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s productions of Titus Andronicus and King Lear, and has narrated the audiobook versions of Shakespeare’s Henry VI and Pat Barker’s Noonday.
John Sackville is an English actor and voice artist. He studied at St. Andrews University and the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. He has since acted on stage and on camera and has narrated a number of audiobooks, computer games, documentaries, and commercials.
Anne Reid, MBE, is an English stage, film, and television actress. A BAFTA Award–nominee, she is best known for her roles as Valerie Barlow in Coronation Street and Jean in Dinnerladies.
Finlay Robertson is an actor, writer, and voice-over artist. He has appeared in Doctor Who, How Not to Live Your Life, and Alfie, among many other films and television series.
