''Wide Open'' is the third novel by English author

Nicola Barker Nicola Barker (born 30 March 1966) is an English novelist and short story writer. She was born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. When she was still young her parents left England and settled in South Africa. Fiction Typically she writes about ...

published in 1998 by

Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...

. In 2000 it won the

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award The International Dublin Literary Award ( ga, Duais Liteartha Idirnáisiúnta Bhaile Átha Chliath), established as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, is presented each year for a novel written or translated into English. ...

Plot

Set mostly on the

Isle of Sheppey The Isle of Sheppey is an island off the northern coast of Kent, England, neighbouring the Thames Estuary, centred from central London. It has an area of . The island forms part of the local government district of Swale. ''Sheppey'' is derived ...

on the north coast of Kent on the

Thames Estuary The Thames Estuary is where the River Thames meets the waters of the North Sea, in the south-east of Great Britain. Limits An estuary can be defined according to different criteria (e.g. tidal, geographical, navigational or in terms of salini ...

. Two men, both called Ronny (one is then renamed to Jim), strike up a strange friendship. Jim invites Ronny to live at his prefab near the beach on the island. They meet an oddball cast of neighbours, including Sara who breeds wild boars and her daughter Lily, Luke a pornographer and part-time nudist, Carrie an optician who is related to Sara who is investigating an inheritance from her father to Ronny. Then Ronny's brother Nathan arrives as their childhood brings bad memories...

Reception

*The IMPAC prize panel praised the novel: '‘Wide Open is word perfect, witty and ironic...The author's focus on marginal lives and on the importance of the dispossessed and the apparently mad persuade us finally that Wide Open possesses a manic energy and taut eloquence worthy of a large, serious and global readership' *

Boyd Tonkin Boyd Tonkin Hon. FRSL is an English writer, journalist and literary critic. He was the literary editor of ''The Independent'' newspaper from 1996 to 2013. A long-time proponent of foreign-language literature, he is the author of ''The 100 Best Nov ...

writing in ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'': 'It combines Nicola Barker's trademark qualities of offbeat comedy and quirky characterisation with an emotional darkness and depth that marked it, for many critics, as her breakthrough ...The novel mixes an eccentric island backdrop – a Barker speciality – with a cast of intriguing oddballs, pin-sharp comic dialogue, and a sinister undercurrent of violence and abuse' Barker's tale of eccentrics wins richest fiction prize
Retrieved 29/5/22.

References

{{s-end 1998 British novels Novels set in Kent Faber and Faber books Isle of Sheppey