Toby's Room by Pat Barker

This author has focused her fiction in the peri-WW I era in England, and this book is no exception to that rule.  As anyone who has watched ‘Downton Abbey’ knows, WW I was a sea change for England.  The was not only a colossal waste of life and resources.  It represented a shift in the importance of class in England, as well as the roles of women in society.  That is the cultural and social backdrop against which the story takes place.

The book is entitled ‘Toby’s Room’ but it is really about Toby’s sister, Elinor.  They are siblings who are unusually close throughout their lives.  They are so close that they have a taboo sexual relationship that was a ‘one off’ event for Toby, but Elinor is not so convinced about that.  She wants that extended intimacy, which in childhood meant one thing but in adulthood would certainly include sex.  Which is why you are supposed to leave your family of origin behind you and find intimacy with a partner—because sex with you family of origin is really frowned upon.  

The book does not focus on incest, but rather sees it as part of the drive for Elinor’s obsession with Toby.  When she has a premonition that he will not come home from his military service in France and he is soon thereafter reported ‘missing in action, presumed dead’. She becomes obsessed with what happened to him.  The subtext of that obsession is that something triggered that premonition, and that she somehow knew that not coming back is what he intended.    She is desperate to find out what his state of mind was those last few days on the battlefield, and somehow absolve herself from the guilt she feels that she should have recognized the danger and done something about it.  She really wants to be wrong, but she is equally sure that she is right.  She drops all the social niceties in her pursuit of her goal, which is wholly unladylike at the beginning of the 20^th century.  Pursuing men who ignore you is simply not done.  She can’t let it go because she can’t get on with her life without knowing.  She is sleeping in Toby’s room and painting Toby.  So he is in her thoughts both day and night.  Moving forward with ordinary tasks of life is simply impossible for her.  The backdrop of WW I, men with profound physical and psychological damage, magnifies her obsession, but the truth is that the death of a parent, a spouse, a child, or a sibling leads to tremendous and ongoing trauma in those left behind, and post WW I in England it was almost impossible to have not lost at least one of those.  This is a serious story well told.