Five Miles From Outer Hope is technically not my type of book but I first read it when I was 14 and it's stuck with me since. It's the book I read every few months. It's my go to comforter when I'm in a bad mood. This is the book that makes everything better. For me, that is. I love it.
( )

Ok this novel really deserves a 3 1/2. I toyed with giving it four stars but it wasn't quite there. Barker's writing style is still fantastic but the story isn't as bizarre and enchanting as Darkmans. In a way, this is more like a weird feminine John Irving-esque sort of novel where the British family of misfits are all named after Thurber dogs and seem like the kind of people who will always struggle to find their place in this world. While the mother goes galavanting across American prisons marketing her anal probe, the rest of the family in England houses a South African who doesn't want to serve in the military. This is set in the 80s and the plot really centers around this farcical series of tricks played upon the guest and the main character. It's fun but it doesn't leave your head spinning with quite the same vigor as I'd like.


( )

All you need to know about this book can probably be summed up in the first sentence: "It was during those boiled-dry, bile-ridden, shit-ripped, god-forsaken early-bird years of the nineteen eighties". If that makes you smile, you'll probably enjoy the rest of it. If it makes you roll your eyes, then you might as well stop reading there.

Medve, the narrator of this book, is a smart but self-conscious sixteen-year-old with a gothically weird family. The action, such as it is, takes place in June 1981, as Medve attempts to look after her disintegrating family (although she's a bit too self-centred to notice what's really going on) and flirts and fights with a "skinny, self-centred, stupid, impolitic m------f------r" of a deserter from the South African army.

But the story is not really the point - it's Medve's voice that the book focuses on. Barker hits the tone perfectly - just the right mixture of pretentiousness and hostility. I spent a little while wondering what the book was actually about, but then I stopped worrying and decided to enjoy the ride. ( )