Toby's Room By British author Pat Barker is Unpleasant & Substandard

British author, Pat Barker, has been awarded the Booker Prize winner (Ghost Road) and honored as  Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her brilliant legacy of work.  Her works mainly dealt  with the horrors of WWI & the aftermaths of trauma.  I read her Regeneration Trilogy & am in accord with British author Jonathan Coe (The Rain Before it Falls '08)  that her trilogy "is one of the few real masterpieces of late 20th C British fiction."  Her previous novel, Life Class '07, was lighter in subject matter; an art student in the years after WWI.  Her most recent novel, Toby's Room '12, refers to the brother of the herione, Elinor.  Elinor was an art student & a commissioned artist to draw soldiers wounded & disfigured in the war.  The novel concerns the horrors of war but it is centered on the incestuous relationship between Elinor & Toby.  When Toby is classified as MIA, Elinor becomes obsessed with learning what became of her brother. Two of her classmates, Paul & Neville, were stationed with Toby during the war.  Elinor is relentless in her pursuit of information regardless of Neville's gross facial disfigurement & Paul's devotion to her.  The mystique to discover what become of  Toby kept me engaged.  The hideous truth is that Toby was caught having a sexual liasion with a young stable hand & chose suicide rather than face a dishonorable discharge.  Barker is a masterful writer and I appreciate her contention, "…historical novels can be a backdoor into the present which is valuable."  However, I found the novel distasteful & would recommend her Regeneration Trilogy instead.