The Hook

by Raffaella Barker

Christy Naylor's life is wrenched apart when her mother dies and her father's crazed reaction is to gamble. He wins a fish farm in a game of poker and uproots them from their suburban lives, to live on a couple of watery fields. Unsettled and unsure of himself, Christy is 17, suffocating and suffering. Mick Fleek, tall magnetic and overpowering, is irresistible and Christy falls for him. She knows nothing about him and plunges deep into an intense love affair, blind to the catastrophe he will bring...

Genres: Literary Fiction

Audible Audio

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Raffaella Barker was born in London in 1964 and moved to Norfolk when she was three. Her father, the poet George Barker, had 15 children; she is the oldest of those by the novelist Elspeth Barker.

She spent her childhood in Norfolk sulking and refusing to get dressed, going everywhere in her nightie. She recalls worrying about how to respond at school when asked how many brothers and sisters she had. She did not know the answer.

After Norwich High School, Raffaella Barker moved to London and did life modelling and film-editing. She landed a job on Harpers & Queen magazine and later freelanced as its motoring columnist. For 10 years she wrote a column for Country Life about her week.

Her debut novel Come and Tell Me Some Lies was published in 1994, followed by The Hook, Hens Dancing, Summertime, Green Grass, the children's book Phosphorescence and A Perfect Life.

Divorced, she lives in Norfolk with her three children aged 17, 15 and eight.

Reviews

[Katy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was an utterly terrible read. From the very first page it is inferred that Mick has done a terrible thing as he is in court, the book keeps you guessing until the last page almost and it is the most anti-climatic reveal ever. Most of the book is about Christy's really boring life working on a fish farm. Nearly every metaphor used involves fish or water. I just DID NOT CARE. Not my cup of tea to say the least.

[Eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books like The Hook fascinate me because they are clearly the products of skilled professionals, and yet they would be virtually unpublishable if anyone tried to sell them to an editor tomorrow. The Hook was first published in 1996 and there must have been something in the water in English literature in the '80s and '90s, because those decades are full of books like this, where--it seems--the author is just telling us a story. How crazy that sounds now! How crazy that it sounds crazy! It's not that The Hook has no plot; au contraire; the minute we meet eighteen-year-old Christy and learn that her mother's just died, she's dropped out of sixth form, her father's bought a trout farm in the countryside, and she's met a man named Mick at a bar, we know bad things are afoot. Maybe it's just that Barker appears to be writing without an agenda. She does tell a story about a young woman being led astray by an older man who is not all he says he is, and let down by the people who ought to be protecting her, but it's hardly #MeToo territory. There is nothing in the narrating voice that forces us to see the novel's events in a political light or even in the light of wider society. I can't decide whether that makes it incredibly subtle and delicate in a way that publishing is missing out on now, or whether The Hook simply has...well...no hook. Or maybe a bit of both. Has anyone else read Barker? What do you think?

[lucy black · Rating 1 out of 5]

all gross and fishy and none of the characters are appealing. ick.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m challenging myself to spend the rest of the year cleaning out my physical bookshelf, and this book has been taking up space since 2018. This was my third attempt at reading it; I found it utterly boring the first two times, and always gave up by page 40. However, the character of Christy felt more intriguing this go round, mostly because I saw a lot of my younger (2018) self in her. The ending was predictable, but succeeded in leaving me wanting more.

[Annitta Engel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bland and predictable, not enjoyable

[Ruth Brumby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gripping but grim. Lots about ageing, dying and life being not much fun.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bizarre, to say the least! Christy falls in love and her family also love the mysterious Mick, even sister Maisie likes him although she thinks there is something dodgy about him.....

It's quite an obscure story to follow, flitting back to when Christy was a child and her mum was alive, to when she lost her mum at 17, to when she met Mick to present...always with lots of fish references (Christy and dad run a fish farm)...Christy is lost and lonely, still feeling the dislike of her dead mum, always trying to please but somewhat pathetic with it...you feel you should empathise with her but when the truth about Mick emerges (without any real clue as to what that is throughout the story) you just feel slightly unsurprised and bored with her, him, the whole family and the book!

Not a great book, disappointing to me after reading the fabulous Hens Dancing, Summertime and Green Grass.

[Abbi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty solid read. It was short, but still managed to build up the tension/plot well. It was much less "chick-lit" than I had assumed it would be, which I was happy about - the writing style was nice, dipping in and out of the first and third person. The characters were fairly unremarkable, save Mick, who I would've liked a bit more information about, to be honest. A nice easy read, all in all.

[Mizzo73 · Rating 1 out of 5]

I took this book camping as it was light to carry in my pack and I thought it would be sufficiently fluffy to read by torchlight. The whole fishing, fishy stuff, being drawn in hook, line and sinker analogy left me a bit cold. If you want fluff read Barker's "Hens dancing" instead

[Donna Boultwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really care for these characters and I didn't like the jumping about between chapters. It was ok.