Love Your Enemies

by Nicola Barker

A first short story collection. These dozen stories are part fantasy, part dirty realism.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, British Literature, 20th Century, Short Story Collection

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Nicola Barker is an English writer.
Nicola Barker’s eight previous novels include Darkmans (short-listed for the 2007 Man Booker and Ondaatje prizes, and winner of the Hawthornden Prize), Wide Open (winner of the 2000 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), and Clear (long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2004). She has also written two prize-winning collections of short stories, and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in East London.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a stronger collection than Heading Inland, notable for the outstanding novelette ‘John’s Box,’ where a terminally ill man constructs his own coffin in a Warholian pop art stylee, and ‘Dual Balls,’ where a prim schoolteacher takes vibrating testicle apparatus into class to honour her friend and subsequently orgasms before the headmistress. ‘A Necessary Truth’ and ‘Symbiosis: Class Cestoda’ deal with oppressive domestic lives where women find liberation in odd ways: the former through a cold caller teaching philosophy, the latter through a tapeworm living in her stomach. Some stories are light, disposable whimsy, but in the appealing Barkerish mode. Note for completists: the stories in Three Button Trick compiles material from this collection and Heading Inland with no new stuff—it’s better to read the two distinct collections.

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicola Barker again: her first book, short stories.

I find it very comforting to read something from 1993; no unwelcome changes in the wider world had happened to surprise me. People watch Bergerac and Wogan, call each other on the phones we now usually call landlines and they write letters.

As usual, I love her characters here, so ordinary and so strange. When I'm in a train or a car going past rows of houses I think about what the lives of the people inside must be like and they are often rather like Nicola Barker characters... their mundane aspects anyway before things turn somewhat Gaimanesque.

I did enjoy her other book of short stories, Heading Inland but I agree that in this one the stories are slightly better. It has some magnificent moments, but it's not quite perfect: in this first book, the conversations of her working-class characters occasionally don't ring true and one is suddenly reminded they were created by a Cambridge graduate. Perhaps she just needed a few more years' working among these people and listening and writing before they started to sound really right.

And these stories are ordered a little strangely; I'm not sure why another little 'un is tacked on after the almost-a-novella John's Box, which in parts is truly magnificent, and as a story about an ending feels like a fitting end.

I may be so much of a fan that I can't give unbiased judgement about Barker's work any more. Every time I put this book down for a few minutes, I would think “Just one more story”, and then I'd finished it as if it were a box of chocolates. (A couple of these stories may be best not read whilst eating, however.)

[Derek Baldwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read most of Nicola Barker's stuff now, currently filling in the gaps, and rereading one or two of the best ones (Wide Open is my favourite). Not ordinarily a fan of short stories which is why this has been done way away from the front of the queue. To me the form seems to lend itself to trite little character studies, parables, and, let's face it, many must have been ideas that weren't good enough to sustain at greater length.

A couple of the stories in this collection are rather weak, Skin and Country Matters specifically, but the rest are not bad at all. Dual Balls is fun, as is the plastic surgery story (have forgotten the title, it's the first in the book). The best is the longest, John's Box, which is sweet, and spiritual, and moving.

The tales are all very English and quite dated in their cultural references but this book is definitely worth a whirl. 3.5/5

[Amelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these short stories I enjoyed and others I really did not. They were all rather weird and some creepy and disturbing. Well written but over all probably not my cup of tea!

[Matthew Steele · Rating 4 out of 5]

👃🏻🧑‍🦲🥫

[Rob Manwaring · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barker's debut collection of short stories. Tonally they are in a diverse range, but some brilliant humour creaking through.

These were good, funny in places, tonally a bit all over the place, but enjoyable and thought-provoking. The longest story, John's Box was especially good; as a dying man decides to build his own coffin. It doesn't quite go where you thiknk it might, but all the better for it.