Five Miles from Outer Hope

'If you ever despair that young British female writing is only concerned with marriage, men and weight problems, you just need to pick up one of Barker's books to reassure yourself that all is not bland!She writes of the comic and sometimes sinister surrealism of ordinary people's lives, and the results are books to make you wince, gasp and laugh out loud. The latest addition! is a sharp, deft account of teenage frustration' Independent 'The pages are alive with arch metaphors, apt similes, puns and riddles!A challenging evocation of that strange, magical, bewildering period between a child and reaching adulthood' Financial Times 'At times comic and whimsical, sometimes sad and occasionally grating, 'Five Miles from Outer Hope' is always fresh, original and tightly written' The Times 'It's a first-love, rites of passage novel, refreshingly free of rose-tinted sentiment!by the way, it's also very funny' Literary Review 'This novel, which cleverly sidesteps the traps of earnestness and seriousness, could well be read as a sort of literary tonic for enervation and grumpiness, the latest welcome despatch from Barker's determinedly perverse and ungovernable imagination' Guardian