society. Mrs Brooke has a strained relationship with Elinor because of her non-conformity. Critical reception Toby's Room received a generally good reception, especially when it came to talking about the themes of what a female artist does in wartime, and how one deals with those who are disfigured and suffering as a result of war. Lee of The Guardian says: "Barker makes us see, with steadiness and without sensationalism, the men with no eyes, the men with no mouths, the men with no jaws, men whose tongues stick out through holes in their cheeks, men who are being patched up and operated on "and sent on their way with whatever the surgeons had managed to supply by way of a face". Lee also notes Barker's frequent return to T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland as a touchstone for the First World War. ("the wound and the wasteland are the same thing. They aren't metaphors for each other, it's closer than that.") The Telegraph stated that the prose style "remains fresh, humanely business-like, crisp and unsentimental. Images are scrupulously vivid, and the plot has real momentum." In the Times Literary Supplement, Mark Bostridge pointed out that the novel as whole owes much to the work of Vera Brittain, and that the fate of Toby Brooke, who killed himself rather than face a court-martial for homosexuality, is clearly based on what has been uncovered by Bostridge about the death of Vera Brittain's brother Edward Brittain, though Barker's novel does not acknowledge the source of the story. References External links The Portraiture of Loss – Dr Suzannah Biernoff in Ampersand magazine on Tonks' work and its impact on medical study and portraiture How do you fix a face that's been blown off by shrapnel? – A BBC interactive site on the development of plastic surgery during the two world wars. 2012 British novels Novels by Pat Barker British historical novels Novels set during World War I Hamish Hamilton books Fiction set in 1912 Fiction set in 1917