Life Class, by Pat Barker (Penguin, Ł7.99)

The young Paul Tarrant and his fellow students at Slade School of art not only discover how to draw in their life class, but are quickly thrust into the harrowing lessons of life that they experience during the First World war, both in London and in Belgium.

As always, Barker conveys the awful immediacy of war in the trenches in unremitting detail and authenticity. Who could possibly emerge unchanged after this life class?