Regeneration (Regeneration Trilogy)

Pat Barker's novel details the real-life encounter of the WW1 poet Siegfried Sassoon and the psychiatrist William Rivers in Craiglockhart Hospital for officers suffering from mental trauma as a result of their experience in the trenches. Sassoon, a decorated hero, is saner than most and certainly no coward, but he has published a declaration denouncing the war, which presents a problem to the government. It is Rivers' job to persuade him to go back to France, but he is also acutely aware of the risk of destroying his patient's individuality in so doing. Although the horrors of trench warfare are always there in the background, the author's sympathetic treatment of the leading characters is such as to make it very pleasant to spend time in their company, and it is only towards the end that the novel fully generates the moral force promised by its theme.Perhaps I was conditioned to respond in a certain way to this book. As an Englishman of a certain generation, the dialogue and texture of the writing was warmly familiar. As an English major, I was absorbed by Pat Barker's treatment of Sassoon's process of distilling his experience into poetry; although he was already known to me, the book made me think of him even more highly, and likewise his contemporary Wilfred Owen, who also appears as a character. A further personal factor is that my own father, like Sassoon, similarly served as a lieutenant in the trenches; he was similarly decorated and I think similarly traumatized. This book makes me wish that I had been able to ask, and he to talk, about the events that clearly destroyed even the survivors of an entire generation.There is horror in the book for certain, but its greatest effects, like those of the War itself, linger on in the souls of the men who are supposedly out of it. Nothing that Pat Barker descibes of trench warfare come close in immediacy to what I consider the masterpiece of the genre, Sebastian Faulks'  BIRDSONG . And by far the most horrific chapter in the book is a so-called medical treatment by a sadistic (and also real-life) London psychologist called Yealland, which is the diametric opposite to the humane methods employed by Rivers, who is a thoroughly admirable and complex individual. So admirable, in fact, that Sassoon feels guilty after a while for spending months among gentlemen in comparative luxury while his men are being slaughtered in France. This reader felt a bit the same: caught up in an easy and even rather escapist read, pondering issues in a somewhat hypothetical way, while the real conflicts are occurring elsewhere. This impression is increased by the more perfunctory treatment of the lesser characters (as other reviewers have observed), who seem to come more from a Masterpiece Theatre script than from real life.All the same, the questions that are posed in the last third of the book have significant gravity, and I look forward to reading the two succeeding novels in the trilogy,  THE EYE IN THE DOOR  and THE GHOST ROAD, to see whether their weight is allowed to build cumulatively from here on out.**[Later: I have now read all three books, and though I found them all interesting, I felt that the special quality given by the narrower focus of REGENERATION got lost when Pat Barker expanded the canvas. See my review of  THE GHOST ROAD .]

I met Pat Barker in 1978 or 79 at a party given by Virago Press in London. Virago had just published her first novel, and the early reviews were coming in, all raves. Barker herself seemed shy and not very ego-driven, which appealed to me. Yet, somehow, when I got back to the US, I didn't read her book. I'm sorry now. I would have been enriched years ago by this writer's wisdom and art.Recently someone suggested Regeneration, since I had gotten interested in the impact of World War I in Europe (it had a less emphatic effect over here, I think. Not as devastating to us as the influenza epidemic that followed it). And I remembered meeting Barker and wondered that I had let her work slip past me. I began reading, and quickly saw what those early reviewers had meant. I found myself marveling not only at the story, but at this writer's very high art and skills. Many writers tell a good story, and you either read around glitches in the execution or just skip when you come to the dead parts. It had been so long since I had read a truly great book, that I had forgotten the force of masterly skills - I had forgotten how important doing something brilliantly could be to the effect of the whole.Barker does many things brilliantly. Description of scene and emotion - fantastic. Ditto to internal monologue, which sets a character in our minds. And sliding easily and naturally from one character to another. Moving back and forth in time as simply as we ourselves do when something today calls to mind something from years ago. She deepens our understanding of each character and the background as she goes. This is high art in service of story, not in service to itself.Barker's knowledge of just which details are important is another skill to marvel at. These scenes are evocative to the reader as well as to the character experiencing them, as tales within tales let us see farther and more clearly. At the same time, the forward movement of the overall story never falters. I couldn't put this book down.The trilogy, of which this is the first part, treats of the multitude of ways an external trauma, in this case war, acts upon individuals and on a society as a whole. Barker uses historical characters as well as invented ones. And such is the level of her skill, known people like Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, for example, to say nothing of the other war poets and the medical people, are never ever the usual wooden historical characters. They are as finely thought- and felt-out as those other characters whom the writer has been free to invent. The reader is drawn well and truly into their lives, unaware of history's heavy hand.That means that this is hardly a "historical novel," along the lines of those we have access to every day. It is as natural as Yourcenar's The Memoirs of Hadrian, and to my mind, an even better book than that classic.I'm now deep into the third and final volume of the trilogy, The Ghost Road (which won England's Booker award in the late 1990s). The second, The Eye in Door, is so powerfully revealing of the inner forces shaping our lives that I will reread it many many times. I cannot even think of parts of it without a shiver.

Great insight into the futilities and horrors and suffering of The Great War. I've loved WW1 poetry and it was interesting to read a story of the great poets, how they protested the war and dealt with the madness of it all.

Nun, Geschmäcker sind ja bekanntlich verschieden, aber ich selbst mag gerne fiktive Geschichten, die in einem realen geschichtlichen Kontext eingebettet sind. Als Psychologe gefällt mir die Darstellung des Psychiaters, die eher wertschätzend ist und ihn im Rahmen des damaligen Wissensstands als bemühten Therapeuten zeigt. Die Gedichte von Sassoon und Owens gingen mir schon immer unter die Haut, und daher gefallen mir auch diese Charaktere sehr gut. Die Grausamkeiten und (diskutierte) Notwendigkeit des Krieges werden zum Teil nebeneinander, zum Teil gegenüber gestellt, und psychische Konflikte, die daraus resultieren, beleuchtet.Wem dieses Buch gefällt, seien empfohlen: The Things They Carried, Letters Home from Vietnam, The Quiet American -- alle drei allerdings zum Vietnam Krieg, aber ähnlich in der Auseinandersetzung mit Krieg.

Great words by a great writer that really make you understand the impact WWI had on Britain. Barker's fictional depiction of non-fictional characters is strong and breath-taking.Absolutely loved it.

This is the first of the author's trilogy of historical novels set in the First World War, all of which won various accolades (the final part, The Ghost Road, won the Booker Prize in 1995). This is a re-read, eleven years after my original reading of the book. I appreciated it more this time round, though it isn't what one would call enjoyable, concerning as it does the mental breakdown of soldiers returned from the trenches, focusing mainly on Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, but also featuring the suffering of (presumably) fictional characters. The novel is set in a real life mental hospital, Craiglockhart near Edinburgh, where these suffering souls are under the care of Dr Rivers, another real historical personage. There are some shocking scenes (especially the electric shock therapy session near the end, administered by another real life doctor of the time, Lewis Yealland); but also some scenes of redemption as some soldiers are cured (in many cases, though, that means cured to be sent back to the trenches). Rivers comes to the conclusion that what leads to the men's breakdown is not so much individual horrific experiences, but rather the passivity of life stuck in the trenches; their "Great Adventure – the real life equivalent of all the adventure stories they’d devoured as boys – consisted of crouching in a dugout, waiting to be killed". The "prolonged strain, immobility and helplessness .... did the damage, and not the sudden shocks or bizarre horrors that the patients themselves were inclined to point to as the explanation for their condition". An interesting read, and I will read the sequels, though feel no immediate rush to do so.

“Fear, tenderness - these emotions were so despised that they could be admitted into consciousness only at the cost of redefining what it meant to be a man.”Regeneration is a story inspired by true events of World War One. Centres around the now famous war poet, Siegfried Sassoon, and his inspiring of Wilfred Owen, the story takes place in a hospital called Craiglockhart, for those suffering shell shock, PTSD.It is a story of intricate characterisation, the horrific consequences of war, and the internal conflict each character faces. Everyone faces different tribulations and struggles that appear impossible to overcome, yet they can unite over their experiences, and it is what forges them into brothers.“You know you're walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face.”Sassoon is the central character. He wrote The Declaration, which criticised and discredited those causing the war, proclaiming that it could have been ended, and was not fuelled by incessant greed. Yet, he faces the trial of facing heavy opposition who can send him far away, and the guilt of leaving his men on the front line.It Is a story of moral dilemmas that plagues all, especially that of William Rivers, the doctor, who wishes to ‘regenerate’ those in his care, but only to send them back to the front line, to almost certain death. This was emphasised by the subtle and smooth prose that allowed ideas, themes and undertones to evolve and naturally present themselves to the reader, depicting realistic and believable mentalities to the characters.“A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance."Regeneration was a haunting yet revealing story that was brilliant in presenting both the horrors of the war, but the reasons of why people fought, and how it formed bonds and inspiration. Focusing on Sassoon, it was amazing to find out how and why he used poetry in the way he did to portray such powerful visions of the reality of war.A powerful war story that focuses on the traumatic impact as a result of the horrendous things most people in WW1 saw.4.5/5