Regeneration

"You must speak, but I shall not listen to anything you say."A Doctor who is engaged in helping a World War I Soldier to regain his speech makes this statement. For anyone who has read of this war, you may agree it was a particularly gruesome event, abetted by the latest in weaponry. This Doctor who is supposed to heal, has the medical ethics of a Mengele. "Regeneration" by Pat Barker is the first of three acts, that examine War, its advocates, the objectors, and groups that society continues to marginalize to this day. This book is a brutal assault; it offers no respite, no quarter to the reader. Some have compared her writing of War to Hemingway, a comparison to Erich Maria Remarque may startle some, but this woman's grasp of the war is remarkable. All three parts of the trilogy were honored with awards, the final volume with The Booker Prize.Many of the players, locations, and events in this work actually exist or transpired. Part of the intensity of the writing derives from the impact only true history can make. The balance of the impact is due to Ms. Barker, and her skill of creating the sense of an epic in a scant 250+pages. There are no innocents in this book; guilt is another emotional commodity that prevails.I don't know that philosophically a pro war book could be credible. Such a book could be written, and few will argue that conflict at times is inevitable, if only because it is part of our nature. What Pat Barker does is to bring back the horror of war without sanitizing or sensationalizing the events.We no longer fight wars like the one that brought us Versailles. The barbaric behavior continues, but the exposure it gets to the public is measured. Death in combat has not changed. However if CNN were in the trenches I believe World War I would have been shortened. The infrared bombing that is more akin to a video game when watched does not have the impact of a soldier removing pieces of a friend from his gasmask.Ms. Barker also writes about a variety of other social events/practices that are as contentious today as nearly a century ago. She examines the need for scapegoats when the truth is unpleasant. This ranges in her work from a German bred dog that is disemboweled for sport, to the issue of those who object to serve, and those that do, but under the double life of what we have named, don't ask and don't tell.I have nearly completed the second volume, "The Eye In The Door", and I can say without hesitation, that if the discussion or graphic description of the subjects I have mentioned are not what you choose to read, pass these works by. If you can put her writing into context, and read through pages that will make some readers very uncomfortable, this is a phenomenal written work. I use the word uncomfortable not as a judgment on topics, individual's choices, or reader's personal views, rather only as an adjective that may apply to how some may feel.I don't know how these grounds can be covered without discomfort. The writer cho

Having just finished Paul Fussell's "cultural essay" on WWI called "The Great War and Modern Memory", I found myself compelled to read this fictionalized account of one of the main figures in Fussell's book, Siegfried Sassoon.The historical background helped me enjoy this book tremendously, but it shouldn't take anyone long to be drawn into this compelling story about a doctor who is trying to "help" shell-shock victims recover so they can be sent back to the front. The characters are rich, the dialog is sharp, and the plot is riveting. Even the pacing, which I was afraid would drag at times, was excellent. Interestingly, the Sassoon story is only a thread that goes through the book; Barker populates the book with several touching stories and characters, some who become more important to the reader than Sassoon.I dare you to read this book and not come away with a deeper compassion and sympathy for the soldiers of WWI.

Having just finished reading "Birdsong" I felt compelled to read more about a period of time that is moving out of living memory. I think "Regeneration" is a superb book that is well written, well researched and moving. I think books like this are so important because we should not be allowed to forget what the people of that time went through and we should not be allowed to trivialise what the First World War did to human beings and how it broke the seemingly Golden Age that had developed throughout Victorian and Edwardian England. I think the novel helps to honour the memory of the people who gave their lives in the war over something they did not understand or comprehend. The book is not just about war as it goes far deeper in helping to explain humanity, gender, class and truth. "Regeneration" is a disturbing and thought provoking book which people should read firstly because it is a good book and secondly becuase it will ensure that you do not forget what the people of the time and especially the soliders went through. They were caught up in a war of industrial proportions and were caught up in a war that they did not understand and we should forever hold them in high regard and in our memories. Afterall, in one month in 1917 there were 104,000 casualties in the war. Sacrifice like that deserves and should be remembered.From a literary point of view, this book is superbly crafted and is an original work of fiction with a good story. It is energetic and highly readable and I recommend it to anyone.

Having read the entire trilogy fairly recently, I find it hard to distinguish between the first book alone and the complete work. However, Regeneration itself does stick out by being the most well-researched and well-informed of the three. I presume that many people have heard about Sassoon's 1917 public objection to the way the war was being waged, which caused him to be put under the supervision of Dr. Rivers - but I had not before reading this novel.The incident was so fascinating that I have since read further about Sassoon, Rivers and the war experience for those who suffered from neurasthenia - all of which reading has confirmed what I initially suspected, that Barker's novel, as well as being exceptionally well-written, insightful and moving, is also extremely true to events and situations. For the benefit of the "novel"-reading world, a fictional "hero" is added, whose life continues in tandem with Wilfred Owen's into the next two books; yet even he, Billy Prior, is more a composition deriving from real soldiers' experiences than the imagination.Not to say that Barker does not apply her creativity to the full - in her descriptive style, and in stringing together of the various lives she is describing. She has insight into character which is both moving and important - it reminds us that beyond the cliches of tragedy lay a very human, normal and mostly dull war, whose effects were nevertheless all-encompassing and disruptive.

As a stand-alone novel it's good. As book one in a trilogy, it's excellent. You meet the main characters in Regeneration. You learn their secrets in The Eye in the Door. You share their pain in The Ghost Road. It's a very different--and often haunting--look at World War I through its soldiers and their horrors. But it's Barker's writing that makes this trio a "10." There is history, fiction, philosophy, psychiatry, even sex and gore; but all part of the story, none of it gratuitous. She does not clutter her prose with tedious descriptions, yet every picture is crystal clear. She tells you things you don't want to know, through three books you won't want to put down.