Product Description
In 1917 Siegfried Sassoon, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: The war was a senseless slaughter. Ile was officially classified "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon's "sanity" 'and sending him back to the trenches. This novel fells what happened as only a novel can. If is a war saga in which not a shot is fired. If is a story of a battle for a man's mind in which only the reader can decide who is the victor, who the vanquished, and who the victim. It is one of the most amazing feats of fiction of our time. Regeneration is the first novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed World War I trilogy, which continues with The Eye in the Door and culminates in the 1995 Booker Prize-winning The Ghost Road.

Amazon.com Review
Regeneration, one in Pat Barker's series of novels confronting the psychological effects of World War I, focuses on treatment methods during the war and the story of a decorated English officer sent to a military hospital after publicly declaring he will no longer fight. Yet the novel is much more. Written in sparse prose that is shockingly clear -- the descriptions of electronic treatments are particularly harrowing -- it combines real-life characters and events with fictional ones in a work that examines the insanity of war like no other. Barker also weaves in issues of class and politics in this compactly powerful book. Other books in the series include The Eye in the Door and the Booker Award winner The Ghost Road.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 85 reviews)

Reality was better

Sorry, but I can't see what this superficial fictional treatment added to the already rich mix of Sassoon's own (internally inconsistent, or just honestly perspectivist?) memoirs and Max Egremont's probing, nuanced telling in his biography of Sassoon. The sharpness and humanity of Egremont's insights make this novel seem banal by comparison.
October 18, 2008

Complex and creative, but raw

In Regeneration, Pat Barker fictionalises an encounter between H. R. Rivers and Siegfrid Sasson in a military psychological hospital. In Craiglockhart, near Edinburgh, there are numerous war wounded, whose experiences in the Flanders trenches of the First World War have left them psychologically, as well as sometimes physically scarred. The symptoms are many and varied. In Sassoon's case it is possible that the motivation might even be political, rather than psychological.

Rivers attempts to analyse his patients and his own responses to them. He is of the modern school, unlikely to resort to the blunt-edged methods of some of his contemporaries. Description of some of these established treatments read very much like torture. They were, after all, in the cases described, trying to make someone talk. How appropriate.

But Rivers is unimpressed and he pursues his own line. Along the way, he also develops new, ground-breaking treatments of his own invention.

Sassoon befriends a young man called Owen, whom he encourages to write. Another friend called Graves visits whenever he can. Together, Sassoon and Owen work on some of Owen's writing. The results, they both agree, are improvements.

The power of Regeneration is the relation between its overall idea and its setting. It presents the creative process as a reflection on experience and sets this in an institution where formal reflection on experience is a treatment. Eventually, it is not just the individual patient who benefits from the cathartic process of reflection, but also the analyst and, ultimately, all of us when the relief takes the form of great poetry.

October 04, 2008

Why you should read the entire trilogy

"Regeneration" is best read as part of the so-called "Regeneration Trilogy," of which it is the first book. (The other two, in order, are "The Eye in the Door" and "The Ghost Road.") This way, you will be able to follow the main characters: Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Billy Prior (all but the last are historical figures) through all three books. In particular, you'll be able to appreciate the ways in which Barker develops the complex character of Rivers, the psychologist who treats soldiers who have suffered breakdowns and who, before the war, had done fieldwork in Melanesia, studying the cultural practices of a tribe of headhunters. "Regeneration" is set in Craiglockhart, the psychiatric hospital where Rivers treats Sassoon and Prior. "The Eye in the Door," mostly set in London, focuses on the social and economic conditions of British society in the war years, while "The Ghost Road" shifts among three settings: London, the battlefields in France, and Melanesia. As one reads through the trilogy, characters appear and disappear, but the figures of Rivers and Prior are central---and often antagonistic. I particularly admire the way Barker uses different techniques to illuminate complexity of character and thought, as when, in "The Ghost Road," Prior begins to write in a field diary (which he does not do in the first two novels). Some readers of "Regeneration" have compared Barker to Hemingway, but I don't think so. His technique is spare, but she works like a painter with a large canvas, one who paints panoramas of historic events. Thus, some parts of the canvas are minutely detailed, while others are merely brushed in. The effect, taken as a whole, is stunning and, by the end of "The Ghost Road," will reduce you to silence, the way a great painting does.
April 01, 2008

Fix Their Minds So They Can Go Back Into The Slaughter of World War I

When the First World War broke out, most people assumed it would be over in a few months as their nation (whichever one that was) sent the others packing. In fact, many raced to enlist fearing that "the fun" might be over before they got there.

Instead, what they discovered in Western Europe was a stalemate with trenches dug from the North Sea to the Atlantic Coast across which English, French, and German soldiers faced each other for years from cold, wet, corpse-filled, and disease-ridden trenches.

No one knew how to break the stalemate. Millions died as shelling continued against these fixed positions.

Every so often some general would convince himself that a massive charge would break the other line. Each time this was tried, the slaughter accelerated as men ran into point-blank machine gun fire and artillery barrages.

Regeneration looks at the disillusionment that led one decorated English officer and poet, Siegfried Sassoon, to remonstrate against the military leadership in public. Rather than court-marital Sassoon, the military chose to send him to a psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers. Regeneration creates a fictional account of their relationship at Craiglockhart War Hospital. The book also looks at how Rivers treated other "mental" cases sent his way.

The most interesting parts of the story come in looking at the ethical dilemma of being asked to help those who cannot mentally deal with the war any more . . . when that "help" may lead to them going back to France where their life expectancy is measured in weeks. I was reminded of stories I've read about patching up people who tried to kill themselves so they could be legally executed.

There's a revolting section on how less sensitive physicians dealt with these "mental" problems . . . basically torturing soldiers until they wouldn't resist going back to fight.

The book has two weaknesses that mar its obvious strengths in recapturing that difficult moment in English history.

1. Ms. Barker assumes that her readers already know about Siegfried Sassoon (or at least that they don't mind her holding back details about what he did for some time). I had never heard of him so it was annoying to try to figure out what all the fuss was about in the early pages. The book could use an extensive historical footnote as a prologue for those who don't know about the incident.

2. The book often skates around the edges of how Sassoon and Rivers related to one another. Much is tacit, and I found it hard to understand in all scenes what Ms. Barker was trying to suggest each one was thinking.

I commend Ms. Barker for picking real characters and bringing them to life in a way that's very poignant (even for those who aren't English) 90 years after the events have taken place.

March 13, 2008

Insightful WW1 profiles from well researched imagined psychological counselling sessions with the `shell-shocked'

This book covers some of the same ground as Ben Elton's praiseworthy The First Casualty, although in an entirely different way. Both try to retrofit as mainstream largely post-60s values towards homosexuality, pacifism, and atheism (in the latter case by omission in writing as if Christianity was as marginalised as it is today, an historical absurdity), but in their defence it could be reasonably argued that of course homosexuals, pacifists and atheists/agnostics were plentiful. While Elton surrounds his message with action and a crime story, Barker instead goes deeply into conversation and rumination, and in both cases there's so much more to the book than mere preaching.

Barker ambitiously imagines encounters between real and fictional historical figures. Of course once she's imagining dialogue that's not recorded her characters are all fictional, but her painstaking research (and the availability of so much detailed material) makes for some powerfully authentic writing. Moreover she has an impressive ability for informed empathy: she asks herself, "What would Dr. Rivers, or Sassoon have been thinking? How would they have reacted?" and comes up with some fascinating and plausible answers. Plausible? Hang on a minute: they seem plausible to me, a guy who'd never even heard of Rivers or Sassoon before reading this book! It would be interesting to hear reactions of others who had studied (or knew) them.

There is not a standard plot, and much of the book is composed of recreations of counselling sessions between `shell-shocked' soldiers and their psychologist. Barker's version of Dr. Rivers is a real triumph - one of the most developed characters I've probably come across. Hats off to Barker for having the skill, compassion and intelligence to convince us of Rivers' skill, compassion and intelligence by what she has him say and do. He's not a quaint historical curiosity, but clearly someone Barker has read extensively and admires. The way she's immersed herself in writing from the time making her characters not `just like us', but still wonderfully real reminds me of O'Brian's marvellous RN stories (much as the authors portray quite distinct attitudes towards battle).

February 27, 2008

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

The Eye in the Door
by Pat Barker

The Ghost Road
by Pat Barker

Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography (Anchor Books)
by Robert Graves
by Paul Fussell

Life Class: A Novel
by Pat Barker

The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien