Regeneration

Rating:
Summary: Extremely overrated
Review: I was so looking forward to this read, and equally disappointed. The male characters (with one notable exception) don't seem to live and breathe, and are a sketchy set of characteristics and tics. The one exception (and not a surprise, considering the author's former work) is a working class Northern woman involved with one of the main characters. Since the characters are not particularly involving and the milieu and era is not brought vividly to life, the book reads as a schematic, rather than a flesh-and-blood, fully realized work of art.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, one of the best on the impact of war
Review: I would echo the earlier reviews and write separately here only to address two relatively recent comments about homosexuality in the book. Certainly it is "naive" to think that marriage "prevents" homosexuality. I took that to be Barker's understated point. Similarly, however, the fact that Sassoon eventually married says little about his orientation. At the time, as Barker points out through Graves, homosexuality would get you locked up. People went a long ways to stay in the closet.

Whatever, Barker has written a great book.

Rating:
Summary: An affecting insight into WWI psychology
Review: In 1917, Siegfried Sassoon threw his Military Cross into the Mersey River and published his "Soldier's Declaration" against the conduct of the war in France. Being a gentleman and an officer, Sassoon, instead of being clapped in irons, was sent to Craiglockhart Military Hospital, where he became the charge of Captain William Rivers, an anthropologist-turned-psychiatrist whose job it was to "cure" shell-shocked officers so that they could go back to the front lines.

This much is historical truth. Although that's a good place to start, the true achievement of Pat Barker's excellent "Regeneration" is the manner in which she invests these historical personages with vivid life and engaging personalities; particularly engaging is the evolution of the relationship between Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, who thanks in part to Sassoon's mentoring became perhaps the greatest of the war poets.

There are more stories in "Regeneration" than just that of Sassoon, however; Prior, who becomes mute after picking a human eye out of the ruins of a trench, or Burns, who can't eat after having inadvertently ingested human flesh in the trenches. Rivers, the center of Barker's trilogy, is also the common bond with these casualties of war. A profoundly humane man faced with the task of making war-shattered men whole enough to face the Front again, Rivers finds himself in a moral dilemma as deep and complex as Sassoon's- the constant need for experienced, "sane" soldiers who can withstand the pressure of the war, weighed against his recognition that their insanity is the logical response to the horror that was World War I.

Rating:
Summary: The horrors of war
Review: In the first book of Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy, the reader is introduced into the psychological consequences of trench fighting during World War. Officers suffering from variations of the controversial shell shock syndrome were commissioned by the British Army to be treated at Craiglockhart, a military hospital outside Edinburgh, with the intention of healing them and sending them back to the front in France. REGENERATION follows a group of officers treated at Craiglockhart as they deal with the horrific events they have witnessed. There is no doubt that what these soldiers experience can disturb even the most strong-minded individual today. The principle psychiatrist is Dr. Rivers, who suffered from his own personal demons and war symptoms. He created strong friendships with many of his patients and cared dearly for their well being. Rivers is a complex, nuanced character. While he portrays an exterior of believing in the War, he holds an internal debate of the War's philosophical warrants.

It was a pure enjoyment to read about WW1, an often forgotten war in the literary world in my own opinion. I was previously unaware to the full extent of the shock and revulsion of trench fighting that the soldiers had to endure. It seems virtually impossible to leave that situation psychologically untouched. REGENERATION contains many horrific scenes that remain with the reader long after the book is put down. Another intriguing aspect of this book concerns the fact that it is a mixture of fact and fiction. Characters such as Siegfried Sassoon and Dr. Rivers existed in real life, although Barker did perform some literary liberties in writing this book. REGENERATION is a book that was difficult to put down. The unique plot grabbed me and held my attention. Although there were many scenes of graphic violence I felt it was an integral part of the plot. It enabled the reader to get a glimpse of what these soldiers endured in the trenches. A well done accomplishment.

Rating:
Summary: This is an excellent book
Review: It is not often that you find a book that actually makes you sit up and think about the message being conveyed by the author.

This really is a superb book in terms of the character creation and background description to the lives of the young soldiers fighting in the First World War. The relationship between Siegfried Sassoon and Dr. Rivers is an intricate and complex one that is never finally resolved, but both characters are subtly affected by the views of the other.

It is very rare to find a book in a modern literature genre that has a strong and convincing theme. This is one of the first books that I have read since William Boyd that creates an intriguing atmosphere and I am now embarking on The Eye in the Door which is also an equally excellent read.

Pat Barker, I believe, has emerged as one of the strongest authoresses since Iris Murdoch and Virginia Woolf, and I very much look forward to her future novels.

Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful and readable
Review: My sister loaned me this book, and I began it without any real idea of what it was about. Pat Barker has done a masterful job of creating interesting three-dimensional characters, some of whom are fictionalized from real life Britons who were caught up in the war. The steady plot never runs away from the characters, so this is not the book to read if one was expecting mindless action.

That being said, I found this a very interesting and easy read: one of those books that keeps you up too late trying to finish one more chapter. Although I'm not normally a fan of trilogies, this one is good enough to look forward to the remaining volumes.

I recommend this to anyone interested in history, politics, and World War I.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: One of the best books I've read in a long time. Pat Barker has the uncanny ability to convey a great deal of information about her characters through the cadences of their speech and other seemingly inconsequential gestures or reactions. I think this accounts in part for why the entire trilogy drew me in so completely and wouldn't let me go until I'd finished it. The portrayal of Rivers is masterfully done--his compassion, humor, conscientiousness, and attacks of self-doubt make him one of my favorite characters in fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Poets, Patients and Psycological illness.
Review: Pat Barker's booker prize winning book made for excellent reading with an in depth but readable story of mental health. With some intriguing looks into the decisions the army made, during the first world war, regarding mental health and it's treatment. This book provides a gripping look at a place where the real world meets the imagained and the people on the borderline of both. All in all, a great read, one which will make you want to read the sequels and learn what happens to all the carachters.

Rating:
Summary: The Regeneration Trilogy
Review: Pat Barker's magnificent trilogy is not only a profound contribution to our literature on the First World War - it is also one of the most distinguished works of contemporary fiction in any genre. Barker doesn't skirt around the central issues with a po-faced patriotic reverence, but rather tackles them head on: the agonizing contradictions of patriotism and protest; the politics of social and self-surveillance; the homoerotic undertones of trench camaraderie, especially among the war poets; the horrendous physical and psychological costs of war; and the sense of personal duty which drives us, nonetheless, to fight. These are big themes, but Barker's talent is to handle them in a way which makes her novels feel like an easy read. They are accessible, engaging, seemingly simplistic in their style - but in the end profoundly moving in a way which only the highest literature aspires to be. The trick is that she makes her characters so real for us - Prior and Rivers, the consistent protagonists, are completely human. She makes us experience a world-historical incident on a very human scale. Harrowing, intelligent, moving and funny, Barker has crafted a fictional epic that will stay with you forever. Walking through Sydney's Central railway station months after finishing these books, I came across the honour boards listing the hundreds of railway men and women who died in the Great War. Barker's books made the war real for me, made these lives - these deaths - real. If they do nothing more than that for you, they've succeeded.

Rating:
Summary: The best book of the trilogy
Review: Readers who want a fictionalization of Paul Fussell's "The Great War and Modern Memory" should look no further. This slender novel captures the essential cultural impact of World War I--the destruction of sincere discourse. Barker's economical style is ideally suited to the material, although at times I wished she would probe her characters a bit further. While her reticence is fatal to the other two books in the trilogy, it works here, perhaps because Rivers is such a wonderful, complex personality. A haunting experience, and worth every bit of the discomfort it causes.