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Regeneration by: Pat Barker

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Rating: - The poets have lost their personality

"Regeneration" has a solid concept at its heart: using real people and real events to fictionalise a slice of WW1 history. But does Pat Barker really pull it off?

Rivers, the eminent psychiatrist, was clinically dull as a leading man. I found it hard to believe in him or to accept that his moral outlook had changed much by the end of the story. The stars that should have shone brightly in this narrative - Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves - faded into blandness. These mild, melancholy officers were virtually interchangeable and had little character to set them apart. Meanwhile, too much focus was given to peripheral characters like Prior and Burns. Prior's wooing of a local girl was largely irrelevant and upset the book's pacing (I'm sure those local Scots were talking with a strange Yorkshire lilt, as well). Burns' discharge and subsequent depression in Suffolk led to nothing. It just reaffirmed that the war had warped his mind and we knew that from the start.

In particular, though, it was the meeting of Sassoon and Owen that disappointed me the most. Their friendship at Craiglockhart Hospital felt fake, a kind of paint-by-numbers re-enactment based on Sassoon's real-life annotations of Owen's poetry. Neither of these men seemed shaken to the very core by war, as their famous poems convey so well. Indeed, in this novel, the war barely feels real at all. Sassoon comes home from it, writes his withering "Soldier's Declaration" - and spends the rest of his time playing golf, visiting artists and dining at member's clubs. I can't help but think this complex man really hasn't been done justice.

Pat Barker seems to be more of a historian than a novelist and perhaps it shows. She's got her facts straight but scrimped on the humanity. Am I tempted by the next two books in the trilogy? Not really!

Rating: - A Fantastic Book

This is an amazing book. As other's have said, this novel tells the story of Dr William Rivers, an army psychiatrist treating soldiers in WW1 for shell-shock. A condition many at the time did not believe existed. Most of this book is just talking, there is little action and few twists, as we follow the treatment of River's patients. Yet the story is utterly compelling and your heart really does go out to the suffering characters damaged by war.

The story gives a glimpse into a side of the First World War we rarely see, making the horror of the war all that more tragic. Men were on all sides literally were just numbers - there was no respect for life on any side. Your country told you to fight and you did. If you refused, you were a traitor. If you became ill, you had to get better as soon as possible and 'get back out there.'

Rating: - EXCELLENT WW1 NOVEL

This was an excellent novel. It dealt with the dark days that Siegfrield Sasson and others faced towards the end of the First World War about the value of the war, and the consequent feeling of cowardice. It depicted the frutility of war, the suffering that humans can inflict on others. It also encompasses the crass stupidity of the war leaders, and how they valued life-the class system at its worst.
Now nearly a 100 years later it is difficult to envisage the squalor and suffering that went on in the trenches of France. Pat Barker writes very well, and the novel is very atmospheric, and you feel cold, miserable, and most impressively tired. It is the general tiredness that everyone seemed to feel with the war, deaths and the future.
This was an excellent novel. One of the best I have read about the first world war, in spite of the majority of the action being set in Scotland.

Rating: - Review for Regeneration (Pat Barker)

I am very happy with this item. It arrived promptly and in great condition. Thank you very much.

Rating: - Great purchase!

I bought this book after reading other customers reviews. I have loved it from the moment I started to read it and look forward to buying more of Barker's novels.

Review Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next »