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Regeneration by: Pat Barker

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Rating: - A bit of a struggle for me I'm afraid

This is a book I was expecting to enjoy but unfortunately I didn't at all. It describes the first world war hospital experiences of Siegfried Sassoon following his anti-war declaration and hospitalisation outside Edinburgh. The psychological trauma of a number of hospitalised servicemen are described through the eyes of Sassoon and Rivers, the hospital psychiatrist. In common with some other critical reviewers here I found the whole thing rather dull and couldn't really engage with it. The book chops around rather a lot revisiting characters introduced earlier whose back story I struggled to recall. The WWI poets and writers Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen also appear, and Charles Dodgson and H.G.Wells are also mentioned in passing as acquaintances of Sassoon.
Siegfried Sassoon has written his own memoir detailing his wartime experiences, and so if one's really interested it is probably better to hear it from the horse's mouth, rather than through this 'docu-drama' novel. Against the balance of opinion I found this a rather stodgy and dull read, and more than a little pretentious. The inner voice of Rivers sometimes seems confused to me, and Sassoon's dilemma of continuing his protest and risk being considered a coward or returning to the front wasn't very well done for me. I struggled to the end but found the whole experience something akin to wading through the mud of no-man's land.

Rating: - Trauma

I found this book an engrossing and remarkable read.

1) The writing style and dialogue is quite "now". This is refreshing as it makes the characters more human to modern readers and serves to remind us that the war took place not that long ago after all. Whether men and women spoke quite like that to each other at the time is debatable but I don't think it matters.

2) The horrors of the war are brought home to us in a new way. We see the physical and psychological traumas in a hospital back in Blighty - in this case very close to home as I personally used to work at Craiglockhart Hydro in the 1970s - and we get stories of the trench life from a distance, as opposed to up close as in, say, Birdsong. It's instructive to be made aware too that not everyone back home was eagerly awaiting news or even looking forward to the return of their men.

3) Using Sassoon, Graves et al - who became literary stars - gives the story a basis in fact. The narrative largely revolves around Rivers, the doctor, and his humanity and concern shine through. Once again I don't think it matters that much of their exchanges are invented. It's done with respect.

I'm looking forward to the second book in the trilogy.

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.

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