The Regeneration Trilogy: Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, The Ghost… (edition 1997)

REGENERATION
I’ve had this on my shelf for a very long time and imminent emigration to Papua New Guinea brought it rapidly to the front of my to be read list as my books headed into storage, to friends or to the guy who buys books off me on Cambridge market. Very glad to finally get into this trilogy which I first saw on the shelf of a friend of mine In Seoul back in 2006… the same friend that inspired me to get back into novels.

This novel focusses not on the First World War battlefields that we’re so often reminded of but on the effects of those battlefields on the minds of their victims. Dr Rivers, the main character of the book, pioneered our understanding of what is now apparently called combat stress reaction but was then known as nothing at all. We more commonly call it shell-shock. The novel is moving, intricate and written with a great deal of insight into the human condition than many I’ve read for a while.

As Rivers engages with each of his patients you begin to learn more about not only the condition but Rivers himself, a remarkable man in many ways. You learn also about the way that British culture at the time responded to these victims of the war who, to all intents and purposes, were perfectly unharmed and yet completely disabled. You encounter men who cannot speak, who cannot see, who cannot walk – all psychosomatic victims of trauma. Rivers’ way of unlocking the cages these men are in is intriguing and reveals a man of great empathy and tireless compassion.

I thought the novel was remarkable on many levels. The characters are, for the most part, real people – Rivers, Sassoon, Owen prominent among them. But the way she brings them to life, investing dry and dusty research on these figures with a real colour and power is worthy of praise. In addition, there are very well-constructed fictional characters in there as well, notably Billy Prior who figures prominently in the next two books of the trilogy. The fact that you are at no point aware of any division between fact and fiction speaks volumes for Barker’s skill in this regard. In addition, I thought the subject matter and her portrayal of the home front of WW1 was rare.

I found the novel to be really well-crafted. I loved the way that paragraphs lent themselves to be re-read for more reflection on exactly what was being described. Unfortunately, I read this on the road so didn’t have time to mark any passages for you here. I suggest instead that you get yourself a copy of the whole trilogy if possible and dive on in.

THE EYE IN THE DOOR
Picking up where Regeneration leaves off, Barker’s second book of the Regeneration trilogy was, I thought, in many ways an improvement on the first. The story of shell-shock deepens and while Regeneration showed the response of the medical profession to this condition, Eye tells the story of society’s response, in particular that of the Army itself.

Billy Prior, one of many patients at the Craiglockhart Hospital of Regeneration now becomes the protagonist. The story follows his resumption of Home service, his developing relationship with Sarah Lumb and his continued treatment by William Rivers who has moved to work at a hospital in London.

Billy’s bisexuality comes to the fore in this novel and, just ten pages in, you’ll have struggled to read his first sexual encounter. While I didn’t care for the descriptive nature of them, I do appreciate Barker creating Billy with such a disposition.

I think a bisexual nature works as a literary device for a character who shell-shock has divided into two extremely different and yet equally destructive personalities. The Eye in the Door develops the depths of Billy’s shell-shock much further than even experienced in his time in Craiglockhart Hospital in Regeneration. He finds that he’s blanking out for hours at a time and coming to only to find that he’s been operating as a completely different character he has no control over… with disturbing consequences.

And bisexuality, like shell-shock, was something that society at the time could not deal with head on. There are more reflections from Billy that hint at what might have given rise to such a predilection. Again though, like shell-shock itself, Billy illustrates that the understanding between the causes and their effects on the psyche are little understood. Billy himself, as with his shell-shock, seems to be helpless to manage the urges that bisexuality brings and, as with shell-shock, doesn’t question them as anything but natural. This kind of writing may spark debates which could potentially divide many a book club of close friends I fear.

I think Eye is more complex than either Regeneration or the final book, The Ghost Road. It’s a very vivid description of the society of Britain at the time and is very valuable for that. It’s a rare glimpse of WW1 from the perspective of the Home Front which I don’t recall ever having been considered in any other WW1 book.

There’s a lot going on here both in terms of the characters and the depths of their experiences and society as a whole and the way that Barker portrays it. I think it would be a good one to re-read. Trouble was, I had to finish it fast to pass on to a friend. I think it deserved more time than I could really give it.

THE GHOST ROAD
The final part of the Regeneration trilogy picks up with Billy Prior getting cleared to return to the front in France and his return. Alongside this narrative unfolds more of W.H.R. Rivers’ story, only this time there’s much more from his anthropology days in Melanesia than in the previous books and Barker cleverly works the Melanesian into Rivers’ day to day work in Britain.

Billy also begins a diary which means that you get more of his inside views on things. There are more disturbingly graphic sex scenes too as he pursues his bisexual tendencies and the shell-shock, at least from Prior’s point of view, seems to take a back seat although there are smaller vignettes of other patients that Rivers treats.

There’s more detail in this book than any other about how Rivers became the doctor he was. As Barker draws on the original notebooks that Rivers wrote his anthropological data in, we see how she has constructed his character and thus depicted his approach to treating the victims of shell-shock. I found that doing this in the third novel of a trilogy was much more satisfying because it meant that by now I was much more interested in where Rivers had come from and what had influenced him than I would have been two books ago when I was just getting to know him. He was, it seems, quite a remarkable man if Barker’s descriptions are even remotely correct.

Again, as with The Eye in the Door, there’s a lot going on here. Barker has a great way of using metaphor to convey themes to the reader which, if you’re not careful, you’ll miss because of their subtlety. The futility of conflict, for example, is depicted ingeniously by the juxtaposition not only of the WW1 debacle that we in the west know so well but by the descriptions of Rivers’ experience with headhunters in the Torres Straits in Melanesia. While on the one hand, western society at the time was condemning the tiny scale of Melanesian conflict as needless and barbaric, it was lauding the valorous demise of an entire generation of men.

It’s only by reflecting carefully on the entire construction of the novel from its grand themes to its details that reveals the richness of her writing. I’m sure it was such ability that earned Barker her Booker Prize. I think such an award is entirely just for a novel which closes out a trilogy which will forever influence how I see not only WW1 but also my nation and its part in it. ( )

An omnibus containing all three books in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, I originally picked this up thinking that I would only read the first in the series. However, her characters and their situations were so brilliantly realised that I had trouble putting the book down until there were no more pages left to read.

Broadly speaking this is about the horrors of war, in particular the trench warfare of the first world war, and how the human mind tries to deal with such horrors. It's more than just a novel about the war though: in order to involve us fully in it, Barker takes us into the heads of her main characters, primarily W.H.R. Rivers, army psychologist and noted anthropologist, and Billy Prior, an officer from a working class background. Their struggles with themselves and each other made me care about them and brought home the ultimate message: it's not worth it.

I struggled a little with the middle entry, The Eye in the Door, which was more an examination of society during the war rather than the war itself. It was interesting but less engaging than the first and last books, which dealt more directly with the soliders and Rivers' interaction with them. Overall though, I would highly recommend this as an excellent read, quite apart from its effectiveness as a reminder of how stupid and wasteful war can be. ( )

Based on real historical events and characters, Barker’s books deal with the emotional and mental trauma suffered by those who served in World War I, an often overlooked element of the war experience. The novels are based on meetings between the psychologist W.H. Rivers and the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and they explore the development of ideas around ‘shell shock’ as a medical condition, and the burgeoning science of psychology. These books also paint a believable portrait of British society during the Great War, looking at some of the lesser investigated issues such as attitudes towards homosexuality, pacifists and the dissonance between conditions on the frontlines and how they were presented at home. Each book comes with historical notes and recommended further reading about the people involved. ( )

Powerful trilogy of novels dealing with the psychological effects of the Great War.