Regeneration (original 1991; edition 2008)

I loved this book, it's beautifully written in a tight, almost bald style. The central characters are well drawn and sympathetically portrayed, with an excellent feel for time and place. Barker explores WWI through real characters and draws on some known accounts of their experiences; Sassoon, the 'war poet' is a central character, but it is Billy Prior, shell-shocked and distressed beyond words who affects us the most.

Barker explores themes of loss, manhood, war, comradeship and early psychiatry in a powerful, moving and ultimately rewarding novel of the highest order. ( )

This little book has been a long time waiting for me. I am so glad I have finally read it! It follows the story of Sigfried Sassoon who was admitted to a WWI mental hospital for examination, and for his anti-war feelings to be eliminated/mended/erased so that he could be sent back to the front and continue doing his duty. The medical officer in charge of this feat is William Rivers. He is a middle aged man schooled in the ways of the mind, he is a kind man and a skilled manipulator of others, in a way that helps them see that their afflictions (shell-shock, anxiety and the like) can be overcome that they can carry on.

The book is so much more than its plot though. It is about war and politics, it is about mental health and the effects of what continued anxiety can do to the mind and body, and it is about right and wrong. It is beautifully written, and coupled with a great story is everything I like about books. ( )

This book revolves around the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, caught in the maelstrom of World War One. They both suffered breakdowns and were sent to a mental hospital, and the novel is a fictionalized account of their interactions with the doctor who tried to help them. This is not the story of a cure. Rather, it’s the other way around, and the doctor has to confront his own assumptions about health, survival and war.

It’s a good novel – well-written, slow to develop, respectful of its characters and the reader. Don’t expect much plot. It’s a study. It investigates, and it gets to the heart of things.
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As wonderful as I was told it would be. Really. It's wonderful. Best WW1 novel I've read to-date. Also a very close to the line, never becoming voyeurism RPF. It's real people, living in what is for us remote history, a time in history which was difficult, a daily nightmare for the men and women on the front line and in the medical evac tents. This is shown to us with an economy of words but important words and an engaging and pulling you into the narrative style that made me, slow down my reading, enjoy the pace the author set and enjoy and feel the pain, the despair of these young in age but not in mind and body, men who went through hell, time and time again. Either physically in France or every night in their sleep. Regeneration is an important work of literature on an important moment in time. For me anyway.( ( )

S. Sassoon & Dr. Rivers square off over S's protest of WWI; Rivers is assigned to cure S of delusion of futility & destructiveness of war