Regeneration by Pat Barker Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Regeneration
Book Review: A thoroughly human experience
Summary: 5 Stars
Having read the entire trilogy fairly recently, I find it hard to distinguish between the first book alone and the complete work. However, Regeneration itself does stick out by being the most well-researched and well-informed of the three. I presume that many people have heard about Sassoon's 1917 public objection to the way the war was being waged, which caused him to be put under the supervision of Dr. Rivers - but I had not before reading this novel.The incident was so fascinating that I have since read further about Sassoon, Rivers and the war experience for those who suffered from neurasthenia - all of which reading has confirmed what I initially suspected, that Barker's novel, as well as being exceptionally well-written, insightful and moving, is also extremely true to events and situations. For the benefit of the "novel"-reading world, a fictional "hero" is added, whose life continues in tandem with Wilfred Owen's into the next two books; yet even he, Billy Prior, is more a composition deriving from real soldiers' experiences than the imagination.
Not to say that Barker does not apply her creativity to the full - in her descriptive style, and in stringing together of the various lives she is describing. She has insight into character which is both moving and important - it reminds us that beyond the cliches of tragedy lay a very human, normal and mostly dull war, whose effects were nevertheless all-encompassing and disruptive.
Book Review: A thoroughly moving book
Summary: 5 Stars
Having just finished reading "Birdsong" I felt compelled to read more about a period of time that is moving out of living memory. I think "Regeneration" is a superb book that is well written, well researched and moving. I think books like this are so important because we should not be allowed to forget what the people of that time went through and we should not be allowed to trivialise what the First World War did to human beings and how it broke the seemingly Golden Age that had developed throughout Victorian and Edwardian England. I think the novel helps to honour the memory of the people who gave their lives in the war over something they did not understand or comprehend. The book is not just about war as it goes far deeper in helping to explain humanity, gender, class and truth. "Regeneration" is a disturbing and thought provoking book which people should read firstly because it is a good book and secondly becuase it will ensure that you do not forget what the people of the time and especially the soliders went through. They were caught up in a war of industrial proportions and were caught up in a war that they did not understand and we should forever hold them in high regard and in our memories. Afterall, in one month in 1917 there were 104,000 casualties in the war. Sacrifice like that deserves and should be remembered.From a literary point of view, this book is superbly crafted and is an original work of fiction with a good story. It is energetic and highly readable and I recommend it to anyone.
Book Review: Absurdly Overrated Fluff
Summary: 2 Stars
Absurdly overrated, and I am wondering what kind of bigwig muckety-muck connections Ms. Barker has in the publishing industry which allows for such mediocre material to receive such propagandistic hooplah.It is written adequately enough for a psychological novel, sure; however, as a chronicle of WAR it fails miserably: there is precious little of the dirt and grit of war, just a lot of fluff from someone who has obviously never experienced it first hand. Barker should stick to something she knows, something she's actually experienced. She gives the reader so little concrete detail here: One or two pages of "Homage to Catalonia" by Orwell, or "A Farewell to Arms" by Hemingway, are worth far more than this entire light-weight book in providing the reader with a real glimpse into war and a soldier's thoughts.
Book Review: An Exploration of Valor
Summary: 4 Stars
Regeneration by Pat Barker is a great novel depicting and justifying the anti-war movement of Siegfried Sassoon and other protesters during World War I. Barker displays the naïveté of the young men before they are sent out to the battlefield, full of excitement fight the Germans and in their complete masculinity. Instead these men face a more "feminine" side when they break down from their confrontation with the true horrors of the war. Deemed mentally unstable by their superiors, the scarred soldiers are sent to recover at Craiglockhart, a convalescent hospital for combatants of the war. Regeneration illustrates the different ideas of true valor of the various Craiglockhart patients as well as of the doctors (namely Dr. Rivers) working there.
A very poignant part of the book is when Rivers visits Dr. Yealland's hospital and sits in on one of the awful treatment plans of Yealland. Feeling immensely guilty and remorseful, Rivers sees the similarity between Yealland and himself, as they both force unsound men back onto the battlefield when these men have no more urge to fight. Though the two doctors' opinions, personalities, and rehabilitation strategies differ drastically, Rivers still feels troubled. Yealland's treatments further impair the conditions of his patients, whereas Rivers uses gentle encouragement and conversation about emotions to cure his own. While many victims in the beginning look to Rivers' curative ideas as very feminine (like speaking about one's feelings), ultimately Rivers' succeeds in re-emasculating the Craiglockhart combatants. The friendships that he forges with his various patients differ greatly from the aloof and godlike behavior that Yealland displays towards the soldiers convalescing at Queen Square. Although Rivers' therapy is much more compassionate, viewing Yealland's treatments causes Rivers to nonetheless begin to question his principles and alter his views on the war.
Book Review: An affecting insight into WWI psychology
Summary: 5 Stars
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.