Product Description

'"The Ghost Road" is a startlingly good novel ...With the other two volumes of the trilogy, it forms one of the richest and most rewarding works of fiction of recent times. Intricately plotted, beautifully written, skilfully assembled, tender, horrifying and funny, it lives on in the imagination, like the war it so imaginatively and so intelligently explores' - "Times Literary Supplement".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61101 in Books
• Published on: 1996-07-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
Booker Prize Winner in 1995. August 1918, and Lieutenant Billy Prior stops en route to the trenches to meet William Rivers, the psychiatrist who helped him overcome shellshock earlier during the 'war to end wars'. Prior, a working class bisexual who moves between male and female lovers, between social classes, and between the mutually incomprehensible worlds of civilian life and the Front, is a completely fictional creation. But Rivers was a real army doctor who treated several famous patients at his Craiglockhart clinic, notably war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. It is a measure of Barker's remarkable skill as a novelist that both characters - and all the others in a book crowded with humanity - are completely believable. The Ghost Road completes the examination of the Great War she began in Regeneration and continued in The Eye in the Door, and ties together many themes of the earlier two books - the link between concepts of masculinity and war, the meaning of class and gender, the ultimate source of personal identity - in a gripping, detailed, eventful story told with tenderness and wisdom. On its own The Ghost Road would be a wonderful novel. The trilogy represents a remarkable and original fictional achievement which sets Pat Barker head and shoulders above her contemporaries. (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
Pat Barker was born in 1943 and educated at LSE. She has published several novels including her highly acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy. The Eye in the Door was winner of the 1993 Guardian Fiction Prize, and The Ghost Road, winner of the 1995 Booker Prize for Fiction. Pat Barker is married and lives in Durham.

Customer Reviews

The Ghost Road
This novel proves to be an illuminating trilogy based on the First World War and on real people and events. Barker succeeds in telling a harrowing and horrifying story through the eyes of Prior, a soldier in the war and through the eyes of Rivers, an army psychiatrist. Prior's story is based equally on his past and the present, where we see him admitted to a psychiatric hospital as a result of his experiences yet ultimately committing himself to lead others much like himself `over the top' to face enemy fire. Additionally, we follow the life of Rivers who devotes his life to treating injured and psychotic soldiers, unveiling their experiences and nightmares in order to restore them back to sanity. Furthermore, a fair majority of Rivers' story is dedicated to his past experiences of staying on an island in Africa where he witnessed `foreign' rituals and procedures and made many strange encounters.

The way in which the events in the story follow on from one another can be confusing as you have to be able to distinguish stories from the past and present and also between the four different stories that are being depicted. If you are familiar with the different characters and the roles in which they play throughout, this novel is a much easier read.

Nevertheless, Barker dares to write about the truth of war, which at times horrifies and shocks. Her novel captures our sympathy by the use of vivid description and she does not hold back on her exploration of the experiences of the men who served in the war. In all, Barkers novel is an excellent, eye-opening addition to that of other war literature and I would recommend the novel to all who wish to read an original and unforgettable outlook on the war.

A brilliant ending to a brilliant trilogy.
The Ghost Road is the last book of a trilogy written by Pat Barker about World War One. This book focuses on Lieutenant Prior and Doctor Rivers, it looks at both of their journeys and struggles through the war and enables the reader to feel compassion for both of them.
The book begins in a hospital as Barker vividly writes about the patients who are there for various things ranging from `shell shock' to chronic asthma. Barker creates vivid images of not only the front line, but the hospitals too, Hallet, a front line soldier is hospitalised, the way in which his surroundings are described are as if Barker had just watched an episode of M.A.S.H and put the darker moments onto paper. The way his family are described sitting at his beside create a great emotional response as you are reminded that the war affected families as well as soldiers.
Barker tells Priors story from his own perspective, she uses the chapters as his own journal articles, this makes the reader feel closer to his character as they are actually reading what he is both thinking and feeling.
As Prior rejoins the front line, Rivers realises that he has a strong connection with his patients which is superbly shown when Hallet arrives in the hospital, he also realises an unexpected friendship with Prior as he reminisces about the time he spent on an island populated by head-hunters as a young doctor. This is an excellent addition to the book as it reflects the views of not only death, but the values between their culture and the culture of western civilisations.
The conclusion of this book is very moving, it's an ending that is fitting to the trilogy and makes you appreciate the sacrifices that were made during the war.

Still very special on its own - best read, I suspect, as final part of its trilogy
Winner of the Booker Prize in 1995 and then shortlisted for the Booker Prize's 40th Anniversary `Best of the Booker' in 2008, Pat Barker's `The Ghost Road' is the third book of her Regeneration trilogy. It was the `Best of the Booker' nomination that finally brought me to read this book and I did so without having read the previous works in the trilogy, `Regeneration' and `The Eye in the Door'. My advice would of course be to read `The Ghost Road' third but this book can stand alone although one misses out on the main characters's histories and therefore some of their depth.

Set in 1918 during the final months of the Great War `The Ghost Road' follows the last journey to France of Lt Billy Prior who previously has returned from France three times, once with shell shock. It is as a result of this condition that he found himself in the care of Army psychiatrist William Rivers. Rivers continues to care for the young men evacuated from the front with devastating mental illness and brain injuries throughout the novel and considers how if at all he has helped those like Prior who have now been declared to fight again. As he works with these patients he remembers his days as a young anthropologist with the tribes of island communities.

Pat Barker is an author in complete control. She shows the devastation of the World War pointedly rather than overwhelm with the reader with loss one cannot comprehend. Her characters are perfectly human and are described starkly, from their sexual encounters through their illnesses to their own deaths or the deaths around them. The juxtaposition of the violence in Europe with the savage simplicity of the tribesmen is superb and allows the author to explore violence, death and faith from two very different stand points.

Barker's ending is as moving as any Act of Remembrance. In the final advance of the 2nd Manchesters is every single tragic death in that war. The family around the hospital bed is every family that mourned. To read this book, and I suspect to read the whole trilogy, is to explore something of the essence of those four terrible years.