Product Description

In Craiglockhart war hospital, Doctor William Rivers attempts to restore the sanity of officers from World War I. When Siegfried Sassoon publishes his declaration of protest against the war, the authorities decide to have him declared mentally defective and send him to Craiglockhart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3391 in Books
• Published on: 1992-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
This novel, based on Siegfried Sassoon's period in a Scottish mental hospital in 1917, is a brilliant evocation of the emotional suffering the soldiers went through, a suffering so deep they could never recover. (Kirkus UK)

In this fact/fiction hybrid, Barker (Union Street, 1983, etc.) turns from the struggle for survival of northern England working-class folk to the struggle back to sanity by British officers unhinged by WW I trench warfare. Craiglockhart War Hospital, a grim psychiatric facility outside Edinburgh, is the setting. The framework is the arrival of Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart in the summer of 1917, and his discharge back to France in November. Sassoon is treated by the eminent neurologist (and Army captain) William Rivers, whose job is to restore his damaged warriors to fighting condition. Sassoon is a relatively easy assignment. Despite his public statement protesting the war, Sassoon is no pacifist; this complex poet feels at home in the Army and is an exceptionally courageous officer, beloved by his men, to whom he feels a blood-debt that can be paid only by his return. For all the sparring between Sassoon and Rivers, only a hair separates them, for the latter is also a man of enormous integrity, profoundly troubled by the horrors his patients must endure. And it is these horrors (not the clipped exchanges of Sassoon and Rivers) that linger in the mind: Burns's vomiting nightmares caused by a mouthful of decomposing German flesh; Prior's being rendered mute after handling a human eye. At the center is Rivers, a model therapist, whose unatinting support may give even the wretched Burns a chance at a normal life. Barker has also provided some workmanlike off-base romance for Prior, her one developed fictional character; but the heart of the work, where the big fish swim, is Rivers's consciousness, his insights into front-line behavior enriched by his anthropological straining. Don't look here for the dramatic sweep of a war novel; instead, you get a scrupulously fair reconstruction of Craiglockhart, plus a moving empathy for both doctors and patients. The extent of that empathy earns Barker's work a place on the shelf of WW I literature. (Kirkus Reviews)

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

A well crafted and compassionate story
Regeneration is set in the First World War and revolves around the patients of Craiglockhart Hospital near Edinburgh. The men are being treated for shellshock by Doctor W.E.Rivers, and through his relationships with them we get to learn much about the war and the men who fought in it. The narrative is structured around real events and people such as Rivers himself and the poet Siegfried Sassoon. Barker weaves fictional major characters into the story who feel just as real and important as these historical figures.

The novel is not just about the war and its tragedy. It is also a book about writing, mental illness, and a change in the structure of society to name but a few themes. Barker manages to explore a lot in a relatively short novel.

The story is driven by the characters who are realistic and interesting enough so that the narrative only rarely becomes bogged down. I felt that the novel did lose focus somewhat in the middle, when the storyline moves away from Craiglockhart, but Barker doesn't let us languish with Rivers at his brother's farm for too long. I found the ending to the novel to be both climactic and also to raise many questions which make me want to read part two of the trilogy.

The end is climactic partly due to the shocking nature of one particular scene. Indeed, Barker does not shy away from the gruesome images that are often part of a war novel. She chooses her moments though, and we are never desensitised from too much.

Unlike most war novels the women characters are drawn very well. At the beginning of the novel women are largely absent but one particular character at least becomes a compelling portrait. It is refreshing also to read a war novel that seems mostly concerned with life away from the front.

Barker's prose is economical with some choice descriptions which are quite beautiful at times. There were one or two clumsy images which grate, and this is a shame for someone who obviously writes with such skill.

Overall this is a well crafted and compassionate story. I will definitely read the rest of the trilogy.

Subtly powerful
This thoughtful, elegantly written novel is a powerful evocation of the horrors of war - and its aftermath. Barker skilfully blends fact and fiction, incorporating elements of Siegfried Sassoon's spell in a Scottish mental hospital following his anti-war declaration, including his friendship with Wilfred Owen. The novel shows how the first world war destroyed a generation of young men, both physically and mentally. Their experiences emerge not through graphic descriptions of battles and dramatic set-pieces, but through their often complicated relationship with army psychiatrist Dr Rivers. He himself is a deep and complex character, his own feelings about the war becoming increasingly ambivalent as he watches the men he has 'cured' return to the front - and near-certain death.
It's a quietly haunting novel, and I can't wait to read the rest of the trilogy.

Complex and creative, but raw
In Regeneration, Pat Barker fictionalises an encounter between H. R. Rivers and Siegfrid Sasson in a military psychological hospital. In Craiglockhart, near Edinburgh, there are numerous war wounded, whose experiences in the Flanders trenches of the First World War have left them psychologically, as well as sometimes physically scarred. The symptoms are many and varied. In Sassoon's case it is possible that the motivation might even be political, rather than psychological.

Rivers attempts to analyse his patients and his own responses to them. He is of the modern school, unlikely to resort to the blunt-edged methods of some of his contemporaries. Description of some of these established treatments read very much like torture. They were, after all, in the cases described, trying to make someone talk. How appropriate.

But Rivers is unimpressed and he pursues his own line. Along the way, he also develops new, ground-breaking treatments of his own invention.

Sassoon befriends a young man called Owen, whom he encourages to write. Another friend called Graves visits whenever he can. Together, Sassoon and Owen work on some of Owen's writing. The results, they both agree, are improvements.

The power of Regeneration is the relation between its overall idea and its setting. It presents the creative process as a reflection on experience and sets this in an institution where formal reflection on experience is a treatment. Eventually, it is not just the individual patient who benefits from the cathartic process of reflection, but also the analyst and, ultimately, all of us when the relief takes the form of great poetry.