The author has written an excellent anti-war novel that explores the experiences of soldiers in World War I diagnosed with "shell shock," the PTSD of that incredibly brutal war, and the experiences of those who treat them. The novel blends historical characters (i.a., the soldier poets Wilfed Owen and Siegfried Sassoon) with fictional characters in a surprisingly effective way. It explores not only the moral issues associated with waging the war but also the moral dilemma of the doctors charged with curing the damaged soldiers in order to send them back to the sausage factory of the trenches in France. It is the first volume of a trilogy, but it stands alone as an excellent novel of the war, now almost forgotten, that shaped the world in which we live (alas!).

Thank you for this book, Dawn!!!!! Thank you, Jeanette, for bringing it to my door. Dawn, you should soon get The Housekeeper and the Professor from me. :0)

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I am "enjoying" this read, if one can speak of enjoying anything about the horrors of the trenches of WW1 warfare. Although none of the book takes place there in the trenches you certainly see the repercussions on the people who have been there. You do see their nightmares and the physical and psychological damage the war has wrought on these men.....and do remember that the shell-shocked patients one encounters within the covers of this book are the lucky ones, the survivors of the Battle of the Somme!

Although this is a book of historical fiction it is based on real people and events. It is the first of author Pat Barker's World War I trilogy. The second book is The Eye in the Door and the third The Ghost Road. Renowned and groundbreaking psychologist/anthropologist Dr. William H. Rivers, Captain Brock and poets Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen all existed. They are central characters of this book. In 1917 Siegfried Sassoon refused to continue his service as a British officer. His "Declaration" of July 1917 states:

I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.…

I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust…. (page 3)

Sassoon had hoped that through a public court-martial the continuation of the war would come to be debated, but his friend Robert Graves instead brought it about that Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. He was treated by Dr. Rivers. Sassoon was not a pacifist. His religion did not forbid him to fight. He did not think all wars were wrong, and he was indeed a man of great courage. He was a decorated war hero.

The book fills your head with questions. Who is sane? Who is crazy? Should one fight? Should one abstain? How do you treat the psychologically damaged? And should you treat them, the soldiers, so you can send them back out to fight some more? What does warfare do to men and their sense of manliness? What is the impact on women? And how are our behaviors warped by war? Do the damages wrought stop at the end of the war? Is pacifism the answer? All of these questions are brought to focus through the author’s talent in blending these real people and events with some additional fictional characters. There is an Author’s Note at the end that clarifies what is fact and what is fiction.

Why only three stars? I would have appreciated a more thorough discussion of what exactly Sassoon wished to be done to stop the war. He was not court-martialed, so not much came of his “Declaration”! I found the theme of different methods for treating those shell-shocked very distressing. The theme concerning homosexuality left me unmoved. What I appreciated most was the portrayal of Dr. Rivers. Did he make the shell-shocked more mentally sound? Psychologically, who changed most – the patients or Dr. Rivers? There isn’t a smidgen of happiness in this book. Just a word of warning.

Please see Dawn’s wonderful review here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
There you will find interesting links about the Craiglockhart War Hospital.

I will continue with more books on the "Great War":
A Long Long Way
Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War
The Absolutist
A Farewell to Arms
Beauty And The Sorrow
Three Day Road

I have read so many books about WW2. Now it is time for WW1. Of course, All Quiet on the Western Front has always been the book that I have so associated with this war. It is outstanding. Maybe it is time for a reread?

Hago esta declaración en un acto de desafío constante a la autoridad militar, porque, a mi juicio, aquéllos con el poder necesario para poner fin a la guerra están alargándola intencionadamente...

Me ha gustado muchísimo el planteamiento de este libro, una perspectiva de la Primera Guerra Mundial fuera de las trincheras.
Estamos en 1917 en el Hospital Craiglockhart (hoy Hospital de Edimburgo), un lugar que acoge a los soldados con traumas de guerra. Son estos personajes (la mayoría reales) los que cuentan la historia; a través de ellos conoceremos las secuelas de estar en el frente, pivotando entre locura y sensatez; patriotismo y pacifismo; sentido del deber y libertad para decidir... un debate que la autora ha llevado de manera brillante con toda la labor de documentación que ha hecho. Tanto los traumas, como los tratamientos y hechos que se relatan aquí, sucedieron.

Un libro que me ha transmitido mucha impotencia. Más allá de heridas físicas, el daño emocional y psicológico, la culpa del superviviente, la vergüenza..., son protagonistas absolutos.
Todo ello sin dejar de lado, la denuncia: para políticos y Comisiones médicas los soldados eran solo un número: si eres apto, perfecto; si no, no me interesas.

Regeneración es la primera parte de una trilogía, la autora ganó con estos libros el Premio The Guardian Fiction y el Booker. Esta primera parte, además fue llevada al cine en 1997.
Pat Barker, se inspiró en los relatos de su abuelo que luchó en Francia.
Una historia diferente, narrada con inteligencia y llena de humanidad.

Soy un soldado, convencido de que actúo en representación de otros soldados. Creo firmemente que esta guerra, que era una guerra de defensa y liberación cuando entré en ella, ha degenerado ahora en una guerra de agresión y conquista... he visto y padecido el sufrimiento de la tropa, no puedo seguir siendo cómplice en la prolongación de dicho sufrimiento con fines que considero malévolos e injustos.

I am lost for words as to how good this novel is. To think that Barker, who was born in 1943 can write a novel which transports the reader into the horrors and the carnage of the trenches of World War 1 so effectively is amazing. Barker’s writing enabled me to see, and feel, the horrendous damage, physical and mental, that these soldiers had to endure. Her writing opens, and explores the ravaged and war damaged psyche. Before this war started, the term “Shell Shock” didn’t even exist. We now know of it as post-traumatic stress disorder and Barker shows us just how debilitating and soul destroying it can be. Most of these poor men suffering from this condition were thought to be cowards and sent back to the trenches. Barker explores the shame and paradoxically the relief that these men felt at this hospital. The shame felt because of the cultural spirit bred into generations of men that mental illness is a sign of weakness, relief, because they had respite, even if only temporary, from the trenches.
Siegfried Sassoon is a poet and a hero who has come to the belief that the Great War should be stopped and is being allowed to continue by the “powers at the top”. He writes a declaration in protest and is subsequently sent to the Craiglockhart War Hospital for evaluation. Dr Rivers has the job of deciding if Sassoon is mentally fit to return to the trenches. Rivers is the main protagonist of the novel and it is through the appointments with his patients that we see the mental damage and destruction that was inflicted on the soldiers in the trenches. However, the book is not just about them, it is also about Rivers and the effect that his patients, and the war, are having on him. The guilt he feels when he sends soldiers back to fight, the anguish he feels from seeing these men suffering day after day. At times it seems he is in as much mental turmoil as his patients. Essentially he is healing these men only to send them back into the very environment that damaged them in the first place.
I did not know until the author’s note at the end of the book that most of the main characters in this book are real. I had an inkling of an idea after reading Robert Graves name, but had never heard of the others. This is an amazing book, one of the best I have read for some time. It’s brilliantly written and I can’t wait to start the second book in the trilogy, 5 Stars.

"A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance."

The best parts were the Sassoon scenes. The rest was so so and not quite what I thought it would be.

I'm a little disappointed after having this series hyped up so much. I'll probably still read the other two books though. Eventually.

"We quite unselfconsciously assumed we were the measure of all things. That was how we approached them. And suddenly I saw not only that we weren’t the measure of all things, but that there was no measure."

While it is well written, and interesting on a certain level, I found myself to be akin to a blind pig going down a dark alley: having been promised the wartime experiences of Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen, I was hard put to find anything substantial, or satisfying on either one. I kept scenting experiences on the horizon, but in the end it was merely an illusory nut. If you are looking for a historical reprise of Sassoon's life, this is not the book for you, as he only appears tangentially. Wilfred Owen is so elusive that he barely merits the designation "cameo appearance".

This novel centres on the war-wounded of the First World War; those lads and men recovering from shell shock, who have been relegated to a mental hospital in Scotland. While the story itself is interesting, there is not much to engage the heart, as each character is too loosely drawn for my taste. One never gets a real sense of who each character is: it really is a blind man's buff trying to figure out who's who and what he's suffering from. The characters are eminently forgettable: not just as a whole, but even from chapter to chapter. I had difficulty remembering exactly what was wrong with Anderson, or Prior, and sometimes wondering who the hell is Anderson anyway, have I even heard about him yet? In addition, it seems to me there are endless pages of loose analysis that stand in for the real hard work of what these men would have gone through to be well and whole again. The whole work seemed just a bit too glib for the experience I was expecting from such a novel. I didn't want to suffer tears of blood -- I just wanted to feel something important was happening.

As a sidebar irritant, Barker spends too much time imposing her voice on the characters by the means of some very annoying italics. Oh. My. Goodness. In the first 100 pages, at the least, there must be 10 such intrusions per page, if not more. She lets you know what you should feel or think about a certain person by interjecting her own voice, ad nauseam. This sort of writing always makes me feel as if the author has already assumed I'm an idiot, and doesn't trust me to know my own mind, accept my own perceptions.

Having dismissed this novel as a 3 star read, I am not ready to give up on Pat Barker's writing yet. I've heard a couple of interviews on radio, and she sounds so delightful and interesting. She comes across as a very intelligent, caring, compassionate , lovely human being -- and for all that, I will hunt down more of her novels. This one, however, goes in the charity bin, sorry to say.

I feel bad for just dishing out 5 stars but they are deserved. God, the dialogue in this was golden. I felt myself just praying for Rivers to start talking to someone else.

This book gave me a glimpse into the thoughts of people who experienced war. The characters are developed well. Sometimes the descriptions are hard to read about.. But gore does not define the book. The message is anti-war. But the message is presented subtly.

This is a series, but I am not compelled to continue to read the books in the series now. I am open to continue the series later.

“A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance.”

Pat Barker's Regeneration is one of the hard hitting take on war through the eyes of a psychiatrist. Based on a true story, the book is very well written on people dealing with the horrors of war and the different treatment philosophies.

The Craiglockhart hospital is entrusted with the task of getting the battle wearied back to the field at the earliest. In Rivers we have an empathetic psychiatrist, who believes in conversations with his "shell shocked" (And other) patients and deciding if they are fit for service. He also does a Freudian analysis of dreams and torn by his own views on war. The book explores the borders of rationality and insanity - a theme explored in great depths in books like Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse Five.

Siegfried Sassoon, a celebrated war leader scandalizes the non fighting old-men with his anti war declaration. In the interest of the morale of troops, he is declared shellshocked and his conversations with Rivers are laced with pacifist view. The other patients like Burns, Wilson and Anderson have genuine war scars that alters them forever. They regenerate in the care of Rivers and we grow to respect him and hold him in esteem.

His own moral dilemma on the treatment process at the other hospital and his own views on sending his patients back to the line make him human. I loved the book in places though found it was a slow in places. A good book, probably, a lot behind time.

You know you're walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face.

Not for all.

I loved this because it was about a poet I know a bit about, having read him, and read Wilfred Own and also through Robert Graves autobiography Goodbye to All that. It's all about the encounters between a psychologist/psychiatrist and Sassoon after his anti war declaration. It made me think a lot about conforming to the façade of society and what happens when the requirements of that society become effectively insane. Is it then insane to protest, or is it actually sane. A thoughtful, straightforward novel with no real narrative gimmicks. Which was nice.

I started reading this book for two reasons. The first was that after all my recent World War I readings I thought it would be good to come up with a book that talked about the consequences of the war on the soldiers who participated. The second was that a few weeks ago I had read the last book of the author, The Silence of the Girls, which had moved me deeply and I was impressed by the beautiful writing and the humane messages that passed, so it became a strong need to read some other of her books. After the reading of this book, I can say that I have the same feelings and I come to the same conclusions.

We are in 1917, in a Britain weary of the war years, where the idea of making peace efforts is beginning to gain momentum. In a hospital where many of the victims of the war end up, this idea is even stronger as soldiers who have suffered physical and psychological injuries strongly question the usefulness of the war, wondering if their sacrifices deserved the trouble. In the Psychiatric Ward, the protagonists of this history are hospitalized, among whom are some of the so-called war poets who, in their writings, described the darkness of the war in the best possible way. There, a psychiatrist, whose basic mandate is to try to bring back patients to the front line, applies unusual methods for the time, really trying to help them.

This is the setting for the author to talk about the war and its consequences. Her psychologically injured heroes are trying to cope with the symptoms of their mental illness while discussing everything they've lived in the trenches, talking about the fear of death, the moral objections to everything they command them to do, the sense of duty and the necessity or not of sacrifice, the need for protest against the war and the form it must have under the threat of the military court, the new world that may arise. In these discussions the psychiatrist is involved and gives his own perspective.

Their country around them is not at all unaffected by all this, with the war greatly speeding up social changes. The questioning of older concepts is now something common and new ones come to take their place. Women, in particular, working in the men's position at the factories that are crucial to the course of war gain their independence and try to enjoy it and do what it pleases them, have fun, with some even dare to look for banned pleasures.

In a nutshell, the author conveyed in an ideal way the situation prevailing in the hospitals that the soldiers were carrying, the pain of the injured, the empty look of the mutilated, the fears, the need for a way out, the nightmares and above all the void left the by the collapse of those things who were given before the beginning of the war. She does this with a prose that is beautiful, sensitive, melancholic, emotional in a restrained way, cynical where needed, which best passes the message of the value of peace, denouncing the war without unnecessary cries and slogans. All this creates a wonderful and very special anti-war book that definitely deserves the attention of everyone.

Ξεκίνησα να διαβάζω αυτό το βιβλίο για δύο λόγους. Ο πρώτος ήταν ότι μετά από όλα τα πρόσφατα αναγνώσματα μου για τον πρώτο Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο σκεφτόμουν ότι θα ήταν καλό να καταλήξω σε ένα βιβλίο που θα μιλάει για τις συνέπειες του πολέμου στους στρατιώτες που συμμετείχαν. Ο δεύτερος ήταν ότι πριν από λίγες εβδομάδες είχα διαβάσει το τελευταίο βιβλίο της συγγραφέως, το The Silence of the Girls, που με είχε συγκινήσει βαθύτατα και είχα εντυπωσιαστεί από την όμορφη γραφή και τα ανθρώπινα μηνύματα που περνούσε, οπότε έγινε έντονη η ανάγκη μου να διαβάσω και άλλα βιβλία της. Μετά το τέλος της ανάγνωσης αυτού του βιβλίου μπορώ να πω ότι έχω τα ίδια συναισθήματα και φτάνω στα ίδια συμπεράσματα.

Βρισκόμαστε στο 1917, σε μία Βρετανία κουρασμένη από τα χρόνια του πολέμου, όπου η ιδέα ότι πρέπει να γίνουν προσπάθειες για την ειρήνη αρχίζει σιγά-σιγά να κερδίζει έδαφος. Σε ένα νοσοκομείο όπου καταλήγουν πολλά από τα θύματα του πολέμου αυτή η ιδέα είναι ακόμα ισχυρότερη καθώς οι στρατιώτες που έχουν υποστεί σωματικά και ψυχολογικά τραύματα αμφισβητούν έντονα την χρησιμότητα του πολέμου, αναρωτώμενοι αν οι θυσίες τους άξιζαν τον κόπο. Στην Ψυχιατρική πτέρυγα νοσηλεύονται οι πρωταγωνιστές αυτής της ιστορίας, που ανάμεσά τους είναι κάποιοι από τους λεγόμενους ποιητές του πολέμου που με τα γραπτά τους περιέγραψαν το σκοτάδι του πολέμου με τον καλύτερο δυνατό τρόπο. Εκεί ένας ψυχίατρος, που η βασική εντολή του είναι να προσπαθήσει να φέρει πίσω στην πρώτη γραμμή τους ασθενείς, εφαρμόζει ασυνήθιστες για την εποχή μεθόδους, προσπαθώντας πραγματικά να τους βοηθήσει.

Αυτό είναι το σκηνικό που στήνει η συγγραφέας για να μπορέσει να μιλήσει για τον πόλεμο και τις συνέπειές του. Οι ψυχολογικά τραυματισμένοι ήρωες της προσπαθούν να αντιμετωπίσουν τα συμπτώματα των ψυχικών παθήσεων τους ενώ παράλληλα συζητάνε για όλα αυτά που έχουνε ζήσει στα χαρακώματα, μιλώντας για το φόβο του θανάτου, τις ηθικές ενστάσεις για όλα αυτά που τους διατάζουν να κάνουν, την αίσθηση του καθήκοντος και την αναγκαιότητα ή μη της θυσίας, την ανάγκη για διαμαρτυρία απέναντι στον πόλεμο και τη μορφή που πρέπει αυτή να έχει κάτω από την απειλή του στρατοδικείου, το νέο κόσμο που μπορεί να προκύψει. Σε αυτές τις συζητήσεις εμπλέκεται ο ψυχίατρος και δίνει τη δική του οπτική γωνία.

Η χώρα τους γύρω τους δεν μένει καθόλου ανεπηρέαστη από όλα αυτά, με τον πόλεμο να επιταχύνει σε μεγάλο βαθμό τις κοινωνικές αλλαγές. Η αμφισβήτηση των παλαιότερων αντιλήψεων είναι πια κάτι κοινότυπο και νέες να έρχονται να πάρουν τη θέση τους. Οι γυναίκες ιδιαίτερα που εργάζονται πια στη θέση των ανδρών στα εργοστάσια που είναι κρίσιμα για την πορεία του πολέμου κερδίζουν την ανεξαρτησία τους και προσπαθούν να τη χαρούν και να κάνουν αυτό που τις ευχαριστεί, να διασκεδάσουν, με κάποιες να τολμούν ακόμα και να αναζητήσουν απαγορευμένες ηδονές.

Με λίγα λόγια η συγγραφέας μας μεταφέρει με έναν ιδανικό τρόπο την κατάσταση που επικρατούσε στα νοσοκομεία που μεταφέρονταν οι στρατιώτες, τον πόνο των τραυματιών, το άδειο βλέμμα των ακρωτηριασμένων, τους φόβους, την ανάγκη για μία διέξοδο, τους εφιάλτες και πάνω από όλα το κενό που άφηνε η κατάρρευση αυτών που είχαν δεδομένα πριν από την έναρξη του πολέμου. Αυτό το κάνει με μία γραφή όμορφη, ευαίσθητη και μελαγχολική, συναισθηματική με έναν συγκρατημένο τρόπο, κυνική όπου χρειάζεται, που περνάει με τον καλύτερο τρόπο το μήνυμα για την αξία της ειρήνης, καταγγέλλοντας τον πόλεμο χωρίς περιττές κραυγές και συνθήματα. Όλα αυτά δημιουργούν ένα υπέροχο και πολύ ιδιαίτερο αντιπολεμικό βιβλίο που σίγουρα αξίζει την προσοχή όλων.

A book about the First World War has to be an anti-war book, even if it was released long before the hype of the Centennial 2014-18. And 'Regeneration' by Pat Barker certainly is such a book: the testimonies of the horrors in the trenches are scattered throughout the book, but the emphasis is on the shocking consequences for the survivors. Barker uses a number of real historical characters (including the poets Sassoon and Owen) and a few fictional ones to illustrate different aspects of what a war does with people.

We look especially through the eyes of Dr. Rivers, a psychiatrist in an institution in Edinburgh, Scotland, where traumatized soldiers (officers actually) are treated after a mental breakdown. Dr. Rivers uses the technique to confront the men gently with what they have experienced, to let them give it a place, and to get to grips with it, so that they can return to the front after a few months. Throughout the book we see Rivers’ doubts growing. He struggles with the methods he and his colleagues use (to his horror a colleague of his in London applies electroshocks and brutally forces a breakthrough). It is especially the confrontation with a number of prominent patients that forces him into self-examination.

Throughs these patients Barker brings on the issues everyone is confronted with in times of war. In the first place there's the choice between militarism and pacifism: this is done mainly through the character of Sassoon, and with remarkable subtlety, as the poet - a decorated trench warrior - in 1917 publishes a very daring declaration against the war, but nevertheless returns to the front out of solidarity with his comrades. The other issues of war orbit around the notions of social antagonism and gender self-image: homosexuality, male identity, the aristocratic character of the officers corps. They are mainly explored through the fictional character of Billy Prior, an officer with a workman background and a bisexual inclination.

In short, Barker has not written a cheap pacifist manifesto, but a mature and subtle study on the psychological impact of traumatic situations. "Nothing justifies this. Nothing nothing nothing", considers dr. Rivers towards the end of the book, offering a concise summary of this novel.