The best analysis of war I have ever read. It focuses on the psychological and sosiological damages of war and truly illustrates the pointlessness of it all.

“Regenaration” is a masterful beginning for a strong trilogy of books that study WWI from a psychososiological perspective, featuring both real historical characters and truly interesting fictional ones.

I’m not that hot on historical and especially war novels, but Barker has created a deeply meaningful, beautiful and extremely powerful masterpiece that takes war and examines it from the point of view of the individual. This is pacifistic literature at its most convincing and beautiful.

“The Eye in the Door” is an astonishing read, the second and best volume of Barker's ingenious WWI trilogy offers an intriguing analysis on war and its effects on people and society by keeping completely away from battlefields and showing the symptomatic paranoia and repression a warring nation imposes on its citizens. Devastatingly strong prose that will stay with you forever.

A bit more incoherent and less original than its predecessors in the WWI trilogy, "The Ghost Road" still manages to be one of the best war novel ever written. Barker’s point of view is more sociological in this final installment to her magnificent trilogy, which might be the only reason this piece doesn’t feel quite as condensed and explodingly powerful as her two previous masterpieces.

Regeneration is a psychologically intense novel based on real events and people, focusing on the treatment of shell-shocked British soldiers at Craiglockhart War Hospital during WWI.

Barker’s portrayal of the complex relationship between Dr. W.H.R. Rivers and his patients, including the famous war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, is both poignant and thought-provoking.

The novel examines the mental toll of warfare and the ethical dilemmas faced by doctors in treating traumatized soldiers.

Barker’s incisive exploration of masculinity, duty, and the horrors of war provides a fresh perspective on WWI. Rather than focusing on the battlefield, Regeneration delves into the minds of men struggling to reconcile their experiences with societal expectations.

The novel's blend of historical fact and fiction, along with its profound psychological insights, makes it a compelling and unique contribution to the body of World War I literature.

First read it on/ around april 28, 2000.
Reread it.
Remarkable how much I remembered - both of the plot, as of the horrors described. Truth been told, the actual plot didn’t interest me, isn’t that strange? Perhaps a reason might be I am not British, my passport country didn’t participate in WWI.
No, what did interest me, a lot, was the first book: Nomansland. Sassoon. And to my surprise, 19 years later, this was still true. I liked the setting, the characters and the interactions. I liked them more in Nomansland than I did in the other two books, where the plot couldn’t interest me, and -I suppose- the characters weren’t interesting enough to continue reading.
It is was it is.
I would still, again, reread the first part of the trilogy.

Read with the knowledge that a new documentary about WW1 was released at the end of 2018. Events took place over a hundred years ago when soldiers were often bayonetted to death. The introduction to Sigfried Sassoon and William Owen was very interesting as was the psychiatric treatment of patients by W.A. Rivers. Rivers was an early believer in talk therapy to work through shell shock.

Hard hitting, thought provoking and moving, this is an excellent trilogy set during the First World War. It deals largely with the psychological effects/trauma that the war had on the men who fought as well as various social issues of the time. These are books that do not shy away from the life-changing impact that the war had on the people involved and they make for some very emotive reading. The amount of research that Pat Barker has done into the subject is astonishing and the whole thing proved to be a real eye opener. I would say that each book is self contained enough to work as a stand alone novel but I think that it's best to read the whole trilogy if possible as certain characters are followed all the way through. I would highly recommend checking these books out if you are interested in the First World War and I look forward to reading some more of Barker's works in the future.

The three books that make up this trilogy are 'Regeneration', 'The Eye in the Door' and 'The Ghost Road'.

The first novel in this trilogy presents us with victims of "shell shock" and other "war neuroses" being treated Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh during WWI. Barker bases some of her characters on historical figures such as poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen and the man who led their treatment. Some of the details are brutal, but the writing is excellent, the characters Barker creates compelling. The inclusion of female munitions workers adds a perspective not usually found in either histories or novels on this subject. Highly recommended.

This is a horror story, which means it isn't for everyone. The physical damage of the First World War is graphically described, but that is not as brutal as the psychological devastation. The language, the injuries, the sex, and the hallucinations are all explicit. Yet it is a story that needs to be told and Pat Baker does it brilliantly. A tour de force.

How amazing when I knew the author was a woman! We have to think why we wage war.

Phenomenal achievement, enthralling and gut wrenching. I read these years ago and they have stayed with me ever since.

The third part, The Ghost Road comes through after a long introduction and slow middle part. The end however is where Pat Barker brings all points of view to a full circle. Barker stands aside and narrates a story like an observer - its harsh, brutal and engaging.

Heavy going, DNF.

My introduction to Pat Barker and the Regeneration trilogy was actually via a 2012 Economist book review of n  Toby's Roomn (sequel to n  Life Classn): I remember thinking the book sounded fascinating, and putting it on my mental to-read list after reading the Regeneration trilogy and Life Class.

I still haven't gotten round to Life Class yet, but I was in an airport bookshop recently and saw the paperback edition of the Regeneration trilogy. I was slightly confused as to why the bookshop had chosen to stock it, until I remembered that it's the hundred-year anniversary of the beginning of the Great War this year.

I'm glad they did, because otherwise I suspect it'd have taken a long while for my memory to be jogged re: remembering to read it, and I'd have been unknowingly missing out on a masterpiece.

The first book, Regeneration, is set in Craiglockhart, a military hospital on the edge of Edinburgh focusing on treating shell-shocked officers. This is where we meet Siegfried Sassoon (who was sent to Craiglockhart after publishing his Soldier's Declaration against the war), W. H. R. Rivers (the real-life psychiatrist assigned to Sassoon), and Billy Prior (a working class officer and another patient of Rivers', this one fictional). All three characters appear in the subsequent novels: The Eye in the Door puts more emphasis on Billy Prior, and The Ghost Road continues to focus on Prior, while also including Rivers' backstory as an anthropologist on an expedition to the Torres Straits in 1898.

Of the three main characters, I warmed very easily to Sassoon (though he's mostly absent from the second and third books), but was especially invested in Rivers, who comes across as a deeply good man doing a difficult job with a great deal of delicacy and sympathy. Prior I found much less personally appealing, and it's to Barker's credit that she made me if not exactly care about what happened to him, certainly be interested in his storylines. This is partly because she sets all her characters against real-world historical events, and uses Prior to discuss various aspects and impacts of the war in England: the social upheaval, changing class structure, political scandal, gradual chipping away at fixed ideas about gender, all are fascinating parts of these books. (I will say that it amuses me greatly that Barker's response to "she writes Books About Women, but can she write men?!?" was pretty much "watch me", as she turned around and wrote a trilogy about an overtly masculine subject, with three male protagonists.)

There's an awful lot to talk about as regards The Themes Of These Books, and I can't really do them justice as I'm still mulling them over. I must have finished all three books within about 36 hours, which should give you some idea of just how fascinating the characters' stories are; at the same time, the sublime prose begs you to slow down and savour every word.

Highly, highly recommended.

(Incidentally, I was pleasantly surprised by how good I thought the 1997 film version -- called either Regeneration or Behind the Lines depending on where you are -- of the first novel was.)