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Regeneration #3

The Ghost Road

pat barker

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An alternate cover edition can be found here.

As World War I winds to a close, two men--Dr. William Rivers, a psychologist whose dedicated healing sends men back to the brutal front, and Billy Prior, a shell-shocked soldier determined to rejoin the final English offensive--are profounded affected by the events of the era. Winner of the 1995 Booker Prize.

278 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1995
Series
Regeneration
Literary awards
booker prize, orange prize, whitbread award, the best of the booker, Αρώνειο Έπαθλο Ενώσεως Σμυρναίων, 

This edition

Format
278 pages, Paperback
Published
January 1, 1996 by Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN
9780140236286
ASIN
0140236287
Language
English
Characters More characters

More editions

About the author

Profile Image for pat barker

pat barker

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Pat Barker is an English writer known for her fiction exploring themes of memory, trauma, and survival. She gained prominence with Union Street (1982), a stark portrayal of working-class women's lives, and later achieved critical acclaim with the Regeneration Trilogy (1991–1995), a series blending history and fiction to examine the psychological impact of World War I. The final book, The Ghost Road (1995), won the Booker Prize. In recent years, she has turned to retelling classical myths from a female perspective, beginning with The Silence of the Girls (2018). Barker's work is widely recognized for its direct and unflinching storytelling.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
35(35%)
4 stars
32(32%)
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33(33%)
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
lone_wolf_club
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This historical fiction is the final book of the Regeneration trilogy set in Europe during WWI. It focuses on finishing the stories of Dr. William Rivers (a real person) and Billy Prior, whom we followed closely in the first two books. It is a character study of the two main characters as they deal with a traumatic past and the horrors of war. We learn about Rivers’ experiences in Melanesia and Prior’s return to the front.

Themes include the psychological effects of war, duty, class prejudice, and friendships on the front lines. It also addresses cultural changes in Melanesian tribal communities brought about by British colonial influences. Regeneration is my favorite of the trilogy, with this book as a close second, and The Eye in the Door third. After reading this trilogy and a few others, Pat Barker has become one of my favorite authors.

4.5
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tahadzmm
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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The final novel in a trilogy about the ending of a monstrous war, WWI, supposedly the War to End All Wars. My husband and I listened to it on our recent trip. Given some of the more graphic descriptions of human depravity I don’t recommend the audio version. You can more easily skim over sections you don’t care to read with a written text v. an audio book. Undoubtedly it would have helped if we’d read the first two books, but it has made me more curious to read The Guns of August/The Proud Tower and All Quiet on the Western Front by way of comparison.

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mangasIwantoread
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I have just finished the book today and I have to say that it totally blew me away.

The third book of the trilogy centers mostly on two of all the characters who were present in the previous books, Rivers and Prior. Throughout the books the characters are developed into vivid, compelling, independent personalities. You can almost feel you knew them in real life after you finish the trilogy, they are so real, so well-developed.

Prior, as a character, shows all of his sides. He's witty, intelligent, brave, and at the same time neurotic, sadistic, unscrupulous, and you still can't avoid finding him really likable, probably because he's so close to what we all are, he's so humane. No perfect hero, but most of the times even painfully familiar, reminding us about our own flaws.

I could definitely continue, but I will round up just by saying that "The Ghost Road" accompanied by the previous two books in the trilogy has definitely won a place in the very top list of my favourite books.
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Jtaro05
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This is the 10th anniversary of first reading this amazing trilogy all the way through during a Summer Vacation. I really want to read these again this year. I actually would love to read them every 10 years and see how my thoughts and opinions change. If you get a chance, read this trilogy. Would definitively be on my 1,000 Books to Read before you die list.
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hagiomoto
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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See, this is exactly why I decided to read the Bookers. I don't normally pick up a war book - in fact I usually run the other way. I would never have chosen to read this book by perusing the library or even on recommendation from a friend. And war novels are bad enough but WWI? seriously? Trenches, and new technology, and All Quiet on the Western Front and...? It happened before my grandparents were even born. We spent about a week on it in high school history and it didn't interest me then. I certainly didn't think it would captivate me now.

But it did. And as apparently historically sourced as this novel was, it wasn't actually about war, but about life, and the fact that so many things we take as Either/Or are really points on one long continuum. The novel first takes Sane/Insane. But who is crazy and who is sane? Is there even a clear line there? Or even more provocatively (and sadly, too many people can't see past this one) what does it mean to be Straight/Gay?

And how about Civilized/Uncivilized? By far the most fascinating bits of this story were Dr. Rivers' flashbacks to the time he spent as an anthropologist in Melanesia in about 1908 - the British Empire was about to Christianize and "civilize" the islands northeast of the Australian continent, and Dr. Rivers got a glimpse of the end of their traditional (un)civilization. And Pat Barker contrastes this traditional headhunting society with the total insanity of the European theatre of World War I just ten years later. Her portrayal of this clash was beautiful, terrible, and so very real.

Or how about the continuum of Alive/Dead? Njiru certainly sees it as a continuum, and at the end of the novel, Dr. Rivers sees it too. When does Billy Prior, our other narrator, cross that boundary -- is there a definite boundary there to cross? And the end of the book, just days before the end of the war, we are faced with the falsity of the dichotomy of War/Peace.

Excellent, excellent novel, and I'm even tempted to go back and read the entire trilogy, of which this is only the last book. Yes, of war novels.
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Dundeee
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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“Ghosts everywhere. Even the living were only ghosts in the making. You learned to ration your commitment to them. This moment in this tent already had the quality of remembered experience. Or perhaps he was simply getting old. But then, after all, in trench time he was old. A generation lasted six months, less than that on the Somme, barely twelve weeks.”

This is the third book in Barker's Regeneration trilogy and for me the fastest paced. This book concentrates on war and struggle both internal and external but mainly how different view death. Although a few of the former residents of the mental hospital Craiglockhart are mentioned this book generally revolves around psychiatrist Charles Rivers and former patient, commoner turned officer,Billy Prior with each chapter alternating between them.

Billy a former resident of Craiglockhart and patient of Dr Rivers continues to see him as an outpatient in London as he struggles with his demons. He returns to France for his fourth tour of duty despite being at one time invalided out and offered a safe desk job in the UK. It is unclear quite why he returns to France other than fighting is all he knows and questions his place in society. He is someone who lives in the present grabbing sex wherever and whenever he can get it both with women and men. Dr Rivers in also haunted by his own demons but these are more rooted in his past and in particular his time on Melanesian island of Eddystone where he sees a very different outlook on death.

Once again this is a well written book and a worthy finale to this enthralling trilogy and perhaps one of the best things that I can say about it is that despite virtually all the characters are male at no time is it obvious that they were written by a woman. These books deserve all the praise that they've received.

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