Henceforth, I'm always going to wonder how this third book of the Regeneration trilogy won the Booker in 1995 and not the first work - Regeneration. Continuing with the focus on Dr. Rivers- a psychiatrist entrusted with mending the broken souls returning from the frontlines of the First World War, 'Ghost Road' shifts to the earlier anthropological work of Dr. Rivers in Melanesia. Somehow, he tries to piece together his reminiscences of the Headhunters with the ongoing horror in the Continent to try and come to terms with the War.

Unlike 'Regeneration', Sassoon and Graves don't make much of an appearance and the only other real life character in the book is the poet Wilfred Owen who dies just a week before the Armistice.

Overall, I'd suggest stopping with the Regeneration and not proceeding with the other two of the trilogy.

A worthy Man Booker Prize winner. The story is the final in a trilogy about a homosexual officer in WW1 who is returning to the front for the fourth time after getting engaged to Sarah. He does not need to go but has a death wish. His psychiatrist Dr Rivers treats him and recalls his time in Melanesia amongst headhunters studying their culture. He compares their attitudes to death with the soldiers he treats.

The end of the war is near and Priors company is sent into a battle which is pointless. Prior to the battle he sees a fellow officer Hallet horrifically wounded and who ends up in Dr Rivers care in London. Where the soldier keeps saying it’s not worth it. Never truer words said that captures the futility of war.

A great read and highly recommended.

Who would’ve thought that a book about the atrocities of war would end my reading slump

Holy shit. The trilogy is incredible.

This novel is the third in a trilogy, and I have to admit that my reading probably suffered from not having read the first two volumes that form the story.
The novel opens in the final months before the end of World War I. The Narrator alternates points of view between Dr Rivers (a real historical figure) who treats shell-shocked and damaged men at a War Hospital and one of his former patients at the hospital, a young and not very likeable lieutenant.
From the beginning my interest was held by the war hospital setting, the broken men and Dr Rivers’s rather unorthodox methods of treatment. I also found the fever-induced memories of his time with a head hunting tribe on a Melanesian island to make fascinating reading. Inevitably the reader’s mind is led to draw parallels between the attitudes of the Melanesian tribesmen, those of their new rulers and those prevalent in war torn Europe some twenty years later. For all the inevitability and truth in those conclusions I felt like a child held by the hand and led to them and this I resented. I wish there could have been more subtlety.
I was distinctly less interested when the narrative switched to the young lieutenant. Looking back I can see that he was a very well drawn character, shown to us with warts and all. The thousands that marched to their death during that period of unnecessary bloodshed were not beautiful saints, they were men with faults, and not always likeable. And they didn’t deserve the suffering and fate that was meted out to them. Still, I found my interest ebbing away when the author focused on the more earthy needs and pursuits of this man. Billy Prior, who returns to the trenches, in spite of medical advice, not only doesn’t break down, but performs one final act of heroism before the guns cease. Even so he can take no pride in an act that he recognises as futile, and one that ultimately causes more suffering.
I thought the descriptions of the realities of the war zone and the trenches to be quite persuasive if a little forced in comparison to other books with the same subject matter. (All Quiet on the Western Front comes to mind).

3.5.

A difficult review to write. I read all three parts of this trilogy in quick succession after leaving them unread on my TBR pile for more than 6 years. I‘m definitely glad I read them and would probably recommend them, but I can’t say I overly enjoyed the experience or that I have taken much from it. The first is by far the best. The very close of the third is ... I hesitate to say satisfying, but it is a neat and fairly powerful conclusion to a trilogy which I think at times got lost amongst itself. Overall, an interesting and subtle (in that very little of the plot is centred on the battlefield) depiction of the affects of war. Interesting characters - both fictional and historic - and for the most part a fairly easy to read style. Although some portions of the trilogy are slow and require some will to march on through.

This is the third and last of an excellent trilogy. The book ends just before the war does, so we will sadly never get to see how any of the characters manage back in regular civilian life.

She addresses Word War I from several angles: a brilliant psychologist (real), women who are freed to work in munitions factories and other employment, soldiers faced with moral and class conflicts. It doesn't deal too much with the battlefield. In this last book we see Billy Prior return to the war after his period in civilian life.

I suspect that integration into civilian life after this most horrific of wars must have been truly awful - how do you leave all those horrors behind you?

Opinions vary, of course, about literary achievements derived from the First World War. But as far as I'm concerned, Pat Barker's REGENERATION trilogy is infinitely more thoughtful, far more emotionally moving, and a better testament to these soldiers than Ford Madox Ford's bloated tetralogy. The diaries from Billy Prior, in particular, seem to be a referendum on Tietjens's pomposity. And the tragic deaths of Prior and Owens parallel the sad ending of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. We also see how the war has affected those in the homeland, such as Rivers. I also liked the way that Siegfried Sassoon is driven more into the background, almost to suggest the interchangeability of people during the course of war. Above all, Pat Barker's lyrical prose style summons a grand momentum that makes her a writer of the first rank. In short, fuck Ford Madox Ford. The Regeneration trilogy really should have taken the place of PARADE'S END on the Modern Library list. It has more purpose, empathy, and sensitivity than the bloated Ford could ever possibly summon. (And Ford served in the war, for goodness sake!)

Last of an excellent trilogy and it does help to have read the previous two books as many of the characters run through them all and there are references back. You could read it as a standalone, but a good deal would be lost, especially the nuance.
We reconnect with characters from the previous books. There is very little of Sassoon and Owen is present in a small way; Prior and Rivers take centre stage. The narrative alternates between the two as they experience the last days of the war. We also go in flashback to the time Rivers spent in Melanesia with a tribe of head-hunters.
Prior is recovering and makes a deliberate decision to return to France, reflecting the same decisions made by Owen and Sassoon. The sex/death circle works its way through in Prior’s liaisons before and after he returns to France. Rivers describes observing a tribe in Melanesia who had been banned from headhunting and other warlike activities. Their whole reason for existence had disappeared and as their culture was based on the rituals related to the gaining of heads the tribe was in decline and lethargy had set in. The contrasts with war in the west are neatly and obviously drawn.
We see Prior, despite his deprived working class childhood, developing his own voice and starting a diary. We also see over the trilogy what the war did for women, allowing them independence previously not possible and the chance of earning a wage. One character even says that August 4th 1914, when the war started was for her the day Peace broke out “the only little bit of peace I’ve ever had”.
I remember when this book came out one reviewer’s idea of praise was to say that it could have been written by a man (!!!). Barker had previously written about strong working class women; here she focuses on men, but also on the effects of war for women and the adjustments society had to make as it coped with “shellshock” and the thousands of men it affected. She is reflecting some of her own working class northern background and she has said herself that she decided to write about the war following some patronising reviews of her early novels about women. What a response! And, of course these novels are just as feminist and class centred as her earlier ones; just reframed.
The last chapter of the novel again emphasises the sheer futility of it all focussing on some of the last actions of the war, when everyone knew it was over and peace was days away. The troops, including Prior and Owen are sent over the top for the last time.

Nice converging and diverging perspectives on the experiences of a British psychiatrist treating the psychologically traumatized in World War 1 and that of his "successful" patients who return to the front. This is the third part of a trilogy based on the real-life Dr. Trivers and his work in treating the gay poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen and other soldiers whose "disorders" were a normal reaction to war experiences. In this volume, the main characher is Billy Prior, who despite injury and "shell shock" at the Somme battle and a secret bisexuality is vibrantly resilient. Deft writing with many vignettes captures the essence of this devastating war from the senses, dreams, and diverse adaptations of his patient-soldiers. She conveys the impact of war without needing to resort much to narrative coverage of actual combat. That comes near the end of the novel when the proximity of peace undermines the meaning of trench warfare even more.

There have been many great winners of the Booker prize, but this must be one of the best, though one should read the whole trilogy to appreciate it fully. A magnificent deeply felt examination of the psychological effects of war, this one deals with the final stages of the Great War and the death of Wilfred Owen.

4.5 very good