“Now all roads lead to France” - Pat Barker quotes an Edward Thomas poem to start the descent into the hell that constitutes the final part of her acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy. But – be warned – The Ghost Road makes a major detour!

Much of the (remembered) action of this novel takes places not in France, but on the islands of Melanesia. That’s about as far away as you can get from the Somme! And this can be a serious let-down for readers particularly interested in the Great War.

As in the previous parts of the trilogy Barker combines historical and fictional characters. With Sassoon now firmly relegated to the status of background character, it’s the historical figure of army psychiatrist (and anthropologist) Dr Rivers who shares the spotlights with the fictional (and still troubled) soldier Billy Prior. The latter returns to France together with war poet Wilfred Owen, whom he met while convalescing at Craiglockhart, at the beginning of the series.

When we first met him, shell-shocked Billy Prior was quite unable to utter a single word. By now he has developed into a surprisingly eloquent literary voice, which might be just a tad unexpected given his working class background that was so stressed in the previous parts of this trilogy.

Now Billy's diary entries and letters include veritable literary gems. “Too close to death ourselves to make a fuss. We economize on grief,” he writes on 19 October 1918. In his final letter to Doctor Rivers, dated 2 November 1918, he writes: “My nerves are in perfect working order. By which I mean that in my present situation the only sane thing to do is to run away, and I will not do it.”

Meanwhile back in London Dr Rivers spends most of his time considering and reconsidering his position and role as army psychiatrist. Memories of his expedition to Melanesia, where he spent time with a vanishing tribe of headhunters, play a crucial role in his struggle to get some sort of grasp on his present situation.

“The ghosts were not an attempt at evasion, Rivers thought, either by Siegfried [Sassoon] or by islanders. Rather, the questions became more insistent, more powerful, for being projected into the mouths of the dead.”

In The Ghost Road it’s Dr Rivers’ turn to face his own ghosts.

The themes of (homo)sexuality, class and the changing make-up of society are further developed here, along with the main theme of the Great War and how to deal with its traumata. Dr Rivers is intelligent enough, though, to remark that “one must beware of attributing everything to the war. The change had started years before the war”.

All in all, the final novel of Barker's Regeneration Trilogy leaves me with mixed emotions. Although this is the novel won her the 1995 Booker Prize, I feel Regeneration (1991), the first part of the trilogy is actually the better novel here. The Eye in the Door (1993) and The Ghost Road (1995) are both good reads, no worry there, but compared to that grand opening novel, they somewhat lack balance and focus. At the end of the day, I enjoyed rereading the trilogy, but did not find all detours equally interesting.

The concluding "shotvarfet" still haunts, though.

I have read the other two books in the trilogy and now have completed book three. The book won the 1995 Man Booker prize and many other prizes. The series is about the physical and mental trauma on the British soldiers from World War One. I have spent the past 10 years studying World War One, reading all I can find on the subject. This series is a novel but dramatically tells of the carnage the War had on the men. I think I liked the first book the best in this trilogy.

The historical fiction had two real poets in the story Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as the author Robert Graves. The psychiatrist Dr. Rivers was also a real person not fictional. By the second year of the War the unprecedented carnage was so great the British soldier’s felt no one could find the words to explain it anymore. There grew a divide between available language and actual experiences. In spite of or because of it countless letters, poems, and diaries were written by the soldiers accordingly it became known as a prodigiously literary war.

Barker, in her novel wrote a section that really hit home with me. “Lt. Billy Prior sits listening to the sounds of pens scratching and pages turning---at least two would-be poets in the hut alone---and, in his own diary, tells us why the men write: ‘I think it’s a way of claiming immunity. First person’s narrators can’t die’.”

In the first two books Lt. Prior and the poets are under treatment by Dr. Rivers for mental problems related to the War. In this book they are back fighting in the War. The title of this book speaks to the ghost both seen and unseen, in all of us. Barker has created a tale of the effects of WWI on the mental health of the British soldiers and its effect on British society. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Peter Firth did an excellent job narrating the series.

Must read.

4-4.5
That was a ride. I need time to process the entire trilogy. Incredible books.