List Appertaining To Books The Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration #1-3)
| Title | : | The Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration #1-3) |
| Author | : | Pat Barker |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 592 pages |
| Published | : | January 1st 1996 by Viking Books |
| Categories | : | Historical. Historical Fiction. Fiction. War. World War I |
Pat Barker
Hardcover | Pages: 592 pages Rating: 4.38 | 2139 Users | 136 Reviews
Description Toward Books The Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration #1-3)
The novelists who wrote immediately after the war (or even during it) – Barbusse, Remarque, Manning, even Hemingway – were concerned mostly with getting down the facts: recording the realities of modern warfare before they allowed themselves to forget, before the details became incredible. Writers of subsequent generations cannot write what they know, and they need to do something else – bring some higher assessment of how people, and society, reacted to this cataclysm overall.
Doing this badly, or not even bothering, is what has frustrated me about other modern novels set around 1914–18. It was interesting coming to this one after recently reading Thomas Keneally's The Daughters of Mars, a book in which the two central characters are female and yet where there was frustratingly little examination of how the First World War affected men and women and their social and sexual interactions. The main characters in the Regeneration trilogy are all men, but one of the things I loved most about it was its constant attention to sexual politics and the radical shifts that this period saw in wider society.
I had been expecting a constrained, clever-clever novel spun around the literary footnote that was the meeting between Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in hospital in 1917. You get that, but there's a lot more here than just lit-historical geekiness. What I wasn't expecting was the delicate infusion of what you might call feminist psycho-sociology: a fascinating exploration of the ways in which men's struggle to deal with trauma is so deeply linked to issues of gender.
Fear, tenderness – these emotions were so despised that they could be admitted into consciousness only at the cost of redefining what it meant to be a man.
Which is one of the things that 1914–18 indeed did. Barker draws out the irony that women were suddenly forced into much more active roles during the war, while men, shipped off to ‘active’ service, in fact found themselves squatting motionless in ditches for ninety percent of the time, before being routinely slaughtered, as Owen famously put it, like cattle.
The war that had promised so much in the way of ‘manly’ activity had actually delivered ‘feminine’ passivity […]. No wonder they broke down.
And again:
Any explanation of war neurosis must account for the fact that this apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace.
This sexual mercuriality is exemplified in the character of Billy Prior, who emerges as a conflicted, damaged antihero in the second book of the trilogy (where Barker just about manages to keep her inclination to melodrama under control). His violent swings between, on the one hand, domestic happiness, and on the other a sort of self-hating sadistic bisexuality (he describes himself memorably after one encounter as a ‘seminal spittoon’), are set against the backdrop of London's brief ‘cult of the clitoris’ scandal.
Prior's girlfriend is awesome. The last thing I expected when I picked this book up was to listen in on a group of Geordie munitionettes telling a joke about a prostitute.
‘He says, “How much is that?” I says, “7/6.” He says, “Hadaway and shite,” and when I come back he'd gone.’
God knows what non-Brit readers make of all this. I am not sure where Pat Barker's from, and I'm too lazy to do even the most rudimentary research, but she nails the dialect, the intonations, the chattiness of these conversations – and from this base she builds a whole social critique into the novel. Some reviewers (I notice) have found this stratum unconvincing, but for me the attempt to examine social change is what lifts this book above its peers. Prior reflects, for instance, that the reaction working-class men have to the trenches is very different from that of the upper class officers – for him and those he knows,
the Front, with its mechanization, its reduction of the individual to a cog in a machine, its blasted landscape, was not a contrast with the life they'd known at home, in Birmingham or Manchester or Glasgow or the Welsh pit villages, but a nightmarish culmination.
In the third book this bird's eye view of British society zooms out even further, by means of a sustained juxtaposition with the tribal society of a group of Melanesian islanders once studied by WHR Rivers, the (historically real) doctor that has been treating Prior. This narrative technique is so audacious, so weird, that at first I didn't really know what to make of it; mostly, I'm just impressed. And I think it's the right decision. I mean if you're a writer, and you know that one of your characters was an anthropologist who studied tribes in Oceania, then I think you have to pursue this and look for parallels – but to see this in action is quite amazing, it's just so very far, at least at first glance, from the world of trench warfare that you can hardly believe Barker attempted it.
Rivers is indeed the calm, still centre of this trilogy (despite some troubled waters of his own), and the way this figure has been recreated in these pages is for me the most impressive achievement of the books. Barker got the Booker Prize in '95 for The Ghost Road, the third novel; but this is a bit of a catch-up job, like giving Peter Jackson the Oscar for Return of the King when he should have won it for Fellowship. The whole trilogy is great though – psychologically astute, hugely wide-ranging, very readable, a perfect example of how writing about conflict from a century ago can still be a way of telling us things about how we think about each other, and about ourselves, today.
Declare Books During The Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration #1-3)
| Original Title: | The Regeneration Trilogy |
| ISBN: | 0670869295 (ISBN13: 9780670869299) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | Regeneration #1-3 |
Rating Appertaining To Books The Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration #1-3)
Ratings: 4.38 From 2139 Users | 136 ReviewsAssess Appertaining To Books The Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration #1-3)
RegenerationThe forthcoming anniversary of the Great War should provide some motivation for readers to revisit, or discover this trilogy from the nineties. Acclaimed at the time (topped off by a Booker Prize for the last in the series The Ghost Road) it has been on my 'to read' list for many years. The story centres around an institution for mentally ill soldiers near Edinburgh, and psychologist W H Rivers. A particular focus is his relationship with patient Siegfried Sassoon and the moralIt was with great anticipation that I turned my inquisitive reading mind towards Pat Barkers 1st WW extravaganza The Regeneration Trilogy. The paperwork version, of this former booker prize winner, boasts just under a 900 page word count and demands some serious attention and dedicated reading time. Having recently reread and loved Sebastian Faulks monumental Birdsong, I was hopeful that Regeneration would provide equal if not better stimulus.In reality The Regeneration Trilogy (as the name
This book is beautifully written, it's funny and sad, it's insightful and because it's about life during the Great War, really, really interesting (to me at least). With a diverse structure and some great characters (beautifully handled) and a meandering story line that adds to ones view of the world at the turn of the century along with some oh, so recognizably human relationships.I gave it 3 stars overall and would have given it five (I enjoyed (most of) it that much) except for the absolute
This is in my top ten, possibly my top 5, best novels.It's a trilogy, but don't hesitate - buy all three as a single volume; they're all brilliant, jaw-droppingly insightful, and written with exquisite skill that appears effortless.Barker writes men better than any male author I've ever read. If I wrote half as well as Barker, I'd die happy. Though the characters are almost all male, they're informed and contextualised within a dual society of men and women. It's about war, it's about how and
While it's technically three novels, The Regeneration Trilogy is one story, and for convenience comes in a one-volume omnibus. Any of the parts could be read on its ownthere's enough brief recap that one could be aware of the events of the other volumes without having read them, and as the trilogy is character-based rather than plot-based it won't befuddle anyone who jumps in at the middle. However, to do so would do the story an immense disservice. Read in its proper order, Regeneration forms
Some notes taken whilst reading all three parts of this trilogy consecutively. Overall, they give a very interesting perspective on the First World War and on groups of people that would normally not be given a voice.RegenerationDr William Rivers is treating victims of shell-shock, including Siegfried Sassoon, who strikes up a friendship with Wilfred Owen. All this is factual. But there is also a character called Billy Prior, entirely fictional, who forms a relationship with the fictional Sarah
Insightful, illuminating, well-written account of the impact of WW1 on the lives and minds of those who lived and fought in it. The understanding of psychology and the use of historical figures throughout the book, combined with fine descriptive writing brings the era and characters to life. I learnt a great deal about the period, complementing the knowledge acquired in my previous non-fiction reading. My volume had 900 pages, which I read in 8 days, a testament to the quality of the book,
0 Comments