Regeneration

Barker, Pat. Regeneration. New York: Dutton. 1992. Print

First Sentences:

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

Description:

Sigfried Sassoon wrote the above words to his British commanding officer during World War II in 1917 while on convalescent leave. His entire letter, "Finished with the War: A Soldier's Declaration," was widely distributed, appearing in London newspapers and was read before Parliament. 

The problem was that Sassoon was a war hero, decorated for bravery with the British Military Cross, the Star, the British War medal, and the Victory medals. To have such an anti-war statement issued from one of its leading soldiers was a delicate situation.

Rather than be given a court-martial for his "Declaration" and refusal to return to the Front, Sassoon was deemed to have suffered from neurasthenia (i.e., a mental breakdown or "shell shock"). He was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital, a convalescent facility for military personal damaged by the war, to be treated by the psychologist W.H.R. Rivers. The challenge Sassoon and others faced at Craiglockhart as well as their discussions about the reality of war, it effects on soldiers, doctors, and women, and their personal struggles to respond to these challenges is vividly, poignantly brought to life by Pat Barker in her book, Regeneration.

Focusing on Craiglockhart Hospital and Dr. Rivers, Barker uses the psychiatrist's thoughts, conversations, and treatment of Sassoon as well as other military patients to deftly reveal the fragile state of existence these men now experience as their recollections and actions from the Front haunt their lives.

It is Rivers who controls the fates of these men, since he must make recommendations about their mental fitness to return to the Front. Rivers gently questions and explores their memories, their family life, and their dreams through individual sessions, seeking the underlying causes for each mental breakdowns. These are men who, despite all their efforts, have been rendered mute, who refuse to believe they can walk, who suffer nightmares and screaming fits. Slowly, cautiously, they begin to reveal themselves to Rivers through calm, yet riveting doctor/patient conversations. And hopefully, they begin to heal.  

Barker shows these men not as cowards seeking shelter from the fighting, but who, despite their physical and mental injuries, want desperately to return to the Front and continue the fight. Even Sassoon, once his treatment is completed, grapples with the question of whether to fulfill his promise to serve, or to refuse to return to the Front, abandon his honor and men, and receive a dishonorable court martial for his beliefs. 

These beautifully, powerfully written personal moral dilemmas, these portraits of proud, broken men and their gentle treatment guided by Rivers, make Barker's historical fiction so compelling, so encompassing. What will happen to each man facing a new day, and what does the future hold for them? We readers live and breathe with Rivers and Sassoon particularly/ They are the representatives of duty and belief, of health and shock, of hope and despair. Their conversations parry and thrust at the reality of a world at war and the duty of men to fight or stay true to his convictions.

It is historical fiction at its best, skillfully recounting factual people, documents, and decisions with fictional conversations and relationships. Barker includes the factual interactions Sassoon and Rivers have with famous people of that era. Wilfred Owen, the war poet, met and worked on his poetry with Sassoon in Craiglockhart, poetry that became internationally famous after the War. Bertrand Russell gave encouragement to Sassoon for his pacifistic views. Rivers himself was a childhood friend of Lewis Carroll.

Barker is a master of the quietly disturbing atmosphere of Craiglockhart and its population, both doctors and patients. These are real people undergoing traumatic upheaval in their lives and trying to overcome their current weaknesses. 

And Rivers himself is part of this damaged group, facing his own stuttering and insecurities, questioning his own beliefs and sense of responsibility when working with these young men he must judge fit enough to return to the Front to a War his conscience now questions. Even Rivers admits, after viewing yet another appalling, devastating situation caused by the hopelessness of the war, that "Nothing can justify this, Nothing nothing nothing."

Absolutely engrossing in its setting, dialogue, and historical account of this troubled era, Regeneration is the first book in a long time that I could not wait to read each day. Highly, highly recommended.

Note: I just learned that Regeneration is the first part of a three-book series by Barker. The other two books, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road (which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1996) follow the lives of these same characters after the close of Regeneration. Guess my reading list has two new additions. Can't wait to hear more about these men.


Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

Comments

Previous posts

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Hochschild, Adam. To End All Wars  

Incredibly detailed, yet highly readable account of the events leading up to, during, and after World War I (previously reviewed here)

Rubin, Richard. The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten War  

Rubin finds, in 2003, there are still living veterans of World War I and interviews them. Their 105+ year-old memories are rock solid for details and their narratives are both chilling and revealing of what war in 1917 was like. Fantastic!

To End All Wars

Hochschild, Adam. To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2011. Print

First Sentences: 

The city had never seen such a a parade. 

 Nearly 50,000 brilliantly uniformed troops converged on St. Paul's Cathedral in two great columns. One was led by the country's most beloved military hero, the mild-mannered Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar, a mere five feet two inches in height, astride a while Arabian horse like those he had ridden during more than 40 years of routing assorted Afghans, Indians, and Burmese who had the temerity to rebel against British rule. Mounted at the head of the other column, at six feet eight inches, was the tallest man in the army. Captain Oswald Ames of the Life Guards, wearing his regiment's traditional breastplate, which, with the sunlight glinting off it, seemed as if it might deflect an enemy's lance by its dazzling gleam alone.

Description:

A friend whose opinions about books I respect, recommended this World War I historical account as the best book she had read in 2012, so I jumped on it. Turns out she was spot on. To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild is a sprawling account of the Great War, recounted primarily from people and resources from Great Britain.  

Using diaries, newspaper accounts, military reports, love letters, speeches, and other primary sources, To End All Wars focuses on the deeply-rooted causes that led up to the global war and which then continued to stoke the war engine with money and millions of lives. Hochschild focuses on the individuals and their culture as the true culprits - the greed, colonialism, nationalism, pride, and over-confidence of men (and women) seeking to obtain or hold onto power.
 
Readers are first introduced to the fully colonized world of the early 1900's. Imperialistic nations like Great Britain, Germany, and France had to seek new means to demonstrate their might and expand their empires. To this end, for example, British armies battled the South African Boers simply to take the diamond-rich land for themselves. Hochschild shares a report from Morning Post correspondent Winston Churchill who watched British troops armed with the new Maxim machine gun mow down tens of thousands of Sudanese troops in one battle. In a few years this weapon would be used against English and French troops to deadly effect.

Hochschild carries readers step by step through key events throughout the world which lead to the major international conflict. At that time, Great Britain, Russia, and Germany were facing serious internal conflicts at home as their citizens demanded better pay and working conditions, and even votes for women. Once war was declared, however, almost immediately these individual issues were dropped and the people and rulers united behind their country's war effort.

The book details Britain dreams of revisiting its greatest conquests of the past, using military strategies and weapons that had proved successful in previous wars. But Hochschild points out these British leaders failed to grasp that the days of glorious cavalry charges were over. Repeatedly, the book documents battles where German troops, firmly settled in catacombs of underground trenches behind miles of barbed wire, repulsed the thousands of French and British troops charging on foot or horseback and brandishing lances. Records show that British military leaders considered the German use of trench warfare, barbed wire, machine guns, and mustard gas unsportsmanlike, eliminating the bravery of hand-to-hand combat.

Major people and international historical events are woven throughout the book, including the rise of Socialism, the suffrage movement, and the overthrow of the Russian monarchy. Influential men such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, and Winston Churchill, all play roles in the war, as do the royal houses of England, France, Germany, and Russia, many who at that time were related by marriage. The book also offers romantic escapades between military leaders, nobility, and commoners to counter-balance the fighting and death from battle scenes.

Hochschild is a master researcher and storyteller, someone able to present a clear picture of major characters and national forces to depict one of the bloodiest and often most idiotically-conducted wars of human history. This book is so well-written, so thorough in its research, so involving in its portrayal of the people that this historical account simply soars. 

This is a challenging and heart-breaking book in its depiction of bloodshed and needless loss of life driven forward by proud military and national leaders. But it is also a riveting piece of thorough research which documents the story of mankind in this era and the forces that lead the world into conflict.

Happy reading.

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

Comments 

Previous posts

_______________

If this book interests you, also be sure to check out:
 

Hillenbrand, Laura. Unbroken 

Absolutely first rate biography of an Olympic runner who is shot down during World War II, survives an arduous voyage in a life raft, only to be picked up by the Japanese and thrown into a POW camp with all its horrors. Extremely well-written and gripping for its details of this hero and what he endured, it is a story of triumph on many levels.