het mooiste boek over de eerste wereldoorlog dat er bestaat, wat een schrijfster!! ( )

An omnibus containing all three books in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, I originally picked this up thinking that I would only read the first in the series. However, her characters and their situations were so brilliantly realised that I had trouble putting the book down until there were no more pages left to read.

Broadly speaking this is about the horrors of war, in particular the trench warfare of the first world war, and how the human mind tries to deal with such horrors. It's more than just a novel about the war though: in order to involve us fully in it, Barker takes us into the heads of her main characters, primarily W.H.R. Rivers, army psychologist and noted anthropologist, and Billy Prior, an officer from a working class background. Their struggles with themselves and each other made me care about them and brought home the ultimate message: it's not worth it.

I struggled a little with the middle entry, The Eye in the Door, which was more an examination of society during the war rather than the war itself. It was interesting but less engaging than the first and last books, which dealt more directly with the soliders and Rivers' interaction with them. Overall though, I would highly recommend this as an excellent read, quite apart from its effectiveness as a reminder of how stupid and wasteful war can be. ( )

Based on real historical events and characters, Barker’s books deal with the emotional and mental trauma suffered by those who served in World War I, an often overlooked element of the war experience. The novels are based on meetings between the psychologist W.H. Rivers and the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and they explore the development of ideas around ‘shell shock’ as a medical condition, and the burgeoning science of psychology. These books also paint a believable portrait of British society during the Great War, looking at some of the lesser investigated issues such as attitudes towards homosexuality, pacifists and the dissonance between conditions on the frontlines and how they were presented at home. Each book comes with historical notes and recommended further reading about the people involved. ( )

Powerful trilogy of novels dealing with the psychological effects of the Great War.