Regeneration by Pat Barker

We met to discuss Pat Barker’s 1991 Booker Prize winning novel Regeneration, chosen for its topicality as we met a day after the centenary of the outbreak of WW1.  Regeneration is the  first book in a Great War trilogy, the subsequent novels being The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road. It explores the experience of British Army officers being treated for shellshock at Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh.  Barker drew on her grandfather’s experiences and her characters are based on people who were there at the time, including the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen and Dr Rivers the pioneering psychologist, one of the first people to realise that shellshock was not a manifestation of cowardice.

Some of the Group had read this book first time around, and were looking forward to rereading it.  However, we found it rather a let down, and the other readers were also somewhat underwhelmed.  While clearly well researched and well told, ultimately we found the characters slightly two dimensional and no-one really mind if they finished the book or not.  

We wondered if, compared to the 1990s everyone today has far better awareness of the mental damage caused to war survivors, or whether the intensity of media interest in WW1 has somehow diluted the novel’s impact.  Wikipedia has a long and interesting entry about the book which may be of interest. 

The list of books recently read and or recommended by the Group gives a good overview of the eclectic range of our reading (apologies for using Amazon links - you can always ignore them if you hate Amazon)

Diaries

Home Fires Burning: The Great War Diaries of Georgina Lee, 1914-1919  edited by Gavin Roynon
A Strange Time: The Diary and Scrapbooks of Cordelia Leigh 1914-1919  edited by Sheila Lesley Woolf and Christopher John Holland (diaries of the chatelaine of Stoneleigh Abbey)

Fiction from Real Events

Elephant Moon by John Sweeney 

Nature Writing

Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain and 
Wildwood: AJourney Through Trees both by Roger Deakin

Fictionalised Fact

The Italian Chapel  by Philip Paris

Science/biography/Psychology

Sybil by Flora Schreiber

SciFi/ Cyber Punk

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

Other recommendations included The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, The Switch  and  Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard

Our next meeting is on Wednesday 14 January at 12.30 at WBS Scarman Road Lounge. We shall be reading We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. Please do come, and bring a book loving friend!