Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Regeneration by Pat Barker (2 stars)

Pat Barker says of the Regeneration trilogy that:

The trilogy is trying to tell something about the parts of war that don't get into the official accounts
It certainly does that. By accounts of people who know WWI history it is well-researched and the artistic license with actual facts seems to have been kept fairly minimal. But the what-happened-when and why isn't the focus of this novel at all. In fact, the view we get of the trenches through the eyes of mentally and emotionally damaged veterans is limited to just a few pages. The plot skirts around the details and raises questions that are much more vast and existential.

Should a doctor treat a patient, when the 'cure' sends them back into the final gasps of a war where they will very likely die? When is a soldier obliged to publicly object or defy their orders? Should the allies have negotiated a truce with Germany earlier, once they were in a strong position, to save further loss of lives?

Some of these questions are raised fairly directly through personal internal conflicts in the novel, others are left up to the reader to come up with on their own and mull over. This novel would be an excellent framework for a school discussion about war, but as a novel read for enjoyment I really did not find it at all interesting.

Towards the end, the novel shifts into describing the terrible electric shock treatments that were being used to 'cure' patients of mental conditions at the time. As described in the novel it was essentially producing a 'cure' through torture. This is a complete departure from the rest of the novel, and felt like 'well, I did a bunch of research, I need to stick this in somewhere'.

Since I'm not reading for a school assignment I'll be giving the rest of this trilogy a miss. Enjoy your essay writing, kids.

2 stars.