***Group Read: Regerneration

I think my copy arrived in the mail yesterday. I'm looking forward to reading with you. The only rule is 'no spoilers.'

Started Regeneration last night, but barely got into it.

I'm about halfway through. Its merely OK so far, I'm hoping for a big finish.

Well I finished and I'm sorry to say I was underwhelmed. It wasn't bad just not great. I expected so much more from the premise of the book.

Sorry to say but the first is the best one so if you are underwhelmed now, I don't think you will be that impressed with the other two. I liked the psychological part but the rest was meh.

If Regeneration is the best, then why did Ghost Road win the Booker? (Silly question, unless of course you were on the panel of judges that year) . Did you see the film version of the Regeneration? (In North America it's called Behind the Line or something like that). I rather liked it, so when I read the book next month that's what I'll be comparing it to.

I didn't realize that there was a movie - thanks! I will check that out.

I think I preferred Regeneration because it gets into the psychological mind set more than the others. But overall, I wasn't all that impressed with the series.

As my fingers approach the keys, the only word I can think of is ‘exceptional’. Just think of the work it took to write a novel of this type some 80 years after the events which led up to it. This book is a historical novel. Some of the main characters—Sassoon, Rivers, Dr. Lewis Yealland—were real people. The descriptions of their techniques, behaviors, mental states and conditions were taken from Rivers’ book 'Conflict and Dream' and Yealland’s book 'Hysterical Disorders of Warfare'. The war scenes are accurate and descriptive. Sassoon and his objections to the war are briefly mentioned in Rivers’ book. The other characters—Prior, Owens, Bryce—while fictional, also come from information provided by Rivers’ book. The one objction I have to the book is that sometimes the metaphor is too heavy for me. I like a light, subtle metaphor. Whatever happened to Sassoon? He lived to be 81 years old. I am giving this book 4 ½ stars. To whoever recommended it to the group, many thanks. I enjoyed it immensely.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through this book, and I've been waiting it for it to have a plot. But I'm slowly beginning to realize that the conversations with the therapist are, in fact, going to be whole plot. It's pretty difficult to get into this if you are not fascinated by war (which I'm not.) Also, my background is in psychology and the conversations just don't ring true to me. It feels like what an author would imagine a psychologist to say without having any real understanding of the field. I know this is based on real people, but somehow I'm having a really hard time believing that. I'm actually more interested in reading Conflict and Dream and making some comparisons.

Maybe it'll get better...

I'm on about chapter 5 and enjoying it immensely. I'm not much interested in war, but the effects of war--which is what this is about--does interest me.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through. I think I've read a later book in the series without realizing it, and I remember liking that book. I'm not as keen on this one. Trying to figure out why, I feel as if the Sassoon/Owen plotline, all the poetry-writing in the sanatorium, doesn't do it for me. I don't like it when A.S. Byatt invents Victorian poetry as part of a novel and I don't like it when Barker does it with real poetry in this book. Rivers and his interactions with the various men should have been enough to carry the novel.
I'm very interested in the effects of war and Barker certainly does a good job with them. The moment that really struck me was when Sarah happens upon a group of the amputees and realizes that she's acted the "Medusa" to them--that was a neat, original moment. Overall, I feel that the characters are fascinating as case studies but somehow insufficiently developed novelistically. I don't care enough what happens to them.
SO while I'm enjoying this read, I have a feeling this will be a sort of 2 1/2 or 3-star book for me.

#8 - The other characters—Prior, Owens, Bryce—while fictional, also come from information provided by Rivers’ book.

Actually, Wilfred Owens was real, and best known for his poem Dulce et Decorum Est. He was one of the famed War Poets. He died in battle three days before the end of the war and his mother didn't find out until after the amnesty was declared. Ouch!

edited to add a link to the poem:

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/3303

# 9 - Also, my background is in psychology and the conversations just don't ring true to me. It feels like what an author would imagine a psychologist to say without having any real understanding of the field.

Interesting. Are you taking into consideration the changes in psychology between 1918 and now? I didn't do a lot of psych in uni, but from what I see in Regeneration, it seems to be in line with what was happening at the time. When we studied WWI literature in English, we spent a lot of time on Freud and the psychology of the period, and based on that I could see where Barker did her research. But I didn't major in psych or anything, so I'm far from an expert.

Finished the book, still not wildly happy with it. I've read and thought a fair amount about shell-shock and trench warfare in the first World War, and about attitudes toward homosexuality, and about early 20th-century psychiatric medicine, so these things weren't new to me. Beyond them, the novel just didn't do enough that was new and exciting. I've also never been a great fan of Sassoon (I have mixed feelings about Bloomsbury in general, love them and detest them) and this book didn't make me like him more.

It was a pretty enjoyable book, mind you, just not a really great one. Glad we did it for the group read.

#13-This is going to be a bit of a long explanation, but I no longer completely agree with my original statement.

When I said it doesn't ring true I meant the structure of the conversations themselves. It's been awhile since my history of psychology classes, but during the period of the book psychology is not as we think of it today--two people sitting in a room talking back and forth about the patient's family, work and relationships.

There were three major schools of thought, and Freud was one. But a Freudian psychoanalyst would not have engaged his patient like Rivers. He would not have even faced the patient when the patient was talking.

So, while I will admit I have not been doing a careful reading of the book, it was confusing to me that if Rivers is a psychoanalyst he is not behaving as one. If he is only influenced by Freud that would make more sense, but I did not know people were electing to do that yet.

Having read a little more about Rivers I now realize he was not practicing psychoanalysis and was actually going more in the direction of cognitive psychology (although there was not a concept for that back then) which makes everything a lot clearer.

I finished yesterday (Remembrance Day) and I have to say that I liked the book very much. A four-star read. For some reason I really liked the part where Rivers goes to visit his friend in Suffolk and there's a big storm (maybe I liked it because that part wasn't in the film, so felt new).

Thought this might be interesting for people who are reading the book.

Here are a couple short recordings of Sassoon's voice:

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1561

I just finished the second book in the series, The Eye in the Door, and although it's considered the weakest book of the three, I liked it a lot. Now on to Ghost Road, which was shortlisted for the Best of Booker prize, and is also a 1001 book.

Just finished Regeneration. I never did stop finding it tedious, but I started enjoying it more toward the end. Or more after I read a quote from Pat Barker where she mentioned something about how it's the female characters you really want to listen to in the trilogy. I'll read the other two, but they won't be at the top of my tbr pile.