Regeneration by Pat Barker was fantastic. Just putting it out there straight up. The story of a decorated British officer serving in World War I who refuses to continue fighting, not because the war can't be won or because of pacifism, but because he feels the war could be over but the powers that be derive benefit from it continuing, in spite of the horrors experienced by the soldiers and the continuing mounting deaths. As a way around his being court martialed, he is considered mentally unstable and committed to a mental institution.
And here in the mental institution is where we learn about all of the horrible traumas the soldiers are enduring, completely aside from physical injuries: the soldier who was launched into the air by an exploding shell and landed on a decaying body with a bloated gut that ruptured in his face, swallowing some of the decaying flesh, who now vomits continuously at any smell or mention of food. Those who have inexplicably gone mute. So many with nightmares. And Dr. Rivers is the military psychiatrist assigned to assessing and restoring the mental health of these soldiers in order to send them back to the front lines.
While sometimes, it was hard not to feel some absurdity of a group of patients with differing types of mental illness all interacting in different ways, I assure you, there was no intention of humor here. The book was certainly a reminder of what World War I was: the war that ushered in a new era of brutality in warfare and how horribly it messed up millions of young men who fought and managed to "survive". While the book doesn't technically take place on the front lines in the trenches, the impact of what the soldiers experienced is just as terrible and impactful. I was surprised to learn that the two main characters, Siegfried Sassoon (the dissenting officer) and Dr. Rivers were based on real-life individuals.
The book also had some very interesting themes around masculinity and overshadowing to homosexuality. Talking about how men of the time (and really, not too much different now) were raised to believe that any show of emotion was considered weakness so they all bottled up the traumas they experienced during the war. And instead, the repressed fear manifests in all of these different and terrible ways and the men feel such shame for even having these feelings. And similarly, during wartime, the soldiers are bound to each other by duty and experience the most intense moments together as possible, and are taught to protect each other like brothers. So a certain type of love develops there. But where is the line in how acceptable that love is? It's ok in the moment, but is then considered unacceptable once they return to civilian life. How are these two very different manifestations of love reconciled?
Pat Barker went on to write two additional books on World War I, the third of which, The Ghost Road, went on to win the Booker Prize in 1995. Even though I haven't read the second two books yet, just based on my experience with Regeneration, I could definitely see how this was possible. I wish that this book (and the rest of hers) got more notoriety in today's time because it was quite brilliant in it's storytelling and writing.
So, I'm actually back dating this post by a couple weeks, because I finished Regeneration about a month ago and moved on to Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, which I also finished a week or so ago. And booooyyyy, do I have a LOT to say about that one. Stay tuned. Oh, and completing Regeneration put me at exactly 200 books left to go. Holla!
