2021/077: Regeneration -- Pat Barker

2021/077: Regeneration -- Pat Barker

Any explanation of war neurosis must account for the fact that this apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace. [p. 222]

After The Pull of the Stars, I felt an urge for more WW1 fiction, so finally embarked upon Regeneration. It's the kind of 'literary' novel that I tended to avoid in the decade after finishing my literature degree ... but that was in another millennium.

Regeneration is based on the time that Siegfried Sassoon spent in Craiglockhart War Hospital as a patient of Dr W H R Rivers, after Sassoon was diagnosed with shell-shock to avoid a court-martial for his anti-war declaration. It's effectively a novel about therapy: ( no spoilers )