The Regeneration trilogy: someone who got it right for once!

[elettaria]

If you're interested in novels about WW1, or reading something where disability is well handled for once, try Pat Barker's highly-praised Regeneration trilogy. She's taken real events and people and added imaginary ones, so that the war poet Siegfried Sassoon and the psychiatrist and anthropologist Dr William Rivers are leading characters (there's

Comments

[dragonsally]

That sounds so good I've requested it from the library.

[elettaria]

Let us know what you think when you've read it!

[dragonsally]

Have you seen this? http://sqbr.dreamwidth.org/275347.html

[elettaria]

Ooh, interesting post. Put up a separate post here to discuss it, if you like. And if you like science fiction, may I lure you over to the Le Guin short story I put up the other day?

[pandorasblog]

I've read the first book and found it absolutely brilliant. (The film adaptation is good, too.) I'm approaching similar issues in my fiction and I'm trying to learn from how Pat Barker handles PTSD.

[dragonsally]

Just finished book one, and thought they were handling everything really well. No, let me rephrase that. Barker has handled everything brilliantly.
Her portrayal of Yealland's treatment of patients left me breathless and feeling sick to the bone, rather like I felt as a teen watching One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.
Now, on to book two.

[dolorelei]

I read this for a class my freshman year in college, either for a special topic course called "Meaning and Madness in the Margins" or a 20th c. European History course. Either way, it's remained one of my favorite books concerning asylums and PTSD. Glad to see it getting discussed in greater detail!

I haven't read the sequels, but I hope to someday.