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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5872.Regeneration?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Regeneration" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165553447m/5872.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5872.Regeneration?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Regeneration</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4000.Pat_Barker">Pat Barker</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/379759?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>An excellent novel - well written and moving. Then again, I'm always a sucker for literature addressing WWI (actually, I think "the Great War" is a more fitting label for WWI) because it reminds me about the staggering losses that shook Europe early in the twentieth century and the enormous artistic response to the war. Although this was written in 1991, the novel manages to capture the artistic spirit, the disillusionment, and the horror of the Great War. I do have two criticisms, however. One is that it seems somewhat facile in its critique of criminalized homosexuality (which was a reality during WWI), and I'm not entirely clear on whether or not Barker provides (or even hints at) a solution to the problems of the military and its construction of masculinity.  (I should note that I haven't read the other two novels in the trilogy - this is the first - so some of these issues may be addressed in those later works.) The second criticism I have is that I'm torn about the traumas suffered by Rivers' patients; they're so grotesque that they border on parody. For example, the fact that Barker equates Prior's source of trauma to a "gobstopper," though conceptually significant, elicited a chuckle from me, and I'm fairly certain that this wasn't what Barker intended. 
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/35568?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Brian's review
rating:
recommended for: anyone

An excellent novel - well written and moving. Then again, I'm always a sucker for literature addressing WWI (actually, I think "the Great War" is a more fitting label for WWI) because it reminds me about the staggering losses that shook Europe early in the twentieth century and the enormous artistic response to the war. Although this was written in 1991, the novel manages to capture the artistic spirit, the disillusionment, and the horror of the Great War. I do have two criticisms, however. One is that it seems somewhat facile in its critique of criminalized homosexuality (which was a reality during WWI), and I'm not entirely clear on whether or not Barker provides (or even hints at) a solution to the problems of the military and its construction of masculinity. (I should note that I haven't read the other two novels in the trilogy - this is the first - so some of these issues may be addressed in those later works.) The second criticism I have is that I'm torn about the trau...more

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