Regeneration
Series: The Regeneration Trilogy, Book 1
By: Pat Barker / Narrated By: Peter Firth
Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
Oh how quietly this book screams—WOW
I read and listen to a lot of military history, and I do so love me some good military fiction. I can’t tell you how many authors of military fiction have held up The Regeneration Trilogy as THE books to read. Dunno why it took me this long to get this, Regeneration, the first in the trilogy, but there you go: I didn’t until now.
While I’m into histories, most of the wars I’ve studied have NOT been WWI; I’m sorely lacking in my knowledge of The Great War. I mean, jeez. I think I’ve puttered around the Falklands War more, and I’m NOT proud of that. But we’re creeping up on Veterans Day—The 101st anniversary of the end of WWI, and since we here at Audiobook Accomplice somehow missed Veterans Day on our first ever go-round the calendar (And I’m NOT proud of that!!!), I’ve been hankering to really dive more deeply into WWI.
Holy cow! What a brilliant listen this was, and of COURSE now I’m looking forward even more eagerly to try the audiobook version of, say, All Quiet on the Western Front, and others of that ilk!
Regeneration weaves together historical fact, real life characters, and some of the most hard-hitting writing out there. No, really. I grew up on Vietnam, we’ve had a gazillion and six run-ins with warfare since then, and I was still completely and unutterably horrified by some of the imagery author Pat Barker uses.
It takes place in a hospital for officers suffering shell-shock, and each individual is brought to his knees and haunted by experiences in the trenches and on the field of battle. A surgeon who can no longer practice because of all the blood he’s seen. A man suffering mutism because he just can’t verbalize what atrocities he saw while fighting in France. And the worst was an emaciated young man who vomited through each meal because he was blown face first into the rotted gore of a dead man, swallowing putrified flesh and guts in the process.
I mean, is that harrowing, or what? Some pretty amazing writing.
The story opens with real life poet Siegfried Sassoon’s public condemnation of the war, a cry to seek a truce with Germany and end the slaughter. Such is an outrage, but he can’t be court-martialed due to his stature, so a friend sways things so that he’s sent to the hospital, as he is “obviously” not in his right mind. And that’s about all that really happens in the book.
It’s mostly a slow set up, and it chronicles nightmares and healing, desires to live a single day more, desires to die in battle to prove that one is not a coward. It’s a story of honor, and it’s a story of men and their great love for each other (Sometimes they don’t know how to love each other: At what point does camaraderie become homosexuality?). Social mores of the time are studied and depicted in a soldier’s flawed desire for sex and intimacy with a young woman who works in a munitions factory, and “modern” techniques for treating shell-shock are shown during brutal electroshocks and verbal abuse (Those who suffer shell-shock are cowards who would’ve broken down in civilian life also—they deserve no respect).
Peter Firth’s narration is slow, quiet, and methodical. At first, I thought his voice and rhythm of speech were going to have me nodding off, but the brutality of the writing, the horrendous struggles each man goes through, the indignities of living as a broken man, just one amongst so many, winds up screaming through your head even though Firth never raises his voice or gets overly-dramatic. Top notch performance, simply well done.
I’m DEFinitely looking forward to the next two in the trilogy, but I don’t know that I’ll be able to do them this year. Maybe one for the next two anniversaries?
And maybe someday soon I’ll be able to hold my head up, be able to tell ya all about WWI!
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