The Ghost Road

Regeneration #3

by Pat Barker

1918, the closing months of the war. Army psychiatrist William Rivers is increasingly concerned for the men who have been in his care – particularly Billy Prior, who is about to return to combat in France with young poet Wilfred Owen. As Rivers tries to make sense of what, if anything, he has done to help these injured men, Prior and Owen await the final battles in a war that has decimated a generation … The Ghost Road is the Booker Prize winning account of the devastating final months of the First World War. The third book in the Regeneration trilogy

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, War, World War I, Historical, British Literature, Literature

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Pat Barker is an English writer known for her fiction exploring themes of memory, trauma, and survival. She gained prominence with Union Street (1982), a stark portrayal of working-class women's lives, and later achieved critical acclaim with the Regeneration Trilogy (1991–1995), a series blending history and fiction to examine the psychological impact of World War I. The final book, The Ghost Road (1995), won the Booker Prize. In recent years, she has turned to retelling classical myths from a female perspective, beginning with The Silence of the Girls (2018). Barker's work is widely recognized for its direct and unflinching storytelling.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

How do you review a book that you found … average?

A book that you suspect will disappear from your memory as soon as you pick up something else to read? My personality goes quite well both with rants about horrid books (Thank you, Coelho, writing a review on The Alchemist was a blast!) and with gushing about books that made me cry and laugh and shiver (yes, Of Human Bondage is still there with me in its entirety, long after closing the book with a sigh of sadness that the 700 page journey is over).

But a historical novel on World War I, with fictional characters I can’t really relate to? Well, I have to admit that I made a mistake. I chose it for winning the Booker Prize (and it happened to fall into my hands), and I was not aware it was the third part in a trilogy. It can certainly be read as a standalone, but I might have a different opinion if I had read the other two in the series as well.

My problem with it is on a different level, though. I love history, and I love literary fiction and poetry. I completely understand why a contemporary author would embark on the endeavour to WRITE historical fiction, to lose herself in historical documents, primary sources, objects, witness reports, to reconstruct an era through thorough research. I understand Pat Barker. But this kind of novel always leaves me with the feeling that it must be more rewarding to write it than to read it. For I am not very interested in Pat Barker’s reconstructions and relationships with historical characters. I want to go on that journey first hand myself, not explore it in the language of today, through the lense of another history teacher. I want to reread The Poems Of Wilfred Owen, to get to know Sassoon better, or add another Remarque experience to my favourite All Quiet on the Western Front, or even reread sections of the splendid brick of Churchill’s The World Crisis, 1911-1918. I want to read all the fiction that was produced back then, adding nuance and understanding through the voices of that time, as I have so often done before, Of Human Bondage and The Voyage Out forever on my best-of-the-best shelf ever since, joining hands with Hemingway’s and other brilliant authors’ war experiences.

So it is maybe my own fault that I find this rather … uninspiring. It is a solid novel, for sure. But to paraphrase the most significant quote in the story, it is already a ghost in the making in my literary world.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last of an excellent trilogy and it does help to have read the previous two books as many of the characters run through them all and there are references back. You could read it as a standalone, but a good deal would be lost, especially the nuance.
We reconnect with characters from the previous books. There is very little of Sassoon and Owen is present in a small way; Prior and Rivers take centre stage. The narrative alternates between the two as they experience the last days of the war. We also go in flashback to the time Rivers spent in Melanesia with a tribe of head-hunters.
Prior is recovering and makes a deliberate decision to return to France, reflecting the same decisions made by Owen and Sassoon. The sex/death circle works its way through in Prior’s liaisons before and after he returns to France. Rivers describes observing a tribe in Melanesia who had been banned from headhunting and other warlike activities. Their whole reason for existence had disappeared and as their culture was based on the rituals related to the gaining of heads the tribe was in decline and lethargy had set in. The contrasts with war in the west are neatly and obviously drawn.
We see Prior, despite his deprived working class childhood, developing his own voice and starting a diary. We also see over the trilogy what the war did for women, allowing them independence previously not possible and the chance of earning a wage. One character even says that August 4th 1914, when the war started was for her the day Peace broke out “the only little bit of peace I’ve ever had”.
I remember when this book came out one reviewer’s idea of praise was to say that it could have been written by a man (!!!). Barker had previously written about strong working class women; here she focuses on men, but also on the effects of war for women and the adjustments society had to make as it coped with “shellshock” and the thousands of men it affected. She is reflecting some of her own working class northern background and she has said herself that she decided to write about the war following some patronising reviews of her early novels about women. What a response! And, of course these novels are just as feminist and class centred as her earlier ones; just reframed.
The last chapter of the novel again emphasises the sheer futility of it all focussing on some of the last actions of the war, when everyone knew it was over and peace was days away. The troops, including Prior and Owen are sent over the top for the last time.

[Megan Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

What becomes of us when all we know is death and killing, and that is taken away?

If that is the question being asked, the answer is not forthcoming. The book ends just before the war does, so we never get to see how any surviving characters would reintegrate into civilian life. From their worries, their neuroses, and what the experiences of warfare have done to them, the answer appears to be "not well." If the experiences of Rivers among the headhunters are instructive, particularly not well.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compared with (previous war novel read) “Empire of the Sun,” this WWI novel actually evades the battlefield, to the benefit of everyone, I suppose. No—this one is more “Best Years of Our Lives” with raunchy sex and modern yearnings for release, than, say, other bloody epics like "Gone with the Wind" or "The War at the End of the World" (I just noticed these are not WWII novels. Still). The men in "The Ghost Road" are basically hydra heads—they converge in their collective destroyed psyche—they all survive that same dire illness: the aftereffects of constant murder & despair. I will be frank, war novels are not my cup o tea. Too much description usually gives me a headache, the panorama is so vast and awesome and the characters can often be thought of as pawns. But this account is semitrue, taking exquisite care with the characterizations, which are rich despite the spare prose. Think of this as an emblem of MASCULINITY of war. Even Prior, a gay character (read: breath of fresh air for this genre), can separate sexuality & camaraderie. This truly has something to say. It's a very rich, enlightening, must read.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

The final installment of Pat Barker’s trilogy regains some of the cohesion lost in the second one, partly because it focuses more on Dr. Rivers’ past, and partly because Billy Prior — as repugnant as ever — finally returns to battle. What does it say when the horrors of trench warfare perk up a story?

A chunk of the narration takes place as Dr. Rivers battles influenza and his mind wanders back to the time he spent in Melanesia researching a tribe of head-hunters. Their barbaric thirst for heads yet their willingness to curtail the practice, the white man’s abhorrence of head-hunting yet their willingness to send millions of young men to their deaths, a people destroyed by their refusal to fight wars and a nation destroyed by fighting a war...these contradictions all give a not-too-subtle commentary on the moral ambiguity of 20th century British culture. Frankly, I’d sort of checked out. A little social criticism goes a long way if you’re not distracted by engaging characters. Plus I’d endured too many tasteless sexual encounters between Billy and whoever was handy to really care much about the book. (What on earth would make an author think that coarseness is going to be anything other than repellent? Are there readers so depraved that they don’t mind?? I shudder to think.)

One of the big disappointments with the trilogy is that the characters who were so fascinating in Regeneration, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, are absent from the second book and make only cameo appearances in the last. Much of the charm (which isn't really the right word) of Regeneration's premise is the fleshing out of historical people and encounters. Instead, Barker took the least appealing character from the first book and focused the rest of the series on him.

The ending, at least, packs a punch. And as a bonus, Wilfred Owen returns for a brief appearance, even if it is only in time to get killed at the Sambre-Oise Canal (he died on November 4, exactly one week before Armistice; his mother received word of his death as church bells rang out victory — that part’s not in the novel). I would definitely read Regeneration and definitely skip the next two. Bizarrely, The Ghost Road is the one that actually won the Booker Award.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Shotfarfet.'

So mutters a horribly wounded Craiglockhart patient to his family and fiancée, as Rivers stands helplessly in attendance. ... his speech was incomprehensible. The wound to his lower jaw made it difficult to determine whether this represented a deficit in the power of using language, or whether the failure to communicate was entirely or primarily mechanical. He showed some understanding of speech, however ...

He suddenly realizes what the man is saying through his mangled face. "It's not worth it."

Barker has used the following epigraph.

Now all roads lead to France
And heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead
Returning lightly dance.

'Roads', Edward Thomas

At some sort of recent moment I developed an urge to rewrite and complete my reviews of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy; and a few days ago, having reached the point where a review of the hauntingly-named finale, The Ghost Road, had become the final step, it occurred to me that this book probably deserved something better than what I'd done for its predecessors – which was to make up reviews consisting of vague memories, a quote or two, and extracts from Wiki articles about the books. (I think the "deserved something better" probably connected to the fact that Ghost Road was the one book of the three that won the Booker when it was published.)

So, I read it again. Got through in two or three evenings. When I finished, wiped the tears out of my eyes and patted myself on the back, murmuring "well that was a good plan."

The Ghost Road is definitely about ghosts. But hardly like Stephen King would approach it. And there are other sorts or spirits which join that dance down the road: the ghosts of the living, the younger selves of characters which only exist in the memory, before those selves were altered inexorably by the horrors of that War which, failing to "end all wars", instead succeeded monstrously in ending so many selves, millions physically, more millions spiritually, ghosts of both these millions, dancing and marching. They are joined by spirits which inhabit the myths and minds of Melanesian natives, natives which Dr. Rivers had studied years prior with Arthur Maurice Hocart, and which in this novel keep coming back to him, weaving in and out of the narrative. Arthur Maurice Hocart matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford in 1902. He graduated with honors in "Greats", a degree combining Latin, Greek, ancient history, and philosophy. After his graduation in 1906 he spent two years studying psychology and phenomenology at the University of Berlin. With this broad and idiosyncratic training in hand, he was picked by W.H.R. Rivers to accompany him on the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Solomon Islands in 1908. Their ethnographic work on 'Eddystone Island' (today known by its local name of Simbo) and in nearby Roviana, stands as one of the first modern anthropological field projects, and was the inspiration behind sections of Pat Barker's novel The Ghost Road. Some of the data from the expedition appeared in Rivers' History of Melanesian Society in 1914, but most of their work did not make it into print until 1922, when Hocart began to publish a series of articles describing the core material. from Wiki On Eddystone Island, Rivers and Hocart struggle to communicate with these natives, one of them, Njiru, becoming Rivers' ultimate source to his people's myths and legends. His people, by the way, a culture defined by head huntering. Banned now with extreme penalties from taking heads by the colonial British, and astoundingly, as Rivers realizes, decreasing in population, dying out as a culture, marrying less, because all their spiritual traditions connected with this head hunting, and intermeshed with every other aspect of their daily lives. So the ghosts of this culture, the ghosts of the spirits which ruled it, joining the march. One of these spirits is that of Ave, whom Njiru consents to explain to Rivers shortly before he, Rivers, is to depart from the village. "Ave lives in Ysabel. He is both one spirit and many spirits. His mouth is long and filled with the blood of men he devours. Kita and Mateana are nothing beside him because they destroy only the individual, but Ave kills 'all people 'long house'. The broken rainbow belongs to him, and presages both epidemic disease and war. Ave is the destroyer of peoples. And we realize that Ave has ruled the world, metaphorically, at this dreadful time in Rivers' life, producing the broken patients he's been treating, destroying peoples en masse, and now, at the end of the story, conjuring up the destruction of the next apocalypse, the Spanish influenza, Pestilence taking over from War, bringing new recruits to the Danse Macabre. Even the ghosts of the future, futures which will never be for those killed and shattered in the war, are summoned to the road, as are the literary ghosts of Barker's trilogy: Sassoon, Billy Prior, Wilfred Owen, Rivers.


This book is a most deserving winner of the Booker. As one review said, it is "deeply eloquent".



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Regeneration
Next review: Memory of Fire I: Genesis
Older review: Invisible Man

Previous library review: The Eye in the Door
Next library review: Another World

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This historical fiction is the final book of the Regeneration trilogy set in Europe during WWI. It focuses on finishing the stories of Dr. William Rivers (a real person) and Billy Prior, whom we followed closely in the first two books. It is a character study of the two main characters as they deal with a traumatic past and the horrors of war. We learn about Rivers’ experiences in Melanesia and Prior’s return to the front.

Themes include the psychological effects of war, duty, class prejudice, and friendships on the front lines. It also addresses cultural changes in Melanesian tribal communities brought about by British colonial influences. Regeneration is my favorite of the trilogy, with this book as a close second, and The Eye in the Door third. After reading this trilogy and a few others, Pat Barker has become one of my favorite authors.

4.5

[Marina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is the third in a trilogy, and I have to admit that my reading probably suffered from not having read the first two volumes that form the story.
The novel opens in the final months before the end of World War I. The Narrator alternates points of view between Dr Rivers (a real historical figure) who treats shell-shocked and damaged men at a War Hospital and one of his former patients at the hospital, a young and not very likeable lieutenant.
From the beginning my interest was held by the war hospital setting, the broken men and Dr Rivers’s rather unorthodox methods of treatment. I also found the fever-induced memories of his time with a head hunting tribe on a Melanesian island to make fascinating reading. Inevitably the reader’s mind is led to draw parallels between the attitudes of the Melanesian tribesmen, those of their new rulers and those prevalent in war torn Europe some twenty years later. For all the inevitability and truth in those conclusions I felt like a child held by the hand and led to them and this I resented. I wish there could have been more subtlety.
I was distinctly less interested when the narrative switched to the young lieutenant. Looking back I can see that he was a very well drawn character, shown to us with warts and all. The thousands that marched to their death during that period of unnecessary bloodshed were not beautiful saints, they were men with faults, and not always likeable. And they didn’t deserve the suffering and fate that was meted out to them. Still, I found my interest ebbing away when the author focused on the more earthy needs and pursuits of this man. Billy Prior, who returns to the trenches, in spite of medical advice, not only doesn’t break down, but performs one final act of heroism before the guns cease. Even so he can take no pride in an act that he recognises as futile, and one that ultimately causes more suffering.
I thought the descriptions of the realities of the war zone and the trenches to be quite persuasive if a little forced in comparison to other books with the same subject matter. (All Quiet on the Western Front comes to mind).

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't say enough good about this trilogy. In an interview with Pat Barker, she described growing up in a home where she saw the lifetime of effects of WWI. Struggling with the effects of a war she didn't live through, her obsession lead to a brilliantly re-imagined world, much of it based on historical records.

She addresses the war from several angles: a brilliant psychologist, women who are freed to work in munitions factories, soldiers faced with moral and class conflicts.

The first book is set in an institution where soldiers are sent for shell-shock. A pacifist is sent there too, to prevent him from speaking out about the war.

The second book addresses the government's fear of traitors in war time: gays and socialists are targeted.

The third continues the story of a few of the characters, who are now returning to the front.

The writing is remarkable, flipping from harsh memories, to forgotten childhood incidents, to the psychologist's anthropology studies in Africa. The therapy sessions were the most engrossing--almost voyeuristic--but they did so much to develop all the characters.

All three books are engaging--interesting plots and characters-- but work on a deeper level too, questioning why nations go to war and how individuals survive it.

[Erwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible finale to an amazing trilogy. This trilogy about the psychological impacts of the Great War is impressive! The Ghost Road and part one: Regeneration were the best. In 'The Eye in the Door' , the character development of Lt. Prior was somewhat 'off'. It was a bit too much to handle. The final installment made up for a lot. The stories of both Prior and Rivers were fascinating. They came together in the end in a powerful and horrifying understanding of the impact of war, and the futilty of (this) war, but also gave a clear understanding of the double standards civilized nations upheld in those days ( and nowadays, no doubt) about what was civilized and what not. This trilogy is highly recommended!

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

My love of the war poets is due to this fantastic series, I think my world changed when I first read Wilfred Owen’s poems.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A worthy Man Booker Prize winner. The story is the final in a trilogy about a homosexual officer in WW1 who is returning to the front for the fourth time after getting engaged to Sarah. He does not need to go but has a death wish. His psychiatrist Dr Rivers treats him and recalls his time in Melanesia amongst headhunters studying their culture. He compares their attitudes to death with the soldiers he treats.

The end of the war is near and Priors company is sent into a battle which is pointless. Prior to the battle he sees a fellow officer Hallet horrifically wounded and who ends up in Dr Rivers care in London. Where the soldier keeps saying it’s not worth it. Never truer words said that captures the futility of war.

A great read and highly recommended.

[Sotiris Karaiskos · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the third book of the trilogy, we leave the rear to move to the heart of the battle, in the last days before the end of the war, when seemed that everything was over. The author describes life in the trenches, using raw language for the last lethal battles and cynicism - through her heroes - for the quietest moments that give the opportunity to challenge what they are doing.

At the same time, something very interesting, psychiatrist Rivers remembers his journey to the South Pacific where he was hosted by a tribe of headhunters, and so he was able to study their culture that seems to revolve around death. This is what gives a lot of food for thought. Despite our evolution, are we modern humans still in the same class as the most primitive tribes? Is war a result of a culture of death worship similar to the most aggressive tribes?

This parallelization is very interesting as in the philosophy of the most fanatical supporters of the war there was this very idea, that war is something invigorating for a society, that the continuous presence of death, either in the form of losses or by the form of extermination of the enemy keeps people alert and makes them energetic. An idea that continued to exist and led to the creation of fascism and then to the Second World War.

Back to the hospital, doctors and nurses have realized that the war is not going to end, as the Spanish flu is making its appearance and is already beginning to cause great losses and they are called to treat these patients along with the injured of the battles. So the book ends and perhaps the author answers to what I mentioned above about death. Together comes the end of this wonderful trilogy which in the simplest way talks about the consequences of the war and makes very important questions about it, making these three books a very important reading for the First World War.

Στο τρίτο βιβλίο της τριλογίας αφήνουμε τα μετόπισθεν για να μεταφερθούμε στην καρδιά της μάχης, στις τελευταίες μέρες πριν από το τέλος του πολέμου, όταν όλα δείχνουν ότι τα πάντα έχουν τελειώσει. Η συγ��ραφέας περιγράφει τη ζωή στα χαρακώματα, χρησιμοποιώντας ωμή γλώσσα για τις τελευταίες φονικές μάχες και πολύ κυνισμό - μέσω των ηρώων της - για τις πιο ήσυχες στιγμές που δίνουν την ευκαιρία για να αμφισβητηθεί αυτό που κάνουν.

Παράλληλα γίνεται κάτι πολύ ενδιαφέρον, ο ψυχίατρος Rivers θυμάται το ταξίδι του στο νότιο Ειρηνικό όπου φιλοξενήθηκε από μία φυλή κυνηγών κεφαλών και έτσι μπόρεσε να μελετήσει τον πολιτισμό τους που φαίνεται να περιστρέφεται γύρω από το θάνατο. Αυτό είναι που δίνει πολύ τροφή για σκέψη. Παρά την εξέλιξή μας εμείς οι σύγχρονοι άνθρωποι είμαστε ακόμα στην ίδια κατηγορία με τις πιο πρωτόγονες φυλές; Ο πόλεμος είναι αποτέλεσμα μιας κουλτούρας λατρείας του θανάτου ανάλογης με αυτές τον πιο επιθετικών φύλων;

Αυτός ο παραλληλισμ��ς έχει πολύ ενδιαφέρον καθώς μέσα στη φιλοσοφία των πιο φανατικών υποστηρικτών του πολέμου υπήρχε αυτή ακριβώς η ιδέα, ότι ο πόλεμος είναι κάτι το αναζωογονητικό για μία κοινωνία, ότι η συνεχής παρουσία του θανάτου, είτε με τη μορφή των απωλειών, είτε με τη μορφή της εξόντωσης του εχθρού κρατάει τους ανθρώπους σε εγρήγορση και τους κάνει ενεργητικούς. Μία ιδέα που φυσικά συνέχισε να υπάρχει και οδήγησε στη δημιουργία του φασισμού και στο τέλος στον Δεύτερο Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο.

Πίσω στο νοσοκομείο, οι γιατροί και οι νοσοκόμες έχουν καταλάβει ότι ο πόλεμος δεν πρόκειται να τελειώσει, καθώς η ισπανική γρίπη κάνει την εμφάνισή της και ήδη αρχίζει να προκαλεί μεγάλες απώλειες και καλούνται να περιθάλψουν αυτούς τους ασθενείς μαζί με τους τραυματίες των μαχών. Έτσι τελειώνει το βιβλίο και ίσως η συγγραφέας απαντάει σε αυτά που ανέφερα παραπάνω για το θάνατο. Μαζί έρχεται το τέλος αυτής της υπέροχης τριλογίας που με τον πιο απλό τρόπο μιλά για τις συνέπειες του πολέμου και κάνει πολύ σημαντικές ερωτήσεις για αυτόν, κάνοντας αυτά τα τρία βιβλία να είναι πολύ σημαντικά αναγνώσματα για τον πρώτο Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο.

[Julian Worker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is set in the last few months of World War I and you can imagine that some of the imagery is harrowing.

William Rivers is the main character in the novel. He was a real person - an English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist known for treatment of First World War officers suffering shell shock, so they could be returned to combat. This returning to combat gives him severe pangs of conscience during the novel where he is constantly remembering his time amongst a tribe in the South Pacific, a tribe whose spirit goes into decline once they give up head hunting.

The other main character is Billy Prior who after treatment with William Rivers, decides to return to France and the fighting for a fourth time. He knows he will regret his decision. Billy's decision is based on the fact that he's an officer from the working class and sets an example for others to follow. He has a fiancee in England and writes to her and thinks of her constantly.

Other real people in this fictional novel include the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfrid Owen. Owen almost made it to the end of the war, but died trying to cross the Sambre-Oise canal, one week before The Armistice.

[Geoff Wooldridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker is the final installment in the Regeneration trilogy, dealing with the horrible physical and psychological impacts of war (WWI) on individuals.

Winner of the Man Booker prize in 1995, the novel reintroduces several familiar characters from the earlier novels (Regeneration, The Eye In the Door).

Still determined to assist others despite his own diminishing good health, psychologist Dr William Rivers persists in his determination to understand and provide effective treatments for 'shell shock' (today we would call it PTSD).

One of his long-term patients, the voraciously active bisexual, Billy Prior, is determined to return to the trench warfare of France, despite Rivers' recommendations, believing that it will be better for him than a safe job in England.

The narrative involving Rivers flashes back frequently (sometimes disruptively) to his experiences as a much younger man with the natives of the South Pacific (Melanesia) and Torres Strait. Telling these tales of primitive rituals and beliefs around life and death, Barker allows her character Rivers to reflect and draw parallels with the culture of death and sacrifice that represents the brutal and relentless warfare in Europe.

The story-line also follows Billy Prior, in the days before he embarks for France, and then, through journal entries and letters, his thoughts and experiences as he battles through the grim days as the war draws towards its end in November 1918.

The language is gritty, frequently coarse and crude, which some might find offensive, but Barker has infused an unapologetic dose of realism and frankness into her prose that is apt and powerful. She has refused to dress up or sanitise anything here.

Some other historical characters from the earlier novels, such as the war poets Sassoon and Owen, make brief appearances again. many of the characters are real historical figures, although the events are mostly fictionalized.

This has been an engaging and rewarding trilogy, and while it might not be the very best of the multitude of novels covering aspects of WWI (Her Privates We by Frederic Manning is better), it was an original and fascinating insight into the issues of mental health associated with war service.

[Giedre · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have just finished the book today and I have to say that it totally blew me away.

The third book of the trilogy centers mostly on two of all the characters who were present in the previous books, Rivers and Prior. Throughout the books the characters are developed into vivid, compelling, independent personalities. You can almost feel you knew them in real life after you finish the trilogy, they are so real, so well-developed.

Prior, as a character, shows all of his sides. He's witty, intelligent, brave, and at the same time neurotic, sadistic, unscrupulous, and you still can't avoid finding him really likable, probably because he's so close to what we all are, he's so humane. No perfect hero, but most of the times even painfully familiar, reminding us about our own flaws.

I could definitely continue, but I will round up just by saying that "The Ghost Road" accompanied by the previous two books in the trilogy has definitely won a place in the very top list of my favourite books.

[Martine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final instalment in the Regeneration Trilogy struck me as a bit unfocused and heavy-handed in its use of symbolism and parallel storylines. However, certain scenes were very powerful, and the ending packed a punch.

I'm not sure why The Ghost Road rather than Regeneration or The Eye in the Door won the Booker Prize. I can only assume the Booker judges wanted to honour the trilogy somehow and so picked the last book to show their appreciation, much like the Academy showered The Return of the King with Oscars even though The Fellowship of the Ring was a vastly superior film. Personally, I thought The Ghost Road was the weakest of the three books (rated a mere 3.5 stars, as opposed to the 4 and 4.5 stars I gave the other two books), but it didn't mar my overall impression of the trilogy, which is good.

A review of the entire trilogy is forthcoming.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I honestly think if the war went on for a hundred years another language would evolve, one that was capable of describing the sound of a bombardment or the buzzing of flies on a hot August day on the Somme. There are no words. There are no words for what I felt when I saw the setting sun rise.

I have a hypothesis that the muddled history I've internalized of whether The Lord of the Rings is a single work or a trilogy has something to do with the fact that reading Regeneration the way I did meant that its sequels were destined for five stars regardless of intervening time or space or change of tune. Of course, the sequels could have really fucked up to the point that this fate was broken and denied, but in this case, Barker kept up her streak of leaving the reader broken in her wake. A warning, perhaps, but with the subject at hand, to be denied would be the more dangerous route, as that would involve withholding some amount of the truth, a mechanism which must occur if ever one is to convince others to go to war. Not revolution, mind you. Not rebellion, nor mutiny, not even resistance. War.

By any proper civilized standard (but what does that mean now?) we are objects of horror. But our nerves are completely steady. And we are still alive.

I have my doubts about the reception of Barker's other works, especially the ones that also take place in merry old WWI-era England. On the one hand, the writer in the Regeneration trilogy has her finger on its pressure point in the ways that forgo all talk of being 'of the times' that it's nearly impossible for that to have all evaporated by the time the first words began forming for another project. On the other, it'd be a downright shame, as while I've already committed to finding a nice three-in-one edition to reread every ten years or so, I've grown tired of going over the same old territory in various media. Sticking to the same author is hardly adventurous, and I don't think I'll be dislodging R.L. Stein off my most read authors list anytime soon, but many-tomed classes in the vein of Austen and Shakespeare have given me an appreciation for bibliographical evaluations. If Barker isn't worth this endeavor, I don't know who is.

I suppose what one should be asking is whether an ideal becomes invalid because the people who hold it are betrayed.

The strange part is that this trilogy doesn't treat with war at its most creative. This isn't Haiti in 1812, or South Sudan in 2011, or anything lending to postcolonial or anti-settler state. You can't even make an argument for genocide, or at least not on any level other than the peripheral. The statement made by one of the characters that poison gas and trenchfare was the worst the twentieth century had to offer was made by a brain firmly in its present, the skill of an author rather than an imagination and thus the sort of hubristic perfection no one alive would ever want to be able to afford. Some things, however, never go out of style: post-traumatic stress disorder, homophobia, biphobia, toxic masculinity. One could make an argument for racism, but as far as fictional ethnography written by a white author goes, Barker was more than willing to hand off the baton to someone who has the right to talk about such things.

We have to die, we don't have to worship it.

At the end, I have to say, I regret the ending. It wasn't a horrible ending, practically the best one, but a better one than that would have been to never end, which is so overwhelmingly selfish a statement that I can only make it after having gone through each of the three books in the order intended. Due to the matter of various prizes and places on esteemed lists, as well as the way in which the writing is constructed, this is one of the more pulled apart series, some reading the first and no other, some heading straight to the third, the oft-neglected second suffering from both middle sibling syndrome and the mystique of the loner piece of literature, without sequel and thus without close compare. Even I wasn't the most orthodox about my road to completion. After leaving the first in the series to itself for three years and rushing through the following two in the last month, I'm nearly drunk with the bone-raking pathos of what I remembered and what I've just experienced. One way of reasoning it out is that the books were there when I needed them. The power of them, though, suggests that I was there when they needed me.

A curious, old-fashioned romantic poet, though I don't know why I say that, there's plenty of them about...But then they don't all quote, 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,' as he did, quite without embarrassment, the other night while I was getting ready for bed. I said very sourly indeed that a more appropriate quotation for this stage of the war might be: 'I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more...' His leap across the room was rather remarkable. He'd slapped a hand across my mouth, and we were staring at each other, dumbstruck, before either of us had time to think, his face chalk-white and I suspect mine as well, each trying to remember what the penalty is for smacking an officer in the gob. Quite possibly death.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Regeneration Trilogy: I read these books in the late '90s, after Ghost Road was first published. I was in love with the British war poets of WWI at the time and this fit right in. I don't remember many details, but these books were great reads. Very athmospheric, accessible and captivating main characters, I suffered with them every step of the way.

P.S.: The movie is also very good.

[grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

currently crying at the kitchen table

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barker's final volume of the "Great War Trilogy" does an admirable job of bringing the series to its expected but none-the-less tragic conclusion. Although The Ghost Road deserves the five stars I awarded it and the Booker prize, it does so in large measure because of what has come before. Barker has created a trilogy in which each volume points the way forward toward the inevitable ending, but in which the final volume suffuses the whole with a new level of meaning as the reader reflects on the first two volumes with a deepened understanding after (even while!) reading the third. It is difficult to comprehend how we continue to send young men (and now young women too) into the meat grinders of war after war from which even those who return alive and physically whole do not do so undamaged by the experience. It is futile to imagine that literature has the power to end war, but this series of fine novels makes a powerful argument that war is itself insanity and that our jingoistic politicians and those who elect them are doing violence to our society that will affect generations to come. Works such as this are necessary to remind us that the essence of war is not in flags, parades, and uniforms but in the cries of hideously wounded men crying out for their mothers as the world explodes in mud and blood around them. It is important that we remember.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Third and last part of the Regeneration trilogy. Earlier, I read the first book and that made quite a big impression. In this part two characters are followed further, but now at the end of the war (summer and autumn 1918): Dr. Rivers in London, still trying to tinker injured soldiers, and Billy Prior, the asthmatic officer who absolutely wants to get back to the war. Rivers looks back on his time as anthropologist in Polynesia, where he had lived in a community of headhunters become lethargic and lustless by the British ban on head-hunting; precisely the same Great Britain now sent waves of young men to a certain death in Flanders and Northern France; the theme of war as a vitalist force. Prior is one of those men who aware his fate and resolutely going for it, but at the same time struggling with his social background (proletarian) and his sexual orientation (bisexual, described in some fairly explicit scenes). Barker has made of this last part a very rich book, with numerous vistas to a greater whole; but to me it is less successful than the first part, that went much broader and gave more depth to the theme of psychological traumas.

[booklady · Rating 2 out of 5]

The final novel in a trilogy about the ending of a monstrous war, WWI, supposedly the War to End All Wars. My husband and I listened to it on our recent trip. Given some of the more graphic descriptions of human depravity I don’t recommend the audio version. You can more easily skim over sections you don’t care to read with a written text v. an audio book. Undoubtedly it would have helped if we’d read the first two books, but it has made me more curious to read The Guns of August/The Proud Tower and All Quiet on the Western Front by way of comparison.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gobbled this up. It was a fine ending to a marvelous trilogy that brilliantly shows the side effects of the Allied forces having won. These are novels. One of the main characters, Billy Prior, is fictitious. But the doctors and some of the other patients were real people. In this last installment, Billy Prior returns to France and he serves with Wilfred Owen. Dr. Rivers continues to treat the battlefield mentally maimed. Interestingly, Rivers spends a lot of time in his memories of having explored Melanesia. I think this might at first be disconcerting to those who have not read the earlier novels in the series.

Despite all of that and the fact that this won the Booker Prize, I did not feel this was as powerful as either of the earlier books in the series. Perhaps like Prior and Owens became less sensitive to the horrors of the battlefield, I became somewhat less sensitive to those who continued to suffer. The books of the series are all stand alone, but I think I would have appreciated this one even less had I not read the earlier ones. It is important to note also that the action in them takes place chronologically.

I did feel a connection to this one in a way that I did not the others, and in a way which surprised me. Part of the chapters narrated by Billy Prior are in the form of a diary, beginning in August 1918. As the days tumbled on, I looked forward to September 26, to learn whether he was anywhere near where my grandfather's unit fought, and the day my grandfather ceased to be. Prior was nowhere near and the war continued.

It seems she understood Billy Prior and other working class soldiers, better than Rivers and his class. There is a thread of the discomfort of the the British classes mixing. I looked at Barker's wikipedia entry and it's no wonder this comes through. She was born and raised in a working-class family. Her first three novels were never published and, she told The Guardian in 2003, "didn't deserve to be: I was being a sensitive lady novelist, which is not what I am. There's an earthiness and bawdiness in my voice.” Indeed there is. Four stars for The Ghost Road and I look forward to reading other books by Pat Barker.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Ghost Road is the third book in the Regeneration trilogy, and I have to say, I was disappointed. Rivers has moved to war torn London, still dealing with the young fall out from the devastating World War. Prior, a character from the periphery of Regeneration, who moved to the fore in The Eye In The Door, returns to France against Rivers's advice, and the story takes them both to the end of the War. In this respect, the novel was just as captivating and equally sobering as the first. What I couldn't grasp was the need for the bizarre back story of Rivers, his experiences in colonial Africa, and acceptance into a tribe of headhunters. I expected a large denouement, for all of that to fall in with the modern day story, to learn something from his experience there. But it falls flat against the horrifying final moments of the war in France. So mixed feelings about this one, but an excellent trilogy all told.

[Rishi Prakash · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had picked this book after seeing it as a Booker prize winner which is a big recommendation in itself. This book is the third and the final part of a trilogy that the author wrote with the backdrop of first world war which i found out only after reading this one!! And i guess that is where i got it wrong because i had not read the first two parts so this book was a slow and laborious read for me... i just could not connect with the story at all...

The story was very confusing for me all through and sometime it became difficult even to understand the sequence from one chapter to the next one! I think if a book has been awarded a Booker which is a single-book prize, then it must have merit as a single book without any knowledge of its earlier parts which somehow did not look like a case here although i may be completely wrong too after seeing the average rating(4+) even on goodreads!

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Billy Prior and Rivers were engaging, complex characters whom I loved spending time with. In particular, Prior's sense of humour and Rivers' calm rationality made this trilogy much more enjoyable to read than I was expecting (I'd built them up in my head as Weighty War Tomes).

The clever switch to first person journal entries when we finally got to the Front after 2 and a half books lent an urgency and intimacy. And interspersing these entries with Rivers' feverish memories of the South Pacific islanders and their approach to death meant that the dread kept building and building.

I wasn't as moved by the ending as I expected to be. Which is more to do with my mood than the book, which was very skilfully crafted to be devastating.

[Michael Robotham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've enjoyed this trilogy and THE GHOST ROAD - a former Book Prize winner is perhaps my favourite of the three books.

[Aike · Rating 4 out of 5]

not sure what i think about the Eddystone storyline but otherwise as sharp and well-written as the previous two books in the trilogy, a fitting ending as well. it was actually nice to read this with the previous book fresh in mind because the three installments do actually build on each other.

[Emer Tannam · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

Comparisons are odious, and so are expectations.

This was my least favourite of the trilogy, but it was still an excellent read! I just didn't find the bits about the doctor and the indigenous people as interesting as the rest of it.