This is the third and final part of the Regeneration trilogy which culminated in this novel winning the Booker Prize. I think ultimately the second novel is the better, and best of the three, but I won’t fault the Booker Prize for recognizing the quality of the series, and probably wish it had done more of this in its time (well, I guess it kind of did this with Paul Scott’s Staying On) (Anyway!). In this third volume we meet back with Billy Prior who having been in the hospital in book one, one civilian duty in book two, is now back at the front, leading soldiers in book three. We also Dr. Rivers, who spent book one treating Siegfriend Sassoon, book two more in the background, is now long out of the war and conducting anthropological research far afield away from the war.
The novel mostly splits between Billy Prior’s war diaries and Dr. Rivers experiences in the field. The war diaries are by far the more interesting (though entirely banal) of the two main sections, but the Dr. Rivers sections are interesting because they’re a constant reminder of how constrictive and claustrophobic the war was for those involved (while entirely being meaningless) and how much of the rest of the world there was to be a part of. I could only imagine, for example, how truly remote the war probably felt to say Americans on the homefront, where there was absolutely no threat of existential proportions.
The Billy Prior sections however drip with disdain and horror, and are quite harrowing in their writing.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Road-Pat-Barker/dp/0525941916/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+ghost+road&qid=1554649116&s=gateway&sr=8-1)