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This
is the first novel in the prize winning trilogy
by Pat Barker.
Set
mainly at Craiglochart Hospital in Edinburgh, we see the eminent
psychologist W. H. Rivers and his patients struggle with the brutal effects
of shell shock, gas and mortar attacks, and the dehumanising
trenches. River’s patients are psychologically and physically, seemingly
beyond repair, yet they are often sent back by the Medical Boards to a war
hungry for young lives.
In the fictionalised accounts of River's surgeries the difficulties of
treating these men are typified by the contradiction who is the poet
Siegfried Sassoon an anti-war soldier.
It is also in this setting that Sassoon meets Wilfred Owen.
Perhaps surprising for us is the admiration the young Owen shows
for the already published Sassoon.
Sequels :
Eye in the
door /
The ghost road |
