Regeneration

Regeneration by Pat Barker is the story of the effects of war on soldiers. It is the first book in a trilogy following the same men from their time under the care of a psychiatrist through the end of World War I. 

In 1917 Siegfried Sassoon, a poet and war hero, refuses to continue serving in the war due to the senseless slaughter. He is classified as mentally unsounds and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland. 

Psychiatrist Dr. William Rivers is in charge of helping a cast of soldiers in various degrees of trauma from the war. He believes in the controversial idea that men should talk about the things that happened to them instead of pushing down their feelings. 

Based on actual people, Barker has created the story of what war does to the people who fight it. She challenges the relationship between doctor and patient, between classes, between men and women, and between men and men. 

This book should be required reading. 

Book two is The Eye in the Door, and book three The Ghost Road. 

Barker, Pat. (1991). Regeneration. New York: Plume.