Pat Barker is an amazing writer. She manages to reach into us and toy with the very essence of our being and spit it back out onto a page. Read this novel if you can find it (i myself just recently bought it in a small town book store in mint condition). I'm not willing to get into the details or spcifics of the novel, but I will tell you that it took awhile to "get into" the book, but once there, i devowered it

If you haven't jumped into a dragon boat yet and paddled, this is a great intro to the sport and history of the greatest team sport for people of all ages and ANY skill level!! The stroke instructions and illustrations are very well put together for the most novice paddler. The history and current status of the sport is also well composed for those who would like to know what the rave is all about! I have certainly enjoyed all the graphics and photos. For those that i have referred this book to--new and experience paddlers as well as sport enthusiasts--have all agreed with its comprehensive introduction to the sport that has been growing and growing in the USA. Paddles up!!

Pat Barker's magnificent trilogy is not only a profound contribution to our literature on the First World War - it is also one of the most distinguished works of contemporary fiction in any genre. Barker doesn't skirt around the central issues with a po-faced patriotic reverence, but rather tackles them head on: the agonizing contradictions of patriotism and protest; the politics of social and self-surveillance; the homoerotic undertones of trench camaraderie, especially among the war poets; the horrendous physical and psychological costs of war; and the sense of personal duty which drives us, nonetheless, to fight. These are big themes, but Barker's talent is to handle them in a way which makes her novels feel like an easy read. They are accessible, engaging, seemingly simplistic in their style - but in the end profoundly moving in a way which only the highest literature aspires to be. The trick is that she makes her characters so real for us - Prior and Rivers, the consistent protagonists, are completely human. She makes us experience a world-historical incident on a very human scale. Harrowing, intelligent, moving and funny, Barker has crafted a fictional epic that will stay with you forever. Walking through Sydney's Central railway station months after finishing these books, I came across the honour boards listing the hundreds of railway men and women who died in the Great War. Barker's books made the war real for me, made these lives - these deaths - real. If they do nothing more than that for you, they've succeeded.

This is #2 of the Pat Barker trilogy about World War I, and this second book is as important as anything you're going to read about war in this challenging season (fall '01). She looks at the inner workings of fear, prejudice and scapegoating -- in the case of WWI Britain, homosexuals and pacificists. Scapegoating is alive and well in America right now, as we look for someone to blame, or someone on whom to take out our tensions. All too often it looks like the "someone" is a fellow American with whom we disagree. Read this book, for a deeper understanding of the stresses and strains of war -- on soldiers, yes, but also on us all.

I really believe that the most difficult task of any writer would be to write a historical novel, particularly one set during war years, that is fresh and void of cliche. In this regard, Pat Barker is truly amazing. Both "Regneration" and "The Eye in the Door" offer fresh voice and lack sentimentality..."Regeneration" and "The Eye in the Door" are intense and searchingly deep. Barker has written about psychological problems in terms a layman can grasp. She has written passionately of a war often over-shadowed by successive wars and of the pain and fear more comfortably white-washed by patriotism.

These books will engender fresh compassion for those veterans who have bravely fought wars abroad, witnessing and suffering untold horrors and for those who bravely fought at home by questioning the sanity of what politics demanded and were branded cowards for their beliefs.

a slim paperback from pat barker. tightly written with believeable dialogue. it describes the yorkshire ripper crimes from the perspective of the women most affected, those working as prostitutes in the north of england. anyone familiar with this series of crimes will remember the shadow it cast over these english cities and the women who lived in them. pat barker's women jump off the page as genuine. her descriptions of domestic life could almost be described as lyrical if it wasn't for the tautness of her prose. the chapter written from the offenders point of view is perhaps the weakest part of what is a very strong short book. tight. succinct. probably a lesson in there for modern writers who often seem to use too many words to say too little. worth reading not only for the suspense in the plot but especially for the beauty and directness of the writing itself.

Ms. Pat Barker is a wonderful writer. I have read and enjoyed almost all her work, and while the tone is rarely joyous, nothing prepares you for, "Blow Your House Down". By saying difficult I do not mean complex, rather uncomfortable. The degrading world that she portrays makes Dickensian England appear to be family entertainment.

The story is generally about women who are prostitutes, generally not by choice or to feed an addiction. Most are Mothers paying the bills after the men have finished their abuse and left. Specifically the story centers on a time when a serial killer of prostitutes is at large. This is not a lengthy book and it is not filled with dozens of murders. However, once during the book Ms. Barker portrays a murder and its aftermath in a manner so shocking I put the book down before continuing.

The guts this writer has are amazing. There is nothing stylized, clever or fascinating about this crime. She serves up the act of murder in as disturbing a manner as I have ever read. It is raw and graphic, and totally appropriate, but it is brutal reading. This is not TV nonsense; there is nothing to soften her story. It is about as razor edged as it could be. I honestly cannot imagine it being more coldly depicted.

The writer is not heartless, the book is also full of friendships and compassion, however the two do not mix, and she does not give the reader or her characters a break. There is no pause, no rest, no easing of the tremendous pressure even at the book's end. Ms. Barker writes brilliantly and if you can take her unadorned view of reality you will have a reading experience you will not soon forget.

In 1917, Siegfried Sassoon threw his Military Cross into the Mersey River and published his "Soldier's Declaration" against the conduct of the war in France. Being a gentleman and an officer, Sassoon, instead of being clapped in irons, was sent to Craiglockhart Military Hospital, where he became the charge of Captain William Rivers, an anthropologist-turned-psychiatrist whose job it was to "cure" shell-shocked officers so that they could go back to the front lines.

This much is historical truth. Although that's a good place to start, the true achievement of Pat Barker's excellent "Regeneration" is the manner in which she invests these historical personages with vivid life and engaging personalities; particularly engaging is the evolution of the relationship between Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, who thanks in part to Sassoon's mentoring became perhaps the greatest of the war poets.

There are more stories in "Regeneration" than just that of Sassoon, however; Prior, who becomes mute after picking a human eye out of the ruins of a trench, or Burns, who can't eat after having inadvertently ingested human flesh in the trenches. Rivers, the center of Barker's trilogy, is also the common bond with these casualties of war. A profoundly humane man faced with the task of making war-shattered men whole enough to face the Front again, Rivers finds himself in a moral dilemma as deep and complex as Sassoon's- the constant need for experienced, "sane" soldiers who can withstand the pressure of the war, weighed against his recognition that their insanity is the logical response to the horror that was World War I.

Having just finished Paul Fussell's "cultural essay" on WWI called "The Great War and Modern Memory", I found myself compelled to read this fictionalized account of one of the main figures in Fussell's book, Siegfried Sassoon.

The historical background helped me enjoy this book tremendously, but it shouldn't take anyone long to be drawn into this compelling story about a doctor who is trying to "help" shell-shock victims recover so they can be sent back to the front. The characters are rich, the dialog is sharp, and the plot is riveting. Even the pacing, which I was afraid would drag at times, was excellent. Interestingly, the Sassoon story is only a thread that goes through the book; Barker populates the book with several touching stories and characters, some who become more important to the reader than Sassoon.

I dare you to read this book and not come away with a deeper compassion and sympathy for the soldiers of WWI.

It is not often that you find a book that actually makes you sit up and think about the message being conveyed by the author.

This really is a superb book in terms of the character creation and background description to the lives of the young soldiers fighting in the First World War. The relationship between Siegfried Sassoon and Dr. Rivers is an intricate and complex one that is never finally resolved, but both characters are subtly affected by the views of the other.

It is very rare to find a book in a modern literature genre that has a strong and convincing theme. This is one of the first books that I have read since William Boyd that creates an intriguing atmosphere and I am now embarking on The Eye in the Door which is also an equally excellent read.

Pat Barker, I believe, has emerged as one of the strongest authoresses since Iris Murdoch and Virginia Woolf, and I very much look forward to her future novels.

Pat Barker's magnificent trilogy is not only a profound contribution to our literature on the First World War - it is also one of the most distinguished works of contemporary fiction in any genre. Barker doesn't skirt around the central issues with a po-faced patriotic reverence, but rather tackles them head on: the agonizing contradictions of patriotism and protest; the politics of social and self-surveillance; the homoerotic undertones of trench camaraderie, especially among the war poets; the horrendous physical and psychological costs of war; and the sense of personal duty which drives us, nonetheless, to fight. These are big themes, but Barker's talent is to handle them in a way which makes her novels feel like an easy read. They are accessible, engaging, seemingly simplistic in their style - but in the end profoundly moving in a way which only the highest literature aspires to be. The trick is that she makes her characters so real for us - Prior and Rivers, the consistent protagonists, are completely human. She makes us experience a world-historical incident on a very human scale. Harrowing, intelligent, moving and funny, Barker has crafted a fictional epic that will stay with you forever. Walking through Sydney's Central railway station months after finishing these books, I came across the honour boards listing the hundreds of railway men and women who died in the Great War. Barker's books made the war real for me, made these lives - these deaths - real. If they do nothing more than that for you, they've succeeded.

Pat Barker's trilogy, "Regeneration, "The Eye in the Door," and "The Ghost Road," was like reading a gathering storm. The first two novels essentially set the stage for me for her Booker Prize-winning "The Ghost Road." There the two most powerful characters in the trilogy, Dr. William Rivers, and Lt. Billy Prior, seized me by the brain and would not let go until the final page of the novel, a profound and powerful elegy to the senselessness of war, and to World War I in particular. All three novels, spare and trenchant, make a nifty read on the bus--which is where I enjoyed them going back and forth to work.

Although "Regeneration" is my favorite of Pat Barker's World War I trilogy, I thought "The Ghost Road" was a brilliant and tragic ending. The novel takes us to the final days of World War I, where we witness the tragic fate of Billy Prior, the working-class anti-hero of the trilogy. Interspersed with his experiences in France we also join the psychiatrist, Dr. Rivers. Rivers deals with his unpleasant duty of preparing men to return to battle as he remembers his anthropological work in the Melanesian islands, amongst the members of a culture that was slowly dying out.

Barker's restrained style is extremely moving -- far more so than the florid prose of Sebastian Faulks' World War I novel "Birdsong." Every time I've read this novel, I've been moved to tears.

P.S. The reader from South Africa who was so incensed at Ms. Barker's "factual inaccuracies" might want to check again: There were indeed air raids over England in World War I -- they were carried out by the infamous Zeppelins! Also, Dr. Rivers was living amongst the head-hunters of Melanesia in the Pacific (probably Borneo or thereabouts) NOT Africa.

Having just finished reading this trilogy in one volume I would find it hard to read any of the books individually. Barker really builds on characterisation and plot as each of the stories progresses. Set in Scotland during World War 1 at Craiglockhart (an institution for miltary personnel suffering from shellshock) in `Regeneration', and moving first to England (`The Eye In The Door') and then to the front in France ('The Ghost Road') this is an excellent look at the impact of that war upon the individual. The series is based on historical meetings between W.H. Rivers (anthropologist, psychologist and childhood acquaintance of Lewis Carroll), Siegfried Sassoon (British poet) and Wilfred Owen (poet, killed shortly before the end of the war in 1918) and comes complete with historical notes at the end of each volume and further recommended reading about the people involved.

Barker is a fascinating writer with an obvious interest in the way that the human mind works, and particularly how it reacts to trauma. Some of the descriptions of the breakdowns that individuals suffer, and the incidents that cause them, are horrific and make this (at least in my mind) anti-war literature. Having said that, each of the major characters, both real and fictional, possess a longing to be part of the war even though some have already experienced the horror of being there. I was constantly trying to reassess my own viewpoints in the light of such responses.

The only real disappointment I felt concerned some of the more graphic descriptions of sex (both homosexual and heterosexual) which illustrated characters responses to events, but occasionally struck me as gratuitous in their detail. Having said that, if you are interested in reading `The Ghost Road' because of it's status as a Booker Prize winner, then I definitely recommend reading it in this format, with the other books in the series.

This guide has enhanced my teaching of _Regeneration_ no end. And I feel confident in recommending it to my students. Even if they only read the first short chapter, about Barker's background and upbringing, I've found that it helps a great deal in putting this novel into context. I also like the links to useful websites provided at the back of the book (note to the Publisher: a couple of these no longer work properly).

I'd like to thank Ms Westman for producing this book. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has found it this helpful.

As a big fan of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, I couldn't wait to finally sit down and read her latest. I was disappointed. Granted, this is a very different sort of book from the previous three - set in contemporary time, dealing with more contemporary (though certainly universal) issues. It just didn't resonate with me. The central story -- one man dealing with his grandfather's illness and the ghosts that haunt his grandfather's past -- is quite compelling,and their final scenes together are very poignant. But what do we make of the history of the Fanshawe family ... and the rather alarming painting that is discovered while the current residents of the Fanshawe house are stripping paint in the living room? It seems the Fanshawe's are supposed to parallel the lives of the novel's central protagonists. But then the issue is dropped and doesn't pop up again until the novel's final page.

Barker is a master of nuance and of getting into the heads of her characters and making them real to her readers. On this level, she does not disappoint. But the book as a whole is a rather minor affair and doesn't pack much of an impact.

Certainly not bad, but not great either.

I look forward to her next...

I went through phases while reading this novel. The first 50 pages or so seemed awfully slow in moving along, but by page 100 I thought it would be brilliant (when they discover the drawing below the wallpaper). But then, Parker seems to be more involved in Geordie's passing (and fascinated by Geordie's shriveled genitals) and abandons the Fanshawe family story, and abandons Gareth's revolt story, and abandons Miranda's lonely musings. These never became resolved to satisfaction in my mind.

Barker has gifted narration skills and she has some excellent ideas started in this novel, but that's all that I can say that is good about it. I haven't read any of her other novels so I can't compare her other work to this one.

Oh, well, I'm not complaining. I'm just moving on. For you: read it if you want, or move on, too.

Barker might have entitled this novel Still Another World, so many overlapping worlds does she present here. On the surface it is the story of Nick and the complex life he now shares with his second wife and new son, his ex-wife and daughter, and his strange stepson. It is the story, too, of the Fanshawe family, a much earlier, and also troubled, family that once inhabited the house Nick is now restoring.

But it is especially the story of Geordie, Nick's 101-year-old grandfather and the worlds he has known, including the world of war. Although Nick learned as a child that "You had to be two people, one in each world [of family and of school]," he has always believed that his grandfather "never changed; belonged to only one world." Now that Geordie is dying, however, Nick learns of Geordie's other worlds: his family life, his difficulties after World War I, his marriage, his war nightmares, the haunting death of his brother in battle, and his mother's comment that the wrong son died. And we see the tyranny of memory as Geordie relives his brother Harry's dying moments. Geordie himself says, "I know that what I remember seeing is false. It can't have been like that, and so the one thing I need to remember clearly, I can't ....It's as clear as this hand...only it's wrong."

These vividly depicted battles, real and symbolic, all raise questions of responsibility and blame as each character assesses the accuracy of his own memory. Even the supernatural is evoked, peripherally, as characters consider whether they have really seen what they think they have seen. As Nick gains knowledge through his time spent with Geordie, he recalls their visit to the "ageless graves" of Thiepval, which keep perpetually alive the traumas of a terrible war, and he recognizes the contrast to the graves of the tiny churchyard in which Geordie will lie, with names hidden by moss, old mourners dead and forgotten, and gently decaying stones. And he and the reader recognize that "there's wisdom too in this."

Barker's tightly constructed plots and themes, her vividly drawn characters, her evocation of atmosphere, her deft use of settings to enhance the drama, and her ability to communicate new visions, all testify to the brilliance of this novel, one which may, itself, escape the erosions of time and its "obliterating grass."

While psychologist Tom Seymour and his wife were walking alongside the river, trying to find a way to save their marriage, they came across a young man who swallowed a bottle of pills before throwing himself in the water. Barely thinking, Tom dived in to save the man. He later realises that he knows the man he saved as Danny Miller. In fact, it was his expert testimony that helped to convict Danny, who was 10 years old at the time, of murder.

So, was it fate or coincidence that their paths should cross again in such dramatic circumstances?

It turns out that Danny is very keen to talk to Tom about the crime he was charged and convicted for. He blames Tom for convincing the jury of his guilt. The rest of the book then deals with the circumstances leading up to the murder, what Danny was like as a child and how he dealt with his childhood incarceration.

Ultimately, the truth about the murder is revealed. However, the journey towards this destination is not a particularly eventful one. Apart from Danny's admissions towards the end of the book, there was not a lot that grabbed my attention.

This is an easy, compelling read from start to finish. Engaging characters, take you through the story of a boy murder ( or is he) and that of his psychologist. At the time the author makes one thinks about wider issues, of capacity, morality, and moral responsility. When someone serves time in prison, what is a good outcome, what should we expect from them and from those around them. If these themes sound a little heavy - worry not, Barkers fluent style and ability to keep us guessing, mean that you wont want to put this book down.

A man who committed a murder when only a young boy (Danny) is released from prison and encounters the child psychologist (Tom) whose testimony was crucial in having him convicted. Their ongoing relationship and the events taking place in the child psychologists life form the basis for this novel. What is fascinating about it is the thought processes we hear running through Tom's head as he questions his own previous judgement, not just with Danny but also with Lauren (Tom's wife). Barker has very cleverly not tried to put us inside Danny's head (an altogether difficult exercise, surely?) but allowed us to experience Tom's confusion over the limited information that Danny allows himself to reveal. I was in doubt about how things would end right up to the final page. The author doesn't try to answer all the questions (which obviously proves frustrating for some reviewers), keeping the novel at a managable length, but raises enough to keep me thinking about the issues for a long time. Once I started reading I could hardly put it down.