I taught this book to English Literature students at A Level - so it's very difficult for me to think of this as a book I necessarily 'enjoy'. I'm constantly thinking of different ways to teach it when I read parts of it! However, saying that, this is an interesting journey into the fictionalised minds of men who were directly and indirectly affected by the 1st World War.

So I started book this year's ago during AS Level English and though I never finished it...I decided I wanted to one day.

I finally found a copy recently in a charity shop and added it to my TBR.

This was a book I enjoyed but some of the last few chapters felt pointless and were hard to get through. I did however find the book and subject matter interesting. And even amongst the seriousness and horror there were some amusing lines.

I may one day finish this trilogy depending on how I feel in the future.

Impressive in how its sprawling themes of masculinity and class, among others, develop almost undetected beneath the simplicity of well-drawn character beats. Don't know why I put off picking this up for so long but I'll be romping through the rest of the trilogy much quicker.

Through one sleepless night, I read this. An intensely intimate, spare and gripping novel about the asylum at Craiglockhart in Edinburgh, where soldiers suffering shellshock and other psychological problems were sent during the First World War. Here, they meet Dr Rivers, an anthropologist and psychiatrist, who tries to help them cope with the trauma of the trenches, and ultimately make them appear sane enough that they can credibly sent back there. Among these patients are Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, who will go on to become celebrated poets. As I have studied their poetry and visited the grounds of Craiglockhart, the world Barker described felt very tangible to me, but it is her skill of writing dialogue that captures the humanity of a person and the things unsaid that makes this book so compelling. In a few words, she makes her characters utterly vivid. Normally, I would avoid the subject of WW1, but had heard so many good things about this book that I decided to try reading it: and I'm glad that I did. Barker doesn't tell me anything I haven't read before about WW1, and trauma is certainly a subject I'm familiar with, but in her portrait of the patients and their doctor, who is growing more and more frayed himself, she evokes a depth of compassion. There are many dilemmas for Dr Rivers, particularly whether it is right to send men back to the Front, and many ethical problems for the reader. This novel seems to prove that witnessing atrocity has its own power: that sitting with someone and listening and letting them be seen and heard gives them back something that atrocity has taken from them. This is not a very hopeful book, but there is solace in the descriptions of slow healing and of the ways in people can find ways to communicate with one another.

I listened to an audiobook version of this book first, but reading the physical book made me appreciate the story more - simply because I had more time to reflect upon the ideas and admire the writing style. Barker deftly makes her case against war not by focusing on the physical violence (although there are instances from war, the therapy session with Yealland is described in more detail), but on the psychological effects. In addition, Rivers is a good substitute for the reader as he realizes how war literally turns society upside-down: creating conditions of helplessness that make men as neurotic as women in peacetime; forcing (old) doctors to heal (young) men so that the latter can resume their self-destructive activities. Are these effects worthwhile when there is no ultimate standard?

Dates: 1-8 March 2014