The Ghost Road (1995)

The Ghost Road is a war novel unlike many others. Set in England and France at the end of World War I, it borrows the viewpoints of the often overlooked: men being treated for mental illness. One of these is bisexual; homosexuality was considered both an illness and a crime at the time.

In a style similar to Tim O'Brien's in its thoughtfulness and attention to detail, Barker explores the aftereffects of war with compassion, but not sentiment. One of her most interesting methods is the flashbacks of Dr. Rivers. An anthropologist turned psychologist, Rivers intersperses narration about treating current trauma cases with memories of his research in Melanesia. There, he studied a tribe that was dying out because their warlike way of life was being suppressed; in the present, he treats men going mad due to their tribe’s latest war. The parallels allow the reader to compare both cultures from a more objective point of view.

The Ghost Road is a quick but moving read that reminds us that we take our neuroses and our passions everywhere, even to war. Perhaps even especially to war.
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This entire trilogy was perfect. I can't recommend them enough. Such a sense of time and place. Touching. Devastating. Just incredible. ( )

These books are so good

Está ambientada en los últimos meses de la Primera Guerra Mundial., cuando millones de hombres que participan en una brutal guerra de trincheras ya no son mas que fantasmas en ciernes. ( )

In many ways The Ghost Road feels like a rewrite of the second book in the trilogy ‘[The Eye in the Door]’ but Barker has done a better job this time. The first book in the trilogy [Regeneration] broke new ground with its historical fiction perspective of the story of the two most famous world war one poets sojourn at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh. Here Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen among others were helped to overcome their war neuroses by Dr Rivers talking cure. This concentration on historical figures was augmented in the second novel by the introduction of Billy Prior a fictional character, who also becomes one of Dr River’s patients. The Ghost Road continues with the story of Billy Prior as he is passed fit for service and is sent back to the front line for the final months and days before the end of the war, taking his place in the same regiment as Wilfred Owen who we know was killed in action one week before the armistice was signed.

As the trilogy has evolved Barker’s writing has become less cognitive until in this third book we are presented with a rip roaring story of soldiers trying to survive in the trenches and doctors who are trying to heal impossible mental and physical wounds. There is enough fairly graphic sex to keep readers interested at the expense of theories concerning the efficacy of Dr River’s methods of treatment. Perhaps that is why it was this novel that was selected by the Booker prize panel in 1995. If a dumbing down of the content has taken place (in order to win the Booker prize?) then it has also improved the readability of the novel and by concentrating on more conventional story telling it is my opinion that Barker has written a better novel. It was E M Forster in Aspects of the novel who maintained that authors should concentrate on the story, the people, the plot, pattern and rhythm and in Ghost Road Barker seems to have done just that. Her characters are more fully developed, for the first time we are given a back story of Dr Rivers and his work as an anthropologist on the Torres Straits expedition linking his experiences there with his approaches to treatment of the wounded men of the Great War. Billy Prior is given a more human characterisation with his courtship and engagement to Sarah; a working class girl from the north. The plot of the novel follows the course of one of the final conflicts of the war where Barker’s description of events is both real and enhances her theme of the futility and loss of life. There is pattern and rhythm provided by the different story strands told in alternating sections for example Dr Rivers adventures amongst the headhunters, his work in the hospital, the story of Billy Priors courtship and then his final tour of duty, these strands crescendo nicely to provide an excellent climax to the novel.

Barker also creates the idea of two or perhaps three different worlds existing at the same time for these junior officers caught up in the war. There are the obvious differences of the army and the battlefield and life in England when the soldiers are on leave, but there is also another world, the world of Dr River’s hospital. Barkers comparing and contrasting bring out the themes of her book: the call to duty, the futility of war, sexuality both homo and hetero, class, survival and the destruction of ordinary lives. I read Regeneration a few years ago and have just recently picked up the final two books of the series and while I was fascinated by the first book and its attempts to portray the poet heroes of the war, I found the second book badly balanced and sort of stuck in no mans land, however I thoroughly enjoyed The Ghost Road and so 4.5 stars. ( )