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A review by willowbiblio
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
5.0
"We are Craiglockhart's success stories. *Look at us*. We don't remember, we don't feel, we don't think- at least not beyond the confines of what's needed to do the job. By any proper civilized standard (but what does *that* mean *now*?) we are objects of horror. But our nerves are completely steady. And we are still alive.
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Wow. To end this trilogy with the death of Prior alongside the conclusion of Rivers' Melanesian plot was so heartbreakingly perfect. In addition, Prior dies in battle while Hallet, the man he saved just a few days earlier, dies in a hospital with Rivers present to translate his final words- "It's not worth it".
Having been thoroughly "cured" of his war neurosis, Prior is sent back to France. He seems the most self-aware version of himself and yet equally self-abasing. We learn that he was sexually abused and trafficked as a child and that is sort of in line with the idea that all "hysteria" stems from childhood trauma.
Although Rivers' tribe has incorporated their spirit/ghost encounters into their most important rituals, it is Prior who is the most connected to the "ghosts" who went before him. We see this with the prostitute before he ships out and the French boy in the woods.
The parallel to the past shows that for the tribes the lack of war will be the undoing of their society, while for Europe and England the devastation of WWI has fundamentally altered theirs and ruined the young men. We understand that Hallet's words are in answer to the question Barker has been asking throughout the trilogy about the war and trauma caused by it.
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Wow. To end this trilogy with the death of Prior alongside the conclusion of Rivers' Melanesian plot was so heartbreakingly perfect. In addition, Prior dies in battle while Hallet, the man he saved just a few days earlier, dies in a hospital with Rivers present to translate his final words- "It's not worth it".
Having been thoroughly "cured" of his war neurosis, Prior is sent back to France. He seems the most self-aware version of himself and yet equally self-abasing. We learn that he was sexually abused and trafficked as a child and that is sort of in line with the idea that all "hysteria" stems from childhood trauma.
Although Rivers' tribe has incorporated their spirit/ghost encounters into their most important rituals, it is Prior who is the most connected to the "ghosts" who went before him. We see this with the prostitute before he ships out and the French boy in the woods.
The parallel to the past shows that for the tribes the lack of war will be the undoing of their society, while for Europe and England the devastation of WWI has fundamentally altered theirs and ruined the young men. We understand that Hallet's words are in answer to the question Barker has been asking throughout the trilogy about the war and trauma caused by it.