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Ghost Road, The - Pat Barker
Dec 19, 2002 10:50 PM 8403 Views
(Updated Dec 19, 2002 10:50 PM)

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This was a people perishing from the absence of war.


''The Ghost Road'' ends the 3-book cycle written by Pat Barker of her study of World War I, the men who were part of history in the form of Dr. Rivers and Siegfried Sassoon, and some fictional like William Prior. This also marks the book that added The Booker Prize to her list of achievements. This work differs from the first 2 as a good portion consists of the flashbacks of Dr. Rivers. These are experienced while he is suffering from Influenza, and the fever induced memories the illness recalls.


No one comment can summarize his experiences as an Anthropologist living among a tribe that he studied, but the one I mention above does justice, if incomplete. This is an anti war trilogy of books, so to find one of the main players reliving his past while tortured by his present, witnessing his society's destruction by war, as another was destroyed from the lack of it, is interesting counterpoint to say the least.


Like the second volume, Billy Prior lays a prominent role in this final installment as well. He remains an interesting character, but his obsessions, which at time are in conflict, became a bit tiresome. His personal life that once offered a continually more complex and disturbed man began to be repetitive.


Ms. Barker brings her work to a close as late as the 3rd of November in Prior's journal, and implies some of what is read is even later. By resolving some lives, and leaving others to continue to deal with the madness they will never escape, and doing this in the last week of the war, is acutely cruel. It is also appropriate as when the fighting ended on the 11th day of the 11th month at 11 in the morning, the weapons may have stopped, but the damage had only begun.


The War did not end for those who survived, and a second war was to appear in the lifetime of many of those we met. And perhaps that was one of the points she wished to make, nothing was accomplished, millions died, countless numbers who lived were permanently damaged. And the final Treaty Of Versailles ensured it would all happen once again.


Dr. Rivers helped men only to send them back to the cause of their terror. Other soldiers returned to the front to meet what fate had to offer. But futility was the result, for what did Dr. Rivers have to show that he was productive, that he as a Doctor had healed? And how did the patients that were in his charge benefit from his care and the decisions that followed from it.


A tremendous piece of writing.


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