viktorcello's Full Review: Pat Barker - The Ghost Road
This novel is a compelling WWI novel told from the viewpoint of two main characters--one works as a psychologist at a war hospital (his name is William Rivers and is based on an actual psychologist of the time), the other is Billy Prior, his patient. After suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (shell shock), Billy insists that he wants to return to the front lines of WWI. Rivers consents to let him go, but warns him of the possible danger to his mental health.
Billy is an extremely complicated character, full of conflicting drives and desires. On the one hand, he gets pleasure from sexually humiliating other men, and on the other hand, he has a passionate and caring sex life with his fiancee. He at once feels compassion for his troops as they struggle to not panic when they have to put on their gas masks, but he also secretly wishes to engage in what he knows are inappropriate sexual relations with them. The opposite forces that seem to constantly wear on Billy is one of the most interesting things to follow throughout the book. On the one hand, it is obvious that he must still be mentally or emotionally disturbed, but on the other, he makes consciously wise and careful judgements and choices.
Rivers' character is equally entertaining and interesting. Readers are invited into his thought process as he treats and reflects on the treatment of his patients. Also interesting is his retelling (through a influenza-induced series of dream sequences) his experience as an anthropologist on Eddystone Island, a place occupied by people who are wildly culturally different than him and who teach him lasting lessons about all manner of things--especially love and death (which are not, as he finds, exactly mutually exclusive)...
There is so much depth in this book that even beginning to analyze the meanings of the title "The Ghost Road" could take quite a long time. Ghosts are portrayed in the novel in many different ways and as meaning many different things to each person. Perhaps the most important thing that can be taken immediately from the novel is the wonder of its complexity and because of that, the injustice that this review of it gives it.
I absolutely recommend this novel for interesting deep and also surprisingly easy, reading.
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