Pages: 252
Finished: February 18
I suppose you could place this book in a similar category as Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, for I was certainly reminded of that many times throughout the novel, but only in the consistant antiwar message of the novels, and the medical jargon used.
This novel explores the experiences of antiwar poet Siegfried Sassoon during the time when he was forced into a mental hospital rather than simply being court martialed for writing a declaration that the war "has become a war of aggression and conquest" rather than "a war of defense and liberation." He is declared insane and sent to a hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he becomes a patient of Dr. William Rivers. While a patient there, he meets Wilfred Owen, who obviously worships Sassoon. I did like that the novel is told from several points of view, including Sassoon and Dr. Rivers.
Although well researched and very accurate of the times, I was at many different moments appalled at the techniques and opinions of the day. The idea of masculinity and duty and honor, and the stiff upper lip of Britain, in the face of such torturous experiences as those faced by the men who fought in the trenches made me feel a great deal of pity for these men, and the men who were trained to make them better and send them back to the place that broke them in the first place.
An interesting insight that Dr. Rivers had about the officers who were under his care and their relationships with the men in their command:
Rivers had often been touched by the way in which young men, some of them not yet twenty, spoke about feeling like fathers to their men. THough when you looked at what they did. Worrying about socks, boots, blisters, food, hot drinks. And that perpetually harried expression of theirs. Rivers had only ever seen that look in one other place: on the faces of women who were bringing up large famillies on very low incomes...It was the look of people who are totally responsible for lives they have no power to save.
I also enjoyed this quote by Ruth Head when Rivers is staying with she and her husband. Rivers is asking her advice about something, as well as the advice of her husband, a fellow psychiatrist,
"Is that what Henry thinks?"
Ruth laughed. "Of course not. You want perception, you go to a novelist, not a psychiatrist" (164).
I agree whole-heartedly that a novelist has greater insight into the human psyche than a psychiatrist, or at least the best novelists are also keenly aware of human interactions and motivations.
Since the book was supposedly about Sassoon, I don't feel that it did enough of a job focusing on his life and experiences; more than half the book was about Rivers, and most of the book was from Rivers' point of view. I also felt that the relationship between Owen and Sassoon was not focused upon hardly at all. I would have liked to see more from Sassoon's point of view about how he was inspired to write his poems, and the influence that he had upon Owen. I also would have liked for Sassoon's sexual proclivities and his relationships with Graves to have been more on the surface of things. Having the relationship so much an undercurrent rather than anything open made Graves' later announcement against it fall very flat. I understand the time didn't think much of homosexuality, and that the British are very reserved about romantic situations, but comparing their relationship to the relationship of one of the other patients at the hospital just makes it seem even more heartless.
I liked the book, but I can't say that I loved them. I'll probably read the other two books in the series: The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road. My hope is that perhaps the other two books in the series will focus more on the poet and less on the psychology.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
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