The Eye In The Door by Pat Barker
Feb. 11th, 2014 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
London, 1918. Billy Prior is working for Intelligence in the Ministry of Munitions. But his private encounters with women and men – pacifists, objectors, homosexuals – conflict with his duties as a soldier, and it is not long before his sense of himself fragments and breaks down. Forced to consult the man who helped him before – army psychiatrist William Rivers – Prior must confront his inability to be the dutiful soldier his soldiers wish him to be …
The Eye In The Door is a heart-rending study of the contradictions of war and of those forced to live through it.
It’s 1918 and Billy Prior is working for the intelligence unit in the Ministry of Munitions. He’s supposed to catch Conchies who help deserters to flee to Ireland but he’s more interested in overturning the conviction of his former neighbour, Beattie Roper, who’s been sentenced to 10 years in jail for plotting to kill Lloyd George. When the stress of trying to prove it causes him to start losing time (just as he did in France), Prior resumes seeing the army psychiatrist William Rivers and is once more forced to confront truths he doesn’t want to deal with ...
Pat Barker’s sequel to REGENERATION is another deftly written historical novel that again draws on the psychological horrors of World War I but this time combining it with what was happening on the home front, notably drawing on the real life case of Alice Wheeldon (a Suffragette and atheist who was convicted of plotting to murder Lloyd George) and the real Pemberton Billing libel case that alleged there to be 47,000 homosexuals working for Germany to bring down Britain. It’s a beautifully written novel that goes deeper into Prior and Rivers’s psychology and personal history and I thoroughly enjoyed the home front setting, which continues the themes in REGENERATION but gives more of a sense of the conflict within. Like REGENERATION though, I did find some of the characters samey and in building on REGENERATION it also repeats some of the themes although this didn’t affect my enjoyment and I will definitely read the conclusion.
Billy Prior takes central stage, caught between his homosexuality and love for Sarah (who appears in a short scene), his loyalty to his friends and his duty to his country. The explanation for his homosexuality was a little clichéd (albeit it ties in with his class issues as well) but his scenes with Rivers carry the same spark as in REGENERATION. There’s more here to of Rivers and his work before the War and his work now in London’s military hospital. Less successful is Captain Manning, a married man whose friendship with known homosexuals threatens to compromise his own position in the Ministry of War but whose storyline doesn’t really go anywhere.
Ultimately, the sadness and sense of broken men trying to make sense of their world really moved me and I will definitely be reading the conclusion to the trilogy.
The Verdict:
Pat Barker’s sequel to REGENERATION is another deftly written historical novel that again draws on the psychological horrors of World War I but this time combining it with what was happening on the home front, notably drawing on the real life case of Alice Wheeldon (a Suffragette and atheist who was convicted of plotting to murder Lloyd George) and the real Pemberton Billing libel case that alleged there to be 47,000 homosexuals working for Germany to bring down Britain. It’s a beautifully written novel that goes deeper into Prior and Rivers’s psychology and personal history and I thoroughly enjoyed the home front setting, which continues the themes in REGENERATION but gives more of a sense of the conflict within. Like REGENERATION though, I did find some of the characters samey and in building on REGENERATION it also repeats some of the themes although this didn’t affect my enjoyment and I will definitely read the conclusion.
London, 1918. Billy Prior is working for Intelligence in the Ministry of Munitions. But his private encounters with women and men – pacifists, objectors, homosexuals – conflict with his duties as a soldier, and it is not long before his sense of himself fragments and breaks down. Forced to consult the man who helped him before – army psychiatrist William Rivers – Prior must confront his inability to be the dutiful soldier his soldiers wish him to be …
The Eye In The Door is a heart-rending study of the contradictions of war and of those forced to live through it.
It’s 1918 and Billy Prior is working for the intelligence unit in the Ministry of Munitions. He’s supposed to catch Conchies who help deserters to flee to Ireland but he’s more interested in overturning the conviction of his former neighbour, Beattie Roper, who’s been sentenced to 10 years in jail for plotting to kill Lloyd George. When the stress of trying to prove it causes him to start losing time (just as he did in France), Prior resumes seeing the army psychiatrist William Rivers and is once more forced to confront truths he doesn’t want to deal with ...
Pat Barker’s sequel to REGENERATION is another deftly written historical novel that again draws on the psychological horrors of World War I but this time combining it with what was happening on the home front, notably drawing on the real life case of Alice Wheeldon (a Suffragette and atheist who was convicted of plotting to murder Lloyd George) and the real Pemberton Billing libel case that alleged there to be 47,000 homosexuals working for Germany to bring down Britain. It’s a beautifully written novel that goes deeper into Prior and Rivers’s psychology and personal history and I thoroughly enjoyed the home front setting, which continues the themes in REGENERATION but gives more of a sense of the conflict within. Like REGENERATION though, I did find some of the characters samey and in building on REGENERATION it also repeats some of the themes although this didn’t affect my enjoyment and I will definitely read the conclusion.
Billy Prior takes central stage, caught between his homosexuality and love for Sarah (who appears in a short scene), his loyalty to his friends and his duty to his country. The explanation for his homosexuality was a little clichéd (albeit it ties in with his class issues as well) but his scenes with Rivers carry the same spark as in REGENERATION. There’s more here to of Rivers and his work before the War and his work now in London’s military hospital. Less successful is Captain Manning, a married man whose friendship with known homosexuals threatens to compromise his own position in the Ministry of War but whose storyline doesn’t really go anywhere.
Ultimately, the sadness and sense of broken men trying to make sense of their world really moved me and I will definitely be reading the conclusion to the trilogy.
The Verdict:
Pat Barker’s sequel to REGENERATION is another deftly written historical novel that again draws on the psychological horrors of World War I but this time combining it with what was happening on the home front, notably drawing on the real life case of Alice Wheeldon (a Suffragette and atheist who was convicted of plotting to murder Lloyd George) and the real Pemberton Billing libel case that alleged there to be 47,000 homosexuals working for Germany to bring down Britain. It’s a beautifully written novel that goes deeper into Prior and Rivers’s psychology and personal history and I thoroughly enjoyed the home front setting, which continues the themes in REGENERATION but gives more of a sense of the conflict within. Like REGENERATION though, I did find some of the characters samey and in building on REGENERATION it also repeats some of the themes although this didn’t affect my enjoyment and I will definitely read the conclusion.
