Lisa's Reviews > Regeneration

My experience with this World War I trilogy is bumpy, to say the least.

Starting by reading The Ghost Road without knowing it was the last in the series, I was not impressed. I have difficulties with historical fiction which mixes fictional characters with historical persons in a speculative interpretation of history. But considering the unfairness of judging a series after reading only the conclusion, I now embarked on the first one. Thus I find myself doing what Carol Ann Duffy did with the most famous Wilfred Owen poem: spinning history backwards.

The Last Post, by Carol Ann Duffy:

"In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking droning.
If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin
that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud...
but you get up amazed, watch bled bad blood
run upwards from the slime into its wounds;
see lines and lines of British boys rewind
back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home -
mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers
not entering the story now
to die and die and die
Dulce - No - Decorum - No - Pro patria mori
You walk away.
You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)
like all your mates do too -
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Bert -
and light a cigarette.
There's coffee in the square,
warm French bread
and all those thousands dead
are shaking dried mud from their hair
and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.
You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children talent, English beer, good food.
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.
If poetry could truly write it backwards,
then it would."

The problem is that it is not possible, really. History can't be unwritten, or rewritten.

And my issue with the third, Booker winning part of the series is accentuated and deepened by reading the first volume: I don't like this kind of historical fiction, and my dislike grows deeper with every novel I try. I prefer reading the authors who experienced the time themselves, thus giving authentic testimony, OR historians who keep to objective documentation, analysing the primary and secondary sources in their complexity and completeness, rather than through the lens of a biased fictional character, mingling with historical persons.

A mix of those two approaches is not for me.

So that leaves the question open: should I skip the middle? Having started with the end, then reluctantly moved backwards to the start, is it worthwhile to work my way through the action of the second in order to close the circle?

Or should I leave it wide open and read more Sassoon firsthand instead? The Poems Of Wilfred Owen, in the forwards direction, that is, I know almost by heart.

"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."