A continuation of Regeneration, which I read last summer. This book is more focused on Billy Prior, who was another of the patients at Craiglockhart when Siegfried Sassoon arrived. Prior's working in London for the Ministry of Information, though what exactly he does isn't clear. Here, we mostly see him using his position to visit a childhood friend's mother, now locked up on charges of planning to assassinate Lloyd George.
But Prior's bigger concern is he begins losing time. He's still visiting Rivers, the psychiatrist from the previous book, but there's only so much that guy can do. Especially as Rivers still hasn't resolved the ethical conundrum of sending people back to fight and die in a stupid, pointless war, simply because they don't meet some vague criteria of being unfit.
Sassoon reappears in the back third of the book, having been wounded in France. He still lacks answers to the conflict between believing this war is pointless, yet feeling like he still needs to be there fighting. Barker writes him as a less dynamic force this time, pale and shaken and depressed with himself and his work.
Prior appears to be better off outwardly, but there's the gaps in time, and the realization he's almost split inside his mind to cope with what he went through. Or not cope, perhaps, so much as survive. Prior doesn't miss the fighting, but part of him is ashamed to have found a desk job in England, (even though his asthma's what keeps him there), and part of him resents the people who didn't fight at all. And he knows, to some extent, it's ridiculous to feel as though people might judge him for not being "over there", especially since he was once already, so that gnaws at him.
There's a whole background thread about a man who claims to have a list of 47,000 British citizens who the Krauts lured into homosexuality for the purpose of blackmailing them into undermining England's war effort. It seems in part an example of an absurd mindset. Rather than focus on what's actually happening in the war, the dying, concoct some ridiculous reason why the war isn't over already, that comes with a convenient scapegoat group. It's an easy way to avoid examining anything really going on.
Sassoon is friends with several people on the list, and Prior is picked up by a man who's receiving anonymous notes implying he's on the list. Prior is indifferent to the whole thing. Possibly a class thing, as that comes up a bit, that Prior is not of the "gentleman" class, only temporarily elevated by becoming an officer. So he's not likely considered prominent enough to be on any such list, but Prior also doesn't seem nearly as worried about being caught at it, whether he's with a man or a woman. Which may be related to the reveal Prior was repeatedly sexually assaulted as a child by one of the parish priests, but seems to have been rewarded with entry to a better school later on. I don't know how to fit that in to the larger picture of Prior's hostility towards others and himself, or his attitude towards the fighting or anything else.
Maybe it all comes together in the final book, because this very much feels like the middle section of a larger arc. Nothing's quite resolved for Prior, Sassoon, or Rivers. Sassoon seems to be falling apart, Prior may have confronted one inner demon, but Rivers has a host of them he's not addressing. It's not clear how any of them will go from here.
'And of course there's always the unanswered question. Could you face it? Could you pass the test? But where I think we differ, Billy, is that you think that's a Very Important Question, and I think it's fucking trivial.'
Prior glanced sideways at him. 'No, you don't.'
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