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Recent reading
Dec. 6th, 2022 08:03 am- Regeneration by Pat Barker, historical fiction set in a hospital for shellshocked soldiers during WWI— Craiglockhart, a real hospital, and featuring some of its real doctors (W.H.R. Rivers) and patients (Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen). In some ways, it feels like three different stories— it's a workplace drama from Rivers' POV; a philosophical novel from Sassoon's, who has been hospitalized instead of court-martialed after publicly decrying the war; and a wartime romance for two original characters, an officer with working-class roots and a local munitions worker— although that implies a lack of cohesion in the book as a whole, which couldn't be further from the truth. Probably the best book I've read this year.
- The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers, which was interesting to re-read after Regeneration, since the physical and psychological impact of WWI on the young men that fought in it is a significant thread— the struggles of a friend of Wimsey's, whose PTSD and physical disability makes it hard to hold a job, is relevant to the plot, but there's also the passing references to men missing an arm or leg, and the generational divide at the titular veterans' club.* Unlike most of my Sayers re-reads this year, I remembered whodunnit (and a major plot twist), which actually made it more fun to read— ( ... )
- Factory Girls by Michelle Gallen, a coming-of-age novel set in mid-'90s Northern Ireland. In the months leading up to the 1994 ceasefire, 18-year-old Maeve spends the summer working at a local factory as she waits for the exam results she hopes will be her ticket out of town.
- The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers, which was interesting to re-read after Regeneration, since the physical and psychological impact of WWI on the young men that fought in it is a significant thread— the struggles of a friend of Wimsey's, whose PTSD and physical disability makes it hard to hold a job, is relevant to the plot, but there's also the passing references to men missing an arm or leg, and the generational divide at the titular veterans' club.* Unlike most of my Sayers re-reads this year, I remembered whodunnit (and a major plot twist), which actually made it more fun to read— ( ... )
- Factory Girls by Michelle Gallen, a coming-of-age novel set in mid-'90s Northern Ireland. In the months leading up to the 1994 ceasefire, 18-year-old Maeve spends the summer working at a local factory as she waits for the exam results she hopes will be her ticket out of town.
