Barker's skill as a writer shows in her ability to take a story in which nothing much really happens on the surface, and still lead you through an excellent read. The story is set in a rehab hospital for shell shock during the last year or so of WW I. Why does it work? It is based on real events - some of the characters are famous people from the time. In the flashbacks of some of the patients there are some scenes of the kind of ugly, senseless violence typical of WW I. There is some sex. She is very good at evoking the feel of the times - society, class relations, models of personal interaction.
While it is largely a critical examination of class and British society during the war period, there are also some interesting bits that go beyond the book.
The book brought to mind "Three Day Road" by Boyden, as a contrast. Rather than a direct social critique, Boyden's book puts the war within the context of the native myth of the man-eating Windigo. This is a critique of western society in a larger or deeper sense, moving beyond social tinkering to questioning the whole underlying modus operandi - a society that eats its own young. This myth-based confrontation can even be extended beyond the specifics of the War to our way of being in general; capitalism as a Windigo model.
The most interesting part for me is when the main character, the head doctor, recounts an experience he has working as an anthropologist in New Guinea. He has been questioning the locals about social and kinship relations, but then they turn the same questions back on him. They are amazed and astounded by his account of European social and kin relationships, find them ridiculously hilarious and absurd. This has the effect of unseating the anthropologist's deep, unconscious culturo-centric attitude of European superiority, of Europe and the West as.."the measure of all things" or something to that effect. This is a profound thought, but on the margins of the book.
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