Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?

[sovay]

Claude Choules, last known combat veteran of the first world war.

I finished reading Pat Barker's The Ghost Road (1995) yesterday. It is less of a novel than its predecessors, Regeneration (1991) and The Eye in the Door (1993); what it is, it becomes clear only in the last few pages, is a ritual, a sending-on, an exorcism. There was a need for it. I was reading about events still tied by memory to the living world.

They have gone on now.

Comments

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

I loved Pat Barker's trilogy, even (or perhaps especially) when it was grim going. I read it in 2004, when our present wars were new, and it resonated with me so much.

[sovay]

I read it in 2004, when our present wars were new, and it resonated with me so much.

I had never heard of the books before the last week in April, when I found Regeneration on the used-book table that sometimes appears across the street from Burdick's. I loved it instantly. I loved The Eye in the Door. I am not sure I can love The Ghost Road, but it deserves its Booker. They were books I didn't know I needed. I am going to try Union Street next, and maybe Border Crossing or Life Class, but her other novels will have to be preternatural to displace them.