The Eye in the Door - Pat Barker

You know, Rivers, it's no good encouraging people to know themselves and...face their emotions, because out there they're better off not having any. If people are going to have to kill, they need to be brought up to expect to have to do it. They need to be trained not to care because if you don't...' Siegfried gripped Rivers' hand so tightly that his face clenched with the effort of concealing his pain. 'It's too cruel.'

This is the second book in Barker's Regeneration trilogy. Depicting WWI from unique perspectives, it examines the effects of war on individuals in London society and in mental hospitals. Based on some historical facts, the fiction is gripping and haunting in its gritty details. The author has created intriguing and complex characters. Her use of dialogue is compelling. I like this book every bit as much as the first one of the series.

Central to this series are the mental effects both on individuals and society. In this book we see society striking back against homosexuals, artists, pacifists and others. While Barker's work is fiction, she includes actual events of societal discrimination. Her characters suffer from an increasingly intolerant and mentally unstable society caused by an unimaginably horrible war. Like all great books, this one will leave an impression on the reader. It will cause one to view war with deeper emotions viewing war damages on the people both directly and indirectly involved in its madness.