[In the following review, Smith lauds Barker's portrayal of World War I in her Regeneration Trilogy.]

Only a handful of men survive who fought in the first world war, but it retains its fascination for new generations; in no war before or since were so many young men conscripted to die. Pat Barker's three books [Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road] are fiction with some historical characters, including the neurologist W. H. R. Rivers and the war poets Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and Robert Owen. The books examine the conflicting emotions of soldiers who developed psychological disturbances—shell shock—after their experiences in the trenches. Rivers had no doubt that it was his duty to treat their nightmares and their hysterical muteness or paralysis and so get them fit to return to duty. The origin of the books lies in the conversations between Rivers and Sassoon, who was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital for psychological assessment after he had protested about the continuation of the war.

At one level, then, the books offer a serious discussion of themes including the soldier's mental reaction to war and the ethics of pacifism, but Pat Barker also provides a strong narrative drive centred on the fictional working class officer Billy Prior, sexually omnivorous, contemptuous of the class structure, and determined to see the war through to the end. She describes the fighting in the mud of the western front and the frenetic search for pleasure at home by soldiers, munition workers, and their families.

Rivers's compassionate approach to his shell-shocked patients is contrasted with the brutal treatments used by Lewis Yealland, the author of Hysterical Disorders of Warfare. The psychological consequences of prolonged stress were not properly understood until after the war, when Lord Moran explained in The Anatomy of Courage that repeated demands on bravery would eventually exhaust the reserves of virtually every combatant. The unique and chilling feature of the first world war was the obstinate refusal by the high commands on both sides to acknowledge that the way they were fighting was sending men to their deaths in vast numbers （100,000 deaths a month in the British army during the battle of the Somme） with no hope of success. As the futility of their impending deaths became ever more obvious to the soldiers at the front some looked for ways to get out alive but most cursed and continued, not wanting to let down their mates. The survivors never forgave the system which had claimed the right to take so many lives.

The war poets who wrote about their experiences were able to channel their anger and frustration into their poetry. They were able to tackle the central conflict between the patriotism felt by so many people in and out of the army and the indignation at the way this emotion was being exploited. Barker draws all these themes together, switching from intellectual discussions to earthy entertainment, and paints an unforgettable picture of a society that must seem unbelievable to most of her readers.