Eye in the Door [Library Binding]

Pat Barker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1995

London, 1918. Billy Prior is working for Intelligence in the Ministry of Munitions. But his private encounters with women and men - pacifists, objectors, homosexuals - conflict with his duties as a soldier, and it is not long before his sense of himself fragments and breaks down. Forced to consult the man who helped him before - army psychiatrist William Rivers - Prior must confront his inability to be the dutiful soldier his superiors wish him to be. "The Eye in the Door" is a heart-rending study of the contradictions of war and of those forced to live through it. This is the second book in the "Regeneration" trilogy.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Eye in the Door is the second installation of Pat Barker's acclaimed and haunting historical fiction trilogy about British soldiers traumatized by World War I trench warfare and the methods used by psychiatrist William Rivers to treat them. As with the other two, the book was recognized with awards, winning the 1993 Guardian Fiction Prize. Here, Lieutenant Billy Prior is tormented by figuring out which side of several coins does he live -- coward or hero, crazy or sane, homosexual or heterosexual, upper class or lower. He represents the upheaval in Britain during the war and the severe trauma felt by its soldiers. The writing is sparse yet multilayered; Barker uses the lives of a few to capture an entire society during a tumultuous period. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

From the author of Regeneration comes the story of British society's struggles during WWI.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Library Binding: 280 pages
• Publisher: San Val (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1417714689
• ISBN-13: 978-1417714681
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,995,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a strip of empathic wallpaper, November 22, 2000

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Eye in the Door (Paperback)

If "Regeneration" were to be considered the story of Dr. Rivers and his patient Siegfried Sassoon, "The Eye In The Door" might be said to be the story of the same doctor and another patient, Mr. Billy Prior. I also would say that the opening comment is an oversimplification. The first two volumes of this trilogy are amazingly rich in detail and personality, and part three, "The Ghost Road", is proving to be no different.

The title of this review is a quote expressed by Prior early in his treatment with Dr. Rivers. It describes a fictional character, but it also demonstrates Pat Barker's brilliant use of words. She has the ability to transform a cliché, to make it fresh, her own, as when she speaks through a female character, "In her world, men loved women as the fox loves the hare. And women loved men as the tapeworm loves the gut." A bit more thought provoking than, men are from Mars, women from Venus.

Mr. Prior becomes an amalgam for many, and perhaps most of the issues the first two books explore. He also through his complex of issues, greatly affects Dr. Rivers. The Doctor cannot maintain complete detachment; one scene even has them switching roles, with Prior drilling into the painful childhood of his advisor. The relationship between Rivers and Prior becomes so psychologically intense, the doctor finds himself dreaming the nightmares "of others". He starts to identify with a critical event that may have damaged Prior as a child. The timing and location of their respective young fears is amazingly similar.

Ms. Barker seems to use the doctor as a metaphor for his patients and their collective experiences. Prior has more going on within his world than anyone could be expected to cope with and remain sane. Prior exists in many states, almost all of which are in impossible contradiction. His mental state eventually reaches a point where his mind makes a severe adjustment in an attempt to cope. With him Ms. Barker has created one of the more complex characters in fiction.

Prior is a decorated soldier who returns to the War four times. Prior is a man whose childhood friends are pacifists. He meets with several and contrary to his duty as a soldier does not turn them in. He tries to have one objector released from jail, the justification is perjured testimony, the truth is quite different.

This installment takes place during the trial when Lord Alfred Douglas made his famous statement in court, that Robert Ross a friend of Oscar Wilde, was "the leader of all the sodomites in London". This too was the time of the black book with 47,000 names of "degenerates" that were "causing" the War to turn against England.

In the midst of all of this, Prior is working for the Government, he is a soldier, he empathizes with pacifist friends, helping them while denouncing their philosophy. He is a bisexual male who also is engaged to marry. His relationships with men do not abate when he decides to wed. He has been wounded and sent back to fight, he has been treated for shellshock and has been sent back to fight, and he is an asthmatic who is sent to fight in the gas of Flanders, twice.

This is one patient amongst many Dr. Rivers has and continues to treat. He has begun to suffer in ways that were once the purview of his patients. His feelings about the War do not change; at least he believes they do not. And guilt becomes a catalyst for his own terrors and nightmares.

And to make sure the reader is kept working, Ms. Barker brings back Siegfried Sassoon, a new version of him perhaps, but extremely interesting as well.

The small number of reviews surprised me for so acclaimed a work. My thought is that some material, while important to the story, is just too graphic for some readers. Ms. Barker holds nothing back when describing the horror of War, so it would have been inconsistent to back off on issues or actions that are potentially contentious for some. As I said in my review of the first book, I make no judgment on the subjects or readers. I believe the writer wanted to bring the full force of all aspects of her work to the reader, and for that I believe her courage is to be admired. She does not vary the intensity to the sensibilities of what may be an issue for some, she writes her books, as she needs to tell her story, she is a gutsy lady.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So very powerfu and intense, May 22, 2001

By 

"janmcalex" (Humboldt, TN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Eye in the Door (Paperback)

I really believe that the most difficult task of any writer would be to write a historical novel, particularly one set during war years, that is fresh and void of cliche. In this regard, Pat Barker is truly amazing. Both "Regneration" and "The Eye in the Door" offer fresh voice and lack sentimentality..."Regeneration" and "The Eye in the Door" are intense and searchingly deep. Barker has written about psychological problems in terms a layman can grasp. She has written passionately of a war often over-shadowed by successive wars and of the pain and fear more comfortably white-washed by patriotism.

These books will engender fresh compassion for those veterans who have bravely fought wars abroad, witnessing and suffering untold horrors and for those who bravely fought at home by questioning the sanity of what politics demanded and were branded cowards for their beliefs.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Historical novel: universal, timeless truth and illusion, July 19, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Eye in the Door (Paperback)

I have read Regeneration, Ghost Road and The Eye in the Door. I was struck by the passages in The Eye which described the process of regeneration. Learning to discern the source of pain, emotional or physical, and dealing with it consciously or through our dreams, are deeper lessons to be found in these historical novels. Integrating cerebral and emotional responses is a endeavor that we should each pursue. This fiction does in fact provide the reader, along with Dr. Rivers, with a vocabulary to address our duality whether it be in the context of World Was I or Vietnam or our daily efforts to understand our deepest motivations, stimulii, responses and perceptions of life. Ironically, I was reading Estes' Women who run with the Wolves at the same time I was enjoying these novels. The novels by Pat Barker illustrated the concept of Descanos, marking our "deaths" and failures which halt our lives unexpectedly. Acceptance, integration and forgiveness are the ultimate goals once the source of our pain is identified. By understanding the lessons that Barker teaches in her novels, I understand that although the world may be falling to pieces outwardly, we can heal ourselves with the assistance of our patient teachers by looking calmly at the situation that causes us rage and sorrow, projecting ourselves into the future, and from that vantage point deciding what would make us feel proud of our past behavior, and then acting that way. Learn about our darker sides. Barker's historical approach illuminates our universal truths and illusions because in a broad sense the emotional and physical problems of Dr. Rivers and his patients are our problems today. Jennifer Stuller Nehrbas