An audio book. Capt Robert Graves (the poet) is trying to prevent Siegfried Sassoon (the poet) being court marshalled by getting him committed as being shell-shocked. Sassoon goes to a mental hospital for evaluation by Dr Rivers. It's a difficult case - Sassoon's won the Military Cross and could return to Cambridge where a job's lined up for him. He's corresponded with Bertrand Russell and has had a declaration read in Parliament.
Rivers' research involved the study of how nerves regenerate after being severed. He (and some of his patients) know about Freud. He knows that his patients think it unmanly to show fear, or display tenderness towards other men. We learn about his and patients' dreams and nightmares. Much of the novel's from Rivers' PoV, though several of his patients have their turn. It's an open hospital, not far from Edinburgh.
Wilfred Owen visits Sassoon. He edits the hospital magazine ("The Hydra") and has bought 5 copies of Sassoon's poetry book, which he asks Sassoon to sign.
There are various forms of repression, all defeated by nightmares. Many characters are repressing fear or homosexuality, finding madness a preferable option. Some patients try to analyse Rivers. Prior, prone to mutism, tells Rivers that his lack of revelation about himself is tantamount to mutism. Prior tries to maintain a relationship with a girl in Edinburgh, but his severe bouts of asthma complicate matters.
Rivers thinks that some patients' behaviour is a sane reaction to terrible experiences, though he suppresses this in his reports. He's given 3 weeks off because of stress. Here's the end of Ch 9 from his PoV - "the war that had promised so much in the way of manly activity had actually delivered feminine passivity and on a scale that their mothers and sisters had scarcely known. No wonder they broke down. In bed he switched off the light and opened the curtains. Rain, silvery in the moonlight, streaked the glass, blurring the vista of tennis courts and trees, gathering at the lower edge of the pane into a long puddle that bulged and overflowed. Somebody on the floor below screamed. Rivers pulled the curtains to and settled down to sleep, wishing not for the first time that he was young enough for France.".
During his break he's offered a tempting job in London. He stays with relatives on a chicken farm, a section packed with symbolism - ("one hen, weaker than the rest, was being picked on by the others. Its chest was bare of feathers and raw where they'd pecked at it. 'I'll have to get that one out and wring its neck,' Charles said. 'Can't you just isolate her then put her back in?' 'No. Once they start they never stop.' They turned and walked back. Mctavish, the farm cat, battered tom, met them at the corner of the yard and preceded them across it. A noticeably morose cat, Mctavish, a defect of temperament Rivers attributed to his being perpetually surrounded by forbidden flesh. He was fond of Mctavish and slipped him titbits from his plate whenever he thought Bertha wasn't looking" ( Bertha's trying to fatten Rivers up). He visits an ex-patient in Alderborough (a section that doesn't really earning its keep). We learn that Rivers' dead father had been a speech therapist. One of his patients had been Dodgson, who'd gone with the Rivers family on a punting trip.
At his new job he witnesses shock treatment. He watches a patient recover the power of speech in one session, the superior doctor using threats bordering on torture and sadism. What will the consequences be? Ex-patients want to stay in touch with Rivers. He writes them letters and visits.
We learn that Rivers had a stutter and was seriously introverted as a young man. After trips to Pacific islands he'd vowed to turn over a new leaf. In fact, only his work at the hospital had gradually brought him out of himself. He thinks that Sassoon is one of the few patients who have influenced him - Rivers begins to think that the war is being unnecessarily prolonged. At the end of the book he writes a report that will send Sassoon back to war.
The concluding "author's notes" help us separate fact and fiction. Sassoon really did suggest the changes to Owen's poem that the novel recounts.
https://gists.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/owen-sassoon-barker-and-me/
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