Amazon used to have a feature where it would generate a list of recommended books for you based on the ratings that you’d given to books you’d already read. At the top of my list was always “Pat Barker.” Pat who? At first I confused her with Pat Conroy. I unconfused myself and jotted the name down for future reference. Eventually, I found the Regeneration trilogy, “The Eye in the Door” first, and the others “Regeneration” and “The Ghost Road” later. These were used bookstore, remainder bin finds. Typical convoluted book discovery. I tend to believe that sometimes fate steps in and says, “Hey, you can’t go through life not knowing about this.”

I’ve been struggling with describing characters. It’s a fine line to say just enough.

In these scenes, Rivers meets Prior for the first time. The language Barker uses is simple and very spare. But every so often, she uses a word that’s a surprise: supercilious. sibilance.

At first, Prior’s attitude is implied. Only later, after he speaks for the first time, does she let Rivers engage in a little open analysis. Finally, she throws in the kicker, the metaphor: A little, spitting, sharp-boned alley cat.

How could you not be able to see Billy Prior after reading this?

This is what I’m aiming for when I write. Sometimes I need to remind myself.

from Regeneration © Pat Barker 1991…

(page 41)

Prior was lying on his bed, reading. He was a thin, fair-haired young man of twenty-two with high cheekbones, a short, blunt nose and a supercilious expression. He looked up as Rivers came in, but didn’t close the book.

‘Sister tells me you had a bad night?’

Prior produced an elaborate shrug. Out of the corner of his eye Rivers saw Sister Rogers’s lips tighten.

‘What did you dream about?’

Prior reached for the notepad and pencil he kept beside his bed and scrawled in block capitals, ‘I DON’T REMEMBER.’

‘Nothing at all?’

Prior hesitated, then wrote, ‘NO.’

‘Does he talk in his sleep, sister?’

Rivers was looking at Prior as he asked the question, and thought he detected a flicker of uneasiness.

‘Nothing you can get hold of.’

Prior’s lips curled, but he couldn’t hide the relief.

(page 49)

Prior sat with his arms folded over his chest and his head turned slightly away. His eyelids looked raw from lack of sleep.

‘When did your voice come back?’ Rivers asked.

‘In the middle of the night. I woke up shouting and suddenly I realized I could talk. It’s happened before.’

A Northern accent, not ungrammatical, but with the vowel sounds distinctly flattened, and the faintest trace of sibilance. Hearing Prior’s voice for the first time had the curious effect of making him look different. Thinner, more defensive. And, at the same time, a lot tougher. A little, spitting, sharp-boned alley cat.