The Eye in the Door

The second volume in Pat Barker's acclaimed World War I trilogy continues the story of the victims of shell shock in World War I trench warfare, and the methods used by psychiatrist William Rivers to cure their trauma at Craiglockhart Hospital. This volume concentrates on the poet Siegfried Sassoon and his conflicting attitudes toward the war in which he fought, and on the bisexual lieutenant, Billy Pryor, who struggles not only with the question of his sexual identity but with society's preoccupation with class, status, and heroism. The consequences of the persecution of homosexuals and pacifists in wartime Britain is vividly depicted.