"Regeneration," Pat Barker

The professor who assigned this book for class did so because he wanted to tear it down and complain about it in public, which is a noble cause and certainly more interesting than when everyone pretends to like the book, but still it isn't quite as bad as he made out. (As everyone knows, the worst assigned reading-type book ever is Ian McEwan's "Saturday," or if you want to go back to the American high school experience, probably "The Scarlet Letter." It's scientifically proven, they keep a copy of "Saturday" in a vault somewhere, just like they used to do with the meter bar. Really!)

In any case, the book read a little like fanfic, which I guess it is - real person fanfiction starring the war poets. Everyone is a little too nice and they all solve their problems by talking them out (which makes sense for a book about psychoanalysis, in a way, but still). Also, everybody is gay.

I might be biased because "Regeneration" is part of a trilogy and I read the 2nd book, "Eye in the Door," first, and that book is all about hustling and blackmail and pacifists starving themselves and 47,000 perverts. Maybe I was expecting something darker.