Reg Barker
Laurie's fellow wounded soldier and straightforward hospital friend, focused on recovery and domestic stability.
The book
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeReg is a solidly built serviceman recovering beside Laurie. His open working-class warmth gives Laurie an ordinary friendship outside the romantic plot.
He wants recovery and marital stability in a life interrupted by war.
How the book draws them
- BuildHe is solidly built and physically marked by convalescence.
- DressHospital pajamas or uniform place him in the ward.
- MannerAn open face reflects straightforward friendship.
- MarriageHis domestic troubles complicate any easy contrast between queer and heterosexual life.
He continues dealing with injury and marriage difficulty rather than entering Laurie's romantic triangle.
If you like The Charioteer
If you like Mary Renault
Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.
Martha Gellhorn
War correspondent who covered the Spanish Civil War, D-Day, and conflicts across five more decades; Hemingway's third wife, 1940–1945.
View author
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The doctor of the Paris slums who wrote the century's blackest, funniest novel — and changed the sound of French prose.
View author
Charles Bukowski
American poet and novelist of Los Angeles rooming houses, racetracks and the post office, who quit his job to write when a publisher offered him a hundred dollars a month. He came to Paris once, in September 1978, drank his way through a live television book programme and walked off the set — and French television has been replaying it ever since.
View author