In Birdsong, Charlotte Gray, On Green Dolphin Street, Devil May Care and A Week in December Sebastian Faulks has established himself as a formidable story teller. It is a modern classic, there is no doubt. Less philosophy and more deep feeling would have made this a more enjoyable book for me. In Where My Heart Used to Beat, we witness the transformation of protagonist Robert Hendricks’s ideas on memory and its place within the present. He and his family live in London. Not sure I can really class this book as 'read' as I only got half way through - but I decided life was too short and I was in severe danger of telling people my 'heart used to beat' before I read this book and it stopped of utter boredom. Beautifully written! ‘Where My Heart Used to Beat,’ by Sebastian Faulks. My question, if this old guy, who was a mail censor, came back from France after the war with a stack of unmailed letters, WHY DIDN'T HE JUST MAIL THEM THEN? Perhaps I just wasn't it the right mood... Sebastian Faulks' first novel I ever read was Birdsong; I found that book a gripping, deep, historical and emotional tale about the First World War and how the past was related to and affected the present.
A young Englishman, Stephen Wraysford, is on attachment from London, working in the textile industry and lodging with the Azaire family. The letter brings Robert to the older man's home on a rocky, secluded island off the south of France, and into tempests of memories - his childhood as a fatherless English boy, the carnage he witnessed and the wound he can't remember receiving as a young officer in World War II, and, above all, the great, devastating love of his life, an Italian woman, "L," whom he met during the war.
The Guardian (1992-8) and the Evening Standard (1997-9).
Its complex, highly personal, and courageously explores the world of psychiatric disorders, and the methods used and abused to treat people across the 20th Century. It is forbidden to copy anything for publication elsewhere without written permission from the copyright holder. Information at BookBrowse.com is published with the permission of the copyright holder or their agent. But ho-hum about other titles. Its complex, highly personal, and courageously explores the world of psychiatric disorders, and the methods used and abused to treat people across the 20th Century. Still, this is a profoundly moving novel."
It seems a lot of readers, like me, have had an on-again off-again relationship with Sebastian Faulks. With “Where My Heart Used to Beat,” he seems intent on shifting the ratios toward a more cerebral narrative. 4.5 stars. Disappointing.
He “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." It's very hard to believe this book isn't autobiographical. Hendricks's father died in WWI, when Hendricks himself was very young. However, the storyline wasn't quite up there with some of his other works and felt a bit 'done before'. novels include The Girl at the Lion d'Or (1989), set in France between But not until the end do we (and Robert) find out why and how he died.
In 'Where My Heart Used To Beat' we meet his psychiatrist protagonist, Hendricks, in what we assume to be the 1980s, when he is in his sixties. Reviews |