Human Traces

June 19, 2006
Set at the dawn of modern psychiatry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, British author Faulks's vast, elegant novel follows two "mad-doctors," Thomas Midwinter and his close friend Jacques Rebière, as they struggle to contribute something great to the emerging discipline. A chance meeting in 1880 leads to a lifelong partnership that lasts through journeys around the Continent and across the Atlantic. The pair vow to unlock the secrets of consciousness, and the novel traces their experiences in the hellish asylums of the day and their diverging approaches to the field. As Jacques grows interested in the Viennese school of psychoanalysis and talk therapy, Thomas focuses on the neurological and evolutionary mechanisms that lead to psychosis. Faulks (Birdsong
) shines in his dramatization of Thomas's lectures, presaging contemporary arguments about chemical imbalances. While his characters attempt to discover what makes us human, Faulks also meticulously depicts grief, longing, nostalgia and melancholy through a portrait of Thomas's sister, Sonia. Faulks marries extensive research with a satisfying narrative arc to create a novel that is compelling as both history and literature.

August 15, 2006
British author Faulks ("Birdsong") has produced an epic novel about the rise of the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry from the late 19th century to the years after World War I. The story revolves around two men: Jacques Rebiè re, a precociously talented youth with a scientific bent, and Thomas Midwinter, also intellectually gifted and naturally curious but with more of a leaning toward literature. The two meet by chance in a French resort town and together dedicate their lives to finding a solution to the problems of insanity and reaching a basic understanding of consciousness, personality, and memory. Thomas's older sister, Sonia, also figures in the story, as the novel follows the course of her tragic first marriage, her later espousal to Jacques, and her involvement in her husband and brother's quest. There are liberal doses of 19th-century scientific theory, and actual historical scholars play minor roles. One of the novel's central dramatic events is an almost scandalous misdiagnosis of a woman's illness through the scrupulous following of the -latest - accepted principles of psychoanalysis. This is an enjoyable and edifying literary achievement, though probably not good beach reading. For all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 5/1/06.]" -Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta Lib."

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2006
It's daunting to begin a lengthy novel on the early history of psychiatry, but Faulks' latest (after " Green Dolphin Street") is less stodgy than this description suggests. In 1880, Jacques Rebiere, a Breton medical student, meets young Englishman Thomas Midwinter at a resort in Deauville, France. They're overjoyed to discover a mutual fascination with the human mind, "the meeting point between thought and flesh." Over the next 35 years, with the help of Thomas' sister, Sonia, they single-mindedly pursue their goal: to run a clinic that will cure, not merely house, the mentally ill. Their mission takes them from the overcrowded Salpetriere Hospital in Paris to the mountains of Austria, and from California's Sierra Madres to the dry African plains, where the earliest humans walked; when describing physical landscapes, Faulks' prose is sublime. He shapes his characters' personalities with a surgeon's gentle precision, but with voluminous pages of case notes and lectures, the novel hardly wears its research lightly. Continually fascinating despite its density, this intellectual epic explores the uneasy relationship between madness and humanity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)