November 26, 2015

Where My Heart Used To Beat - Sebastian Faulks

Bond Street Books, Oct. 27, 2015.



Three Stars



Robert Hendricks is a psychiatrist with some mental issues of his own. As his relationships slowly fall apart around him, he is offered an unexpected reprieve – an invitation to a small French island. The invitation is issued by another psychiatrist named Pereira who claims to have some information about Robert’s father, who was killed during World War I when Robert was still a small child. However, over the course of several visits to the island, Robert has still not learned anything about his father. Instead, he is seemingly overcome with the need to pour out his own story to this virtual stranger – the story of his own experiences as a soldier.


Where My Heart Used to Beat is ostensibly the story of Robert Hendricks, but more than that, it is the story of the last century and the many atrocities it witnessed. The novel questions the authenticity of memory and fact, and whether we can trust our own version of the past. Above all, it asks whether humans have been altered irretrievably, due to the acts we have not only witnessed but also perpetrated in the past hundred years or so.


There was some really lovely and unusual language in the novel, but it was hidden amongst pages of reflections on both world wars. I found myself skimming over Robert’s impromptu therapy sessions with Pereira, in favour of the theoretical conversations between the two men.  Their ideas about what makes us human were so interesting, such as discussions of the “billion firing synapses” that make us “believe” we are human (p. 60-61) to the thought that it is only a “dynamic function” or piece of neural tissue that separates us from other animals. (p. 130)


Robert believes that madness is merely a function of the brain, a physical problem. As humans are the only species to go “mad,” he asks whether it has some Darwinian advantage to our survival. It may be “the secret of what we are” (p. 199) and yet it causes pain and distress, much like our proclivity towards violence and war. Robert tells Pereira that the past century of world wars has fundamentally changed the psyche – is this what makes us human?


Aside from these philosophical debates on the nature of humanity, I didn’t find anything new or interesting to hold my attention. This is my first novel by Faulks, and apparently the themes of war and memory are his usual ones. The style reminded me of many other writers as I was reading, and that’s not necessarily a good thing – I didn’t feel like the writing was truly original. There were also some odd sexual incidents with young girls that didn’t add anything to the story except to make me see Robert as a Humbert-like character.


Most of the time, Robert was emotionally cold and generally unlikeable. Over many conversations, he hashes through all of his memories of war and decides to track down his former love – but when he finds her, he’s not all that interested in her. I suppose the point is that it was really only the memory of her that he loved, but I still felt that the scenes between the two could have used more elaboration. I did like the hints that Robert was an unreliable narrator of his own life, but again, I wish that theme had been developed further. Overall, I felt like Faulks started writing with a clear premise – that the world wars ended the importance of individual lives – and that he forced his plot and his characters to fit that idea, no matter how awkward or unbelievable the story became. It was like a fictionalized version of a psychiatric case study, and it could have been read more clearly as non-fiction.


I received this novel from Goodreads First Reads and Bond Street Books in exchange for an honest review.

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