Human Traces (Library Edition) [Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Sebastian Faulks (Author), James Adams (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2009

Sixteen-year-old Jacques Rebière is living a humble life in rural France, studying butterflies and frogs by candlelight in his bedroom. Across the Channel, in England, the playful Thomas Midwinter, also sixteen, is enjoying a life of ease and is resigned to follow his father's wishes to pursue a career in medicine. A fateful seaside meeting four years later sets the two young men on a profound course of friendship and discovery; they will become pioneers in the burgeoning field of psychiatry. But when a female patient at the doctors' Austrian sanatorium becomes dangerously ill, the two men's conflicting diagnoses threaten to divide them and to undermine all their professional achievements.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

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. Sarah Johnson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.; Unabridged library edition (November 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1433229188
• ISBN-13: 978-1433229183
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 7.1 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well researched historical fiction, July 19, 2007

By 

M. Burla - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Human Traces (Paperback)

Although this is not an "easy" read, it is quite fascinating. The integration of the history of psychology with the story line of two fictional pioneers in the field was extremely well done. I have a degree in psychology, yet found myself learning many new things about the bases of current psychological theory, and I completely enjoyed the trouncing of the Oedipal complex and other parameters of the "Viennese" school even though Freud was never mentioned by name. Faulks draws his characters with style and verve - he has a good handle on both conscious and subconscious motivations, so the people of his novel do come to life and earn a place in your heart.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mental health, November 30, 2006

By 

Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Human Traces: A Novel (Hardcover)

This huge novel spans the careers of two pioneering psychiatrists, one French, one English, who meet as boys and eventually co-found a sanatorium in the mountains of Austria, until driven apart by professional disagreements and the outbreak of the first War. For the first 250 pages of this 600-page book, the story holds the interest with warm characters, fascinating settings, and the stirrings of romance. However, the long lectures and scientific papers that Faulks uses to demonstrate the growing differences between the two (one is a Freudian, the other a Darwinian) come to clog the book around the half-way point, and although the two men continue to develop in interesting ways as people, he loses the sense of linear narrative. But Faulks pulls it all together in the last hundred pages; always a magnificent war novelist (see BIRDSONG, his masterpiece), his WW1 scenes appear almost as a lyrical interlude, with striking cathartic effect, and his final chapters have their own quiet beauty.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What makes us human?, October 16, 2008

By 

Susan Feathers (Tucson, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Human Traces (Vintage International) (Paperback)

What does it mean to be human? Are we at the mercy of our inner, unconscious drives, a product of incomplete evolution - caught halfway between the new brain and the old brain, a work in progress?

Are people who hear voices crazy? Or, do they retain an ancient ability to talk to the gods, throwback to a previous version of us?

Faulk explores these questions in the context of early nineteenth century culture and science. Darwinism, archaeological discoveries in Africa, and war all play into this rich examination of what it means to be human.

Two men, each from disparate childhood circumstances, come together as clinicians in the newly forming field of psychiatry in Europe. Their ongoing discussion provides the raison d'etre of the plot.

Two women - one, a constant presence, all along the way showing us what may be the most human characteristic of all.

Sebastian Faulk gives us no sketch but rather a masterwork with shadings, details, complex colors, and a grand canvas for it all.

Susan Williams