where
my heart used to beat, Sebastian Faulks, Hutchinson Books
I
continue to be surprised by the fiction that Sebastian Faulks creates. After ‘Birdsong’,
it would have been easy to never write another thing, such was the success of
that book. It is a delight to his readers that he continues to produce
beautifully crafted books of such depth. His latest novel, ‘where my heart used
to beat’ (the lower case of the title is intentional), is an exceptional book.
Faulks’ alchemy is the reality of the characters that he creates. You close the
last page knowing them so well.
In
this novel are the familiar themes: the indescribable
suffering of the two world wars, the damaged minds of those involved, and a
sensitive treatment of love and desire. There are many similarities between
this book and ‘Human Traces’, which went into such detail about the workings of
the mind. One of the author’s recurrent ideas is that our society deals with
insanity in such a dysfunctional way, and how a slight shift in perceptions can
show how cruel and lacking in understanding we can all be. He returns to the
idea that ancient civilisations valued people who ‘heard voices’, whilst in the
West we lock them up.
It
is a very male book. The two main characters are Robert Hendricks, a veteran of
Anzio, and Alexander Pereira, a survivor of the trenches. It is
unapologetically male, as the suffering in battle was largely male. It is
over-critical to suggest that the female characters are under-developed or two
dimensional, because this is not their story. There were no women at Anzio and
Verdun, and their experience was to pick up the shattered remnants when it was
over. Each writers plays to his or her strength, and I would not expect Faulks
to become Vera Brittain.
The
author’s choice of timing is interesting. Much of the narrative is from 1980,
the last point in the Twentieth Century when it is credible to include
characters who experienced the First World War. Faulks is more aware than
everyone else that the deaths of Harry Patch and Henry Allingham have closed
the door forever on the Great War, and has framed his story in a time when it
was not unusual to meet old soldiers. It was a world in which many of us grew
up, and hardly appreciated. It is interesting to read this novel in a time when
little by little those who experienced the Second World War are quietly
vanishing. Will the media cherish the memory of those at Anzio in the same way
as they did with those who experienced the terror of The Somme?
That
said, it doesn’t all happen in 1980. Faulks is so skillful when dealing with
recollection and flashback that the story sails through the Twentieth Century.
A theme that runs through ‘where my heart used to beat’ is that the century
itself was diseased and broken, just like the wreckage left of some of the men
who had to live through it. Perhaps his opinion that the Twentieth Century was
a complete disaster will be shared by many more of us when we have greater
perspective. Stop to think for a minute about The Somme, The Death Camps, the Gulags,
Chinese Brutality, Atom Bombs, assassinations of peacemakers, AIDS and famine;
and you realise that Sebastian Faulks is right.
This
book is not all doom. The love story hidden inside is every bit as touching as Stephen
and Isabelle in ‘Birdsong’. It took my breath away.
Faulks
will never surpass ‘Birdsong’. He will, however, write different books that
touch the reader as deeply. This book is one of them.
