where my heart used to beat

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.