Where My Heart Used to Beat by Sebastian Faulks

by Sebastian Faulks, Unknown Author

The new bestseller from the author of Birdsong and A Week in December . 

     "You don't live the life I have without making some enemies."
Having accepted a strange but intriguing invitation to a French island, psychiatrist Robert Hendricks meets the man who has commissioned him to write a biography. But his subject seems more interested in finding out about Robert's past than he does in revealing his own. For years, Robert has refused to discuss his past. After the war ended, he refused to go to reunions, believing in some way that denying the killing and the deaths of his friends and fellow soldiers would mean he wouldn't be defined by the experience. Suddenly, he can't keep the memories from overtaking him. But can he trust his memories and can we believe what other people tell us about theirs?
Moving between the present and past, between France and Italy, New York and London, this is a powerful story about love and war, memory and desire, the relationship between the body and the mind.
Compelling and full of suspense, Where My Heart Used to Beat is a tender, brutal and thoughtful portrait of a man and a century, which asks whether, given the carnage we've witnessed and inflicted over the past one hundred years, people can ever be the same.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, War, Historical, Book Club, Literary Fiction, World War II

Paperback

First published September 10, 2015

About the author

Sebastian Faulks is a British novelist, journalist, and broadcaster best known for his acclaimed historical novels set in France, including The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong, and Charlotte Gray. Alongside these, he has written contemporary fiction, a James Bond continuation novel (Devil May Care), and a Jeeves homage (Jeeves and the Wedding Bells). A former literary editor and journalist, Faulks gained widespread recognition with Birdsong, which solidified his literary reputation. He has also appeared regularly on British media, notably as a team captain on BBC Radio 4's The Write Stuff, and authored the TV tie-in Faulks on Fiction. Honored as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and appointed CBE for his services to literature, Faulks continues to publish widely, with The Seventh Son released in 2023.

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comfortably middle aged confirmed bachelor, English 'head' doctor Robert Hendricks meets up with academic Alexander Pereira who has some interesting information about his father, whom he never met, as he was killed in the First World War. Robert goes on to share his life story with Pereira mainly focusing on his teenage sexual awakening, his university years, his military service in the Second World War, his big love, his career and his theories in and around treating people with mental health conditions, all asking the question is life what happens to us or how we remember what happens to us... think about it, it's a pretty deep question. :)

A highly evocative, artfully written and constructed Faulks' jam, that not only has an unbelievably almost beautiful critique of war, but somehow also questions how we deal with those with mental health issues, how they are really treated as people; that not being enough, there are also themes around hereditary, familial secrets and lies, the romantic 'the one', how wars destroy possible futures as well as the present; this book also covers huge nuggets like fate, destiny, sanity and sacrifice! I can imagine some writers writing this book and giving up publishing afterwards, knowing that this is as good as it gets for them.... that's how good this book is. And in case you missed it, it asks the question whether life is a collection of events or how we remember those events, how they made us feel? 9.5 out of 12.

2022 read

[Angela M · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I'm always pulled in immediately , with the introspective and intimate first person narrative. I very much like this kind of character study and a plus for me with this book is how much I enjoyed the writing. Robert Hendrick is a British psychiatrist, a veteran wounded in WW II who carries with him more than the physical wound he sustained by a gun shot to the shoulder. I could feel the heaviness in Robert Hendrick's heart from the beginning. He is just so alone despite having a lover. Out of the blue he receives an invitation from a man , also a psychiatrist who says he served in WWI with Robert's father, who died when Robert was two and wants to share some of what he knew about him.

Through discussions with Alexander Pereira and flashbacks we learn that Robert's childhood was a lonely one , and then about his time in the WW II and after. It's slow moving at times mostly during his flashbacks of the time after the war when he embarks on his medical career. The most poignant scenes are reflected in his telling of Luisa , the woman he fell in love with while serving in Italy .

This is not just about horrors of the war and a passionate love affair but about memory and it becomes clear that our memories may not be as vivid as we think. I felt a bit bogged down by the discussions between Robert and Pereira on memory. I'd give this 3.5 if I could because while I very taken with Robert and his story , I didn't feel the punch in the gut over the war story or the depth of the passion of the love story as I did in Birdsong. However , I was moved and saddened by Robert's losses which we see even more clearly by the end .

Thanks to Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley.

[Dem · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars


I had such high hopes for this novel by Sebastian Faulks having loved a previous novel called : Birdsong but while I didn't dislike Where My Heart Used To Beat it certainly didn't set my heart beating any faster either.

Set in 1980, London Psychiatrist Robert Hendricks receives a mysterious letter from an eldery fellow doctor Axelander Pereira who lives on a tiny Iland in South of France and who believes that he knew Hendricks father before his death during the First World War. He Invites Hendricks to visit his home .

I think the problem for me with the Novel wasnt that I found the main character dislikable as I dont have a problem with dislikable characters in novels but that he just wasnt interesting and I needed him to be interesting to sustain my interest. I also had issues with the novel's female character's and their relationships and encounters with Hendricks which were quite bizarre and not very credible. I dont want to go into too much detail as may spoil the novel for others.

I did enjoy some of the wirting and expecially the scenes from the War which were very well written and engaging. I do love how Fauks can dipict such an acurate sense of time and place and this works wonderfully in the novel.

This was one of those books that just blew hot and cold for me. There were chapters where the author had my full attention and other chapters that fell flat and I found myself becoming bored.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

In Faulks’s thirteenth novel, his trademark themes of war, love and memory coalesce through the story of a middle-aged psychiatrist discovering the truth about his father’s death. It is the late 1970s when Robert Hendricks receives a letter from Alexander Pereira, an elderly doctor who served alongside his father in the First World War. The men share a professional interest in dementia and mental illness and Pereira invites Hendricks to visit him on a small island off France and, if all goes well, eventually become his literary executor.

In a fluid first-person narrative Hendricks recalls – sometimes orally to Pereira and other times just for readers – his village upbringing and experiences of the Second World War in France and Italy. That old pistol wound to his shoulder is nowhere near as painful as the memory of his brief love affair with Luisa, an Italian Red Cross worker. Pereira suggests that repressing these wartime memories is only hurting Hendricks and encourages him to seek out old colleagues and lovers. Along the way, Hendricks begins to question what he thinks he knows about the past.

Reminiscent of Birdsong as well as John Fowles’s The Magus and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, this does not have the power of Faulks’s previous work but is a capable study of how war stories and love stories translate into personal history.


Why just 2 stars? Well, I vacillated between 2 and 3, but realized that I’ve compared this unfavorably with Birdsong and The Magus, both of which I gave 3. Although the book is certainly readable, nothing about it feels fresh. Especially when it concerns the world wars, a novel has to do something truly new to stand out. There are certainly memorable lines and scenes, but I didn’t think Faulks quite brought everything together. Why does the novel open with him hiring a prostitute in a New York City apartment, for instance? Similarly, what’s the point of Céline, the 25-year-old gamine he meets in France when he sees her diving nude for urchins, except to show him up as a dirty old man?

Stories of disaffected sixty-somethings trying to make sense of the past and hold on to their sexuality are common enough. Faulks had the opportunity to make this one stand out by contrasting the materialist Hendricks’s full-circle life story with the thesis that the twentieth century marked a loss of the belief that individual lives matter, but I didn’t feel he followed through on the full possibility of this meaning.

Nor was Hendricks’s first-person narrative revealing or intimate enough; third person would have done the job. I also noted two places where I thought flashbacks were clumsy: “the nap of the upholstered seat and the faint smell of diesel were carrying me away – whether I chose to go back or not...Back to that summer of 1944” (ellipsis as in original) and “Thinking of Luisa made me go back in my mind over the other women I had known.”

The title is from Tennyson’s epic elegy, “In Memoriam,” an allusion Faulks doesn’t nearly match up to in terms of emotional depth. This is my fourth Faulks novel; my favorite by far was A Week in December, a rare contemporary one for him. I doubt I’ll check out his back catalogue of historical fiction.

P.S. I nominate pages 228–30 for the Bad Sex award (sample: “the abdomen was flat, the haunches strong and there was a pleasing definition to the patella”).

P.P.S. I did like that Hendricks’s surname matches his love of gin.


Lines worth salvaging:

“I wondered whether it was a peculiarly English trait to feel like an impostor all one’s life, to fear that at any moment one might be rumbled – or whether this was a common human failing.”

“Youthful events are written bold on the virgin page; middle-aged experience is at its best a palimpsest in which the previous drafts are legible and breathing.”

From Pereira’s notes: “the biggest part of the human personality is determined by the way it remembers. Not by what it remembers but by how it remembers it.”

“I didn’t want to have Luisa transposed from the chiaroscuro of my memory to the strip light of the present.”

[Emma.catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Library blind-pick 📚

I honestly had absolutely no idea what to expect from this book. I am a fan of Sebastian Faulks, however I had never come across this particular book before. Thankfully, I can say that I am very glad to have picked this book up. It was an interesting, and slightly peculiar, read. But, worthwhile nonetheless.

Having accepted a strange but intriguing invitation to a small French island, psychiatrist Robert Hendricks, makes his way to visit Alexander Pereira.

Robert was going to meet a man that could open the door to his past. It occurred to him that he felt vulnerable - ‘to think that a stranger might know more about myself than I did.’ And subsequently, he felt the need to make sure his own version of his life was in good order before encountering his unknown past.

For years, Robert has refused to discuss his past. After the war ended, he refused to go to reunions, believing in some way that denying the killing and the deaths of his friends and fellow soldiers would mean he wouldn't be defined by the experience.

The search for his past takes us through the war in Italy, 1944. A passionate love affair, hope and then the great days of idealistic work in the 1960s.

Whilst speaking to Pereira about his time in the war, Robert had fuelled himself with water, brandy and cigarettes. He was exhausted- he had not so much recall these events, as he had relived them. Some of the stories he told surprised himself; the level of physical fitness they had all somehow achieved. Furthermore, what surprised him was the extent of his affection for these men.

I was deeply touched by his passionate love for Luisa. Denial had long been his favourite way of dealing with his feelings of the heart; he had locked away a deep sense of longing and love for Luisa. He had adored her. And still, to this day could not be without her. In the absence of her, he had chosen solitude.

The way the narrator, Robert, blends his neurological knowledge with his purest, deepest, loving feelings is quite exquisite and highly unique. Sebastian takes us on an intellectual, yet emotionally charged journey from present to past, between France, Italy, New York and London. This is a really fascinating novel; and, very unlike anything I have read before. The story is brimming with scientific ideas regarding our psychology, whilst telling a story of war, love, and a man’s search for peace. We move swiftly and smoothly from body to mind, brutal to tender. The ending had me truly, and completely captivated!

“A man’s life is not made up of the things that happened, but by his memory of them and the way in which he remembers.”


🌟🌟🌟🌟

[Maria Roxana · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Ce este viața? Cât valorează ea? Când un om moare, te înțelepțești cât ai clipi. Îți ascunzi penibila neputință, te prefaci că știi ce e de făcut. Îi dai ce i se cuvine, apoi îți vezi de treaba ta. Dar pentru oamenii tăi rămași în picioare și pentru tine însuți ai un alt fel de grijă, ca și cum voi și morții nu ați fi din același aluat. Moartea lor a provocat o ridicare din sprâncene; viața lor a fost o simplă boare de vânt, fără greutate. Însă ale voastre, o, suflete vii, ale voastre sunt pline de înțeles. Ca și cum ai ști dinainte care viață e ușoară ca fulgul și care va fi împovărătoare. Dar dacă acorzi o importanță egală existenței unuia care a plecat deja pe lumea cealaltă, nu mai poți continua.....”

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dr. Robert Hendricks, the narrator of Sebastian Faulks’ latest novel, is an inscrutable character -- an English psychiatrist, a published author, a fighter in the World War II trenches of Anzio, and a self-described “imposter in his own life.”

An unexpected letter from Alexander Perira, a 91-year-old doctor who once knew his absent father (who died on the western front during WW I), begins a chain of self-reflection: “A man’s life is not made up of the things that happened, but by his memory of them and the way in which he remembers.” In its truest sense, Where My Heart Used To Beat is a book about how our false and often “stuck” remembrances can hinder our ability to live fully.

The problem is this novel never really embraces its theme in a visceral way. Here is a musing from Dr. Hendricks: “Rather older than most people, I supposed, I’d come to admit that no supple pattern would be revealed to me; my life would not acquire the gracious and redemptive shape of art. It would instead be a sequence of non sequiteurs reeling and bumping into one another…”

Indeed, that musing is an apt metaphor for the book. As readers, we see Robert Hendricks at various crossroads and we meet people who are seemingly portentous: an uncle locked away, a woman who may love him, a best friend during the time at Anzio, an Italian lover who has remained in Robert’s heart forever. But none of them hold traction and none of it makes us feel any closer to the narrator.

In short, this is a classic example of a novel that makes us think, but not feel. I kept reading on, hoping that the book would eventually catch fire, but I found my interest waxing and waning. Sebastian Faulks has done better. My heart did not beat fast enough.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had a difficult time figuring out what to say about this without spoilers. It is the life of Robert Hendricks, told mostly as memory. We know early enough for it not to be a real spoiler, that Robert's father was killed in WWI, when Robert was just 2 years old. We also know that Robert himself served in WWII. We shouldn't be too surprised that these two experiences have had lifelong effects. It is very much a character-driven novel.

The present time of the novel is 1980 and there are events told in the present. Hendricks became a psychiatrist after the war and some of this includes his professional life, and, therefore, a few of his patients. It is good to keep in mind that this takes place before anti-psychotic drugs were available. Also, so much has been learned since 1980. While this aspect might be off-putting to some, it provides background and insight into Hendricks probing of the why of himself.

If you have read Faulks' Birdsong, this might have a familiar feel to it. Although there are similarities, it really is a different novel (not just a different war). There were many ways in which I felt a personal connection. My father's father was killed in WWI, for example, though my father was old enough to have known his father. It helped me understand better what it is for a boy to grow up without a father, where my own experience was as a girl growing up without one. That is but one link I felt, but also an instance that broadened my understanding.

I wouldn't say that Faulks writes anti-war novels, but one can certainly come away with a better understanding that the damage war does is often not visible. We can see when a veteran has lost an arm or a leg, but the psychological damage done to him is rarely known but to a few. What can almost never be known is the psychological damage it does to those he has loved. Though it is not as good as Birdsong, I can't hold back on this. Five stars.

[Latkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like Sebastian Faulks, and I really wanted to like this book, and I did, up to a point. There was nothing wrong with it - it follows the life of Robert Hendricks, who narrates it, from the perspective of a present day strand set in 1980, when he's in his 60s, back to his childhood and youth, and to his experiences during WWII. Hendricks is a psychologist, and is interested in memory. He goes to visit a man, Alexander Pereira, who knew his father during WWI, on a remote French island. Hendricks's father died in WWI, when Hendricks himself was very young. There's quite a lot about Hendricks's sex life, and the one true love he lost during WWII. In many ways, it reminded me of some of Faulks's earlier works - the bits about war were reminiscent of Birdsong and Charlotte Grey, the bits about psychology reminiscent of Human Traces. It was written beautifully, and was very easy to read. So why didn't I like it as much as I feel I should have? I'm not sure - I just never really engaged with the characters somehow, it all seemed rather cold. Perhaps I just wasn't it the right mood...

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sebastian Faulks' first novel I ever read was Birdsong; I found that book a gripping, deep, historical and emotional tale about the First World War and how the past was related to and affected the present. It is a modern classic, there is no doubt. I carried on reading the other two novels in his French Trilogy, The Girl at the Lion D'Or and Charlotte Grey, and neither of them did disappoint. This latest book from Faulks holds the same traits as Birdsong, it being crafted and set with a very similar vein and plot - albeit a different 20thC war, the Second World War, but does travel as far back as the Great War in the unravelling plot. There are many similarities in the tale,with a most certain different slant than Birdsong, but equally as emotional and, towards the end, as distressing. I laid down for a while after finishing this book, just to try and take in what I had read in the past 100 or so pages.

'Where my Heart Used to Beat' deals with the life journey of a certain Richard Hendricks, a Psychiatrist with a long and varied career catching some fame from a radical Psychiatry movement and a published book during the 1960s, advocating essentially a more humane form of treatment for people with mental health issues rather than the prevailing attitude of that time. If you are familiar with the new radical Psychiatry with proponents such as R.D Laing during the 1960's then this is the gist (I believe) of what Richard Hendricks is proposing; speaking to and trying to understand mental health rather than medicating and all the other distressing methods of treatment that had gone on before. Hendricks' Father had served and died in WW1, and, being lucky enough to gain admittance to a Grammar School and later win a scholarship to University, WW2 comes and interferes with his studies, where, because being qualified, serves as an Officer, from Dunkirk up until Italy during the Anzio invasion, becomes wounded, has some mental issue and is allowed a long period of convalescence where he meets an Italian Woman called Luisa whom he has a very intense relationship with for several months. Luisa unfortunately is married and vanishes when Hendricks returns to a staff job after he returns to his unit, leaving him lost and forlorn (right up to the present day - the date the book is narrated by Hendricks is during the early 1980's). He has issues that are present in his relationships with Women throughout his life post-war, stemming we gather from the love he felt for Luisa. It takes an encounter with another failed Psychotherapist who understands and respects Hendricks one-time radical ideas in mental health for him to slowly understand, come to terms with and bury his past. Alexander Pereira, the failed Psychotherapist knew Hendricks Father during WW1 and this is one reason why he has hunted down Hendricks before his death as he wanted to put his 'estate in order', as it were (in fact both their 'estates').

There is some intense musing here; about the relationship memory has to understanding our past, things we remember in memory shape our current lives more than we care to admit. Richard Hendricks had suffered major emotional events in his life, from growing up without his Father, loosing a fair few of his comrades at Anzio and afterwards, of course the unrequited love affair with Luisa who was married (and this seems the main emotional tear in his life; the other events seemed to just exacerbate his underlying issues) and so on. I liked some of the arguments regarding mental health; would, if Moses had existed today and all the Biblical Prophets, be classified as 'mad', hearing voices and suchlike? The early treatments and how barbaric they were before people, such as Richard and even Pereira tried to practise alternative methods instead of injections, lobotomies and medication, and so on. I like the T.S Eliot references (Hendricks favourite poet), especially to his 'Burnt Norton' poem, dealing with what could have been and what is at the present, relating to his life after Luisa. He always loved her and never recovered from the loss.

The ending is sad but I think equally hopeful. Without giving spoilers away too much, certain issues Richard Hendricks had slowly become resolved, mainly regarding the loss of his Father and finding out how he perished during WW1, and more importantly, finally meeting Luisa when they are both in their 60s. I enjoyed this book, it is a Good Read containing some great emotion and depth.

[Claudiu · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Acolo unde imi bate inima" este, de fapt, un roman despre secolul al XX-lea, secol pe care o sa il caracterizez folosindu-ma de vorbele lui Marin Preda din "Morometii" - "Timpul nu mai avea rabdare"
Mi-a placut romanul si m-a facut sa ma gandesc/meditez putin la lumea din secolul trecut, lume pe care eu am cunoscut-o foarte putin si care, acum mai mult ca niciodata, a murit, sufocata de tehnologia mereu in schimbare, nerabdatoare la randul ei.

[Irina Subredu · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Valiza ei era deschisă pe un scaun. Vedeam puloverele, desuurile, o carte, viața pe care ar fi trebuit să o împart cu ea."

"Am strâns-o la piept și absolut toate orele tuturor anilor irosiți au dispărut în neant când timpul s-a închis peste noi."

[Susan Liston · Rating 1 out of 5]

Started off fine. Robert, a sixty-ish psychiatrist and WW2 vet in 1980 London is invited for a visit by an old man in France who thinks he served with Robert's father, killed in WWI.* Robert recounts to him his own combat experiences in Africa and Italy. Those sections were well done and and engrossing. Then Robert goes home, and the story slows to a crawl. I am guessing I am supposed to be having Deep Thoughts as Robert thinks about patients and finally decides to visit his old Army buddies,etc., but mostly I was nodding off. Then comes a killer. We discover that he had a Lost True Love in Italy and that is why he can Never Love Again! Oh my, didn't I just read another book with that cliched, banal, oh so sappy trope? (See "The Steady Running of the Hour") Here we are again. And both these books were by male authors...that is the stuff of bad chick-lit, boys, man up! And if that isn't enough...the old man not only has a Shocking Tale To Tell about Robert's father, he has, wait for it, a never mailed letter written to two year old Robert from Dad! How bout that. My question, if this old guy, who was a mail censor, came back from France after the war with a stack of unmailed letters, WHY DIDN'T HE JUST MAIL THEM THEN? I wish these sorts of details didn't bother me so much, but I get so tired of lazy coincidences and and happenings that are just not thought through. Or worse, they are thought through, the author just figures the readers won't notice the improbabilities or won't care if they do.
*there is another glaring improbability with this set up, I won't bother going into it.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

 
Good Writing and Ideas in Search of a Framework

Some years ago, in A Possible Life, Sebastian Faulks created several longish stories around incidents that are usually the entire focus of their respective genres of fiction, extending them beyond the specific moment to cover an entire lifetime. For instance, the protagonist of a terrifying WW2 story about the resistance and concentration camps returns to civilian life and becomes a schoolmaster—and there are four other stories that have a similar whole-life trajectory. This is only one of several previous Faulks books you see reflected in his latest novel, but arguably the most important.

For Robert Hendricks, an English psychiatrist of around 60, is a somewhat successful figure going through life in what appears to be a vacuum of meaning, life as the long aftermath of a significant youth. "I had often wondered why I seemed so disconnected from the earlier parts of my existence," he writes. "It seemed there had been some watershed, though I had no idea when or what it was." The novel will be about finding out, and though I can't say I am 100% sure of the answers to Robert's questions at the end of it, I at least have a better understanding of how a relatively ordinary life can unspool from a dramatic beginning, in greater depth that was possible in any of the stories in the earlier book.

That dramatic beginning is Robert's service as a young officer in WW2. From the moment of his first action in Tunis, the novel kicks into top gear; as he showed in Birdsong, Faulks has always been a magnificent war novelist, and his skills do not desert him here. The desert action is but a prelude to his role in the Anzio landings, which I found both exciting and utterly believable. [I do, however, recommend looking up Anzio in Wikipedia; the course of the action was significantly different from the Normandy or Pacific landings, and it is helpful to know the context.] As in Birdsong, there is also a passionate romance behind the lines. This too is well written, though not with quite enough immediacy to justify the importance that Robert later attaches to it.

The catalyst in Robert's rediscovery of his past is an elderly French-English psychiatrist named Alexander Pereira, who reminds me a bit of the title character in John Fowles' The Magus. He lives on a Mediterranean island off the coast of France, and entices Robert to visit him by offering memories of his father, who died in WW1. Most of the flashbacks in the novel are elicited by Pereira, but the two men also engage in theoretical discussion on the physical aspects of mental illness and the questionable nature of human selfhood. The back-cover blurbs are fulsome in their praise of this as a novel of ideas, but I found the theories hard to comprehend, although the case studies were anecdotally fascinating. I vaguely recall having a similar problem with Faulks' novel about early psychiatry, Human Traces; I find him far better as storyteller than philosopher.

All in all, I found this an engaging book with some passages of terrific writing and a few ideas that might have made a stronger impression on another reader. But I felt there were too many separate components in search of a strong frame to contain them, a frame which Faulks never convincingly provided.

[Tony Nielsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Birdsong, Charlotte Gray, On Green Dolphin Street, Devil May Care and A Week in December Sebastian Faulks has established himself as a formidable story teller. If anything he raises the bar with "Where My Heart Used to Beat". Its complex, highly personal, and courageously explores the world of psychiatric disorders, and the methods used and abused to treat people across the 20th Century. Mixed in with this theme is a close encounter with both World Wars. In WW1 Robert Hendrick's father perished, in WW2 Robert himself survived experiences in Italy that he would never forget, try as he might. A passionate love affair was however to remain in his mind for decades. Out of the blue Dr Hendricks is approached by a very elderly former doctor and psychiatric specialist who had served with his father. He had become enamoured with a book that Hendricks had written on the subject of treating sufferers. Hendricks accepts his invitation to join him on a beautiful Mediterranean island. Alexander Pereira and Robert bond and slowly Robert learns about the father he never knew, while sharing his experiences as well. This is an engrossing story, deep and emotional. Could be my book of the year in fact.

[Liviu Szoke · Rating 4 out of 5]

O foarte frumoasă poveste de dragoste, dublată de una despre război și combinată cu nițică psihiatrie și psihologie. Povestea începe în timpul celui de-Al Doilea Război Mondial, unde tânărul Robert Hendricks se îndrăgostește nebunește de-o italiancă pe nume Luisa și continuă de-a lungul a mai multe decenii, până în anii optzeci, când Robert este un doctor psihiatru și scriitor renumit, dar care parcă tot simte că-i lipsește ceva din viață. Crescut de mic fără tată, are șansa să se împace cu trecutul și să afle mai multe despre tatăl lui atunci când este chemat de către un fost psihiatru, acum în vârstă de peste nouăzeci de ani, pe o insulă de lângă Franța, unde demonii trecutului scot la iveală noi și noi detalii. Emoționantă pe alocuri, mai ales la final. Scrisoarea... Recenzia, în curând, pe Bookblog.

[Chantal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh dear. What to say? The first chapter sucked me in and then... and then... I just stuck it out hoping for a big finish.
This was a bit of a trip. There were highs and lows. I felt hopeful that the storyline was going somewhere but most of it was a series of dropped threads. I stuck around to see if they would be picked up and tied up nicely and yes, there was a dénouement that was satisfying.
As poor as this rating is, I don’t regret reading the novel. I still love Sebastian Faulks as an author and his style and intelligence did not disappoint. Where my Heart Used to Beat (what a long title!) made me think. My mind wandered and explored thoughts and memories as I read and I often had to backtrack as I realized I was no longer in the story. I do enjoy these kind of thought provoking novels.
This is not one I will keep on my bookshelf.

[Shirley Revill · Rating 1 out of 5]

I listened through to chapter eleven of this audiobook and I decided I could not carry on listening to the book. I really did try to persevere but it just wasn't for me. The narration was sending me to sleep and after a while I just couldn't remember what I had been listening to.
I have noticed that some people have really enjoyed this book but then again there are others who did not get along with the storyline. So I guess it all comes down to a personal choice you either love it or hate it.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Hendricks receives a letter from a man who claims to have known the father he lost in the First World War. Alexander Pereira has not much longer to live, and would like Hendricks to become his literary executor. Both are doctors, and have dealt with mental health patients during their careers. Both have taken part in world wars. Hendricks eventually agrees to visit Pereira on the Mediterranean island on which he lives, but does not realise how much this visit will open up memories of his own war army career, and his time with Luisa, the Italian woman he loved during the war, and has never been able to forget.

There is usually something deeper in a novel by Sebastian Faulks than the plot might make you believe, and this is no exception. Hendricks is interested, professionally, in what makes humans different. He sees the mind, or soul, however we might describe our consciousness, as a defect in evolutionary theory. We are a faulty species, aware of our own mortality, which is not good for our self-preservation. He is flawed man himself, far from a reconstructed male, and has issues which he does not care to recognise in himself, although essentially he is a good man. These aspects make him quite fascinating, and the book itself makes you inquire into your own past, memories that have been repressed, those that cannot be forgotten, good and bad. Overall it was an intriguing and thought-provoking story.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book in a giveaway on another site. I don't believe I have come across Faulks in the past, but I will be looking him up. My rating is more than 3, more like a 3.6. Looking at other reviews, it appears that those familiar with his previous works don't find this to be one of his stronger efforts. It is easy reading, but please don't make the mistake of reading it too quickly because I think it will undermine your appreciation of the introspective and speculative sections, of which there are many.

This book is particularly appealing for readers who are interested in the history of mental illness - it is as much about that as it is about WWII. For me, it was really about the mental illness, nothing occurred really in the war portions that was especially unique, nor with the love story. It was some time before I really knew where it was going to be honest, but it didn't bother me. Some of the things that happened in his life in the present day were a bit unsettling and did not seem to mesh well with the rest of the novel, but others may not find it so.

[Lydia Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's very hard to believe this book isn't autobiographical. It certainly reads like it is & I had to keep reminding myself that Faulks read English at uni and had a full career in Journalism. I did double check at one point that he wasn't also a Psychiatrist like his hero! The research he must have done is mind boggling.

It's a great read. A very clever and original theme: a late middle aged chap being forced to recount & re-live his life experiences for various reasons. Many surprises for the reader along the way, especially, of course, towards the end. I love his writing & I was drawn in from the first page.

But....

This isn't Birdsong or Charlotte Grey. It's very different from any book I've ever read (by anyone). Other reviewers have mentioned words such as 'dreary' & 'introspective' in their reviews and they are spot in, in parts. However, it is also deep & deeply moving. The war chapters though are the best war fiction I've ever read - truly gripping & fascinating- but I did feel he lost his way on the doctoring part. Or at least the book did. That section was laborious and hard to get through.

However it all comes together in the end & I did enjoy (almost) every minute of it.

[Mariuca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 65-years old retired psychiatrist receives a letter from a man who met his father in the WWI and who wants to share with him war and personal life matters. Robert Hendricks decides he has nothing to lose and joins his host on a tiny French island. There, he gives voice,for the first time,to his inner,unadmitted emptiness, caused by the war traumatic experience, by the loss of a youth love and by the absence of his dead father in his childhood.

I couldn't stop being mesmerised by each word of this book. So terribly simple,but enchanting. It reminded me a little about Love in the time of cholera, where Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza accomplish their apparently long gone love only when death is nearby.

I think that this novel teaches us that it is never too late to heal your wounds and that psychotic episodes happen to anyone,but we are not just ready to accept them and therefore, cure them.

[Eleanor Slater · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book hating the central character (Robert Hendricks) who came across as a pervy, self important old man. Yet as Faulks tells the story of his life I found myself drawn deeper and deeper into his solitude, his puzzlement at life and his tragic love story - so brief but so perfect. As ever Faulks writes beautifully, carefully and with a humanity few other writers possess. Not as perfect a book as Birdsong but brilliant in its own way this is a book to devour and carry with you, a book to revisit and learn from.

[Ruby Grad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely well-written novel about the effects of war, both World Wars, on the life of a particular man, psychiatrist Robert Hendricks. His father died in the first World War, when he was very young. But not until the end do we (and Robert) find out why and how he died. Robert fought in WWII, including at Anzio, and the author does a great job of giving the reader the feel of those battles. We learn about the love of Robert's life and the tragedy that ensued, and how Robert himself was wounded. The gradual unwinding of the stories kept me engrossed.

[SueKich · Rating 2 out of 5]

The madding crowd.

Sebastian Faulks constructs an elaborate edifice to facilitate a series of flashbacks to the narrator’s Second World War years and his subsequent career as a psychiatrist specialising in the chronically insane. The story begins with Robert Hendricks at the age of sixty leading a lonely life. An enigmatic invitation arrives from a stranger, an aged gent who resides on a tiny remote island off the French coast. The invite leads Robert to his door. Robert’s father died in the First World War and the old man had fought alongside him. Will Robert learn something about the father he never knew?

This is a complex tale about madness in various forms: madness as an incurable illness, madness brought on by the horrors of war, madness triggered by one’s genetic inheritance and another kind of madness, the madness of falling headlong into love. For Robert, fighting on the Italian front in World War 2, his life becomes irreparably altered when he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Italian girl, Luisa. But love, like armies, cannot always conquer all.

There are one or two stabs at humour here but on the whole this is a fairly downbeat read. Faulks is excellent on his narrator’s research into madness and this was fascinating to read. But Robert’s experiences with the opposite sex occasionally made for uncomfortable reading and his denouement vis-à-vis Luisa left me, frankly, baffled. I shall close with a longish quote that appealed to me and which provides some idea of the quality of the writing. Here, the author is talking about Paris:

“It was a very handsome city, more so than London; but there was the smugness to deal with, the speech of grunts and shrugs; the barely concealed affection for the departed Nazi occupier; its void August, lay religiosity and fixation with appearances; the way people listened to and admired themselves in the act of talking; the surliness of its waiters, ticket-sellers and shop assistants; the boiling little hotel rooms with their floral wallpaper; its willed ignorance of other cultures.” Just so.

[Kathryn Bashaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

As this novel opens, Robert Hendricks is a lonely, alienated man in late middle age who is about to undergo a transformation that leads him to unearth long-repressed memories of his first love, his experiences in WWII and his childhood as the child of a father he can't remember who died in WWI. Robert is a psychiatrist who specialized in memory, ironically, and who has a rigidly mechanistic view of the human mind, equating it with the tissue of the brain and the electrical and chemical impulses that surge through it, nothing more.
My problem with this book is that Robert's transformation never feels urgent because he doesn't really seem to suffer much from his limitations. As a child, he keenly felt the lack of his father, but otherwise he seems to do fine in life. He loses his first love, is wounded in WWII, never marries or has children, and is pretty alienated from other people, but he seems - if not fine, at least okay with with all that. He has no trouble finding sex partners, even if he occasionally has to resort to paying for them. And my other problem is that his transformation just happens to him, as a result of the efforts of others; he doesn't really have much agency in the events that lead to his recovering his memories and becoming more engaged with life. So, although this was a very readable book, it ultimately felt unsatisfying to me.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/

[Amy Lidbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am never disappointed by Faulks and this read was no exception. Although not captured as fully by the story as I was by 'Birdsong' and 'Charlotte Gray', Faulks's eloquent style, as always, drew me in and beautifully conveyed the critical moments of Robert Hendricks' life; namely his relationships with Luisa and also his parents - and without spoiling the ending, the final paragraphs of the novel are a perfect conclusion to this.

Faulks's description of both war and love throughout are evocative and inspired, and I very much enjoyed the way Faulks expertly and intelligently embeds literary references throughout. At first, the strong thread running through of the protagonist's medical research on psychosis seemed to me like an add-on but the connection became much stronger towards the end. Having read and loved Pat Barker's 'Regeneration' which explores psychosis among men as the result of fighting in war (shell shock), I felt this aspect of the novel to be more of a back drop and the connections between this and his own experiences of war were too huge to just touch on and could have been made more of. However having said that, I wouldn't want that to encroach on the scenes of war and love - Faulks's two specialities that shone through once again.

In all an enjoyable read and it has re-inspired me to go back and read the remaining books of his I've missed.

[Marilena Iovu · Rating 4 out of 5]

„...nu-­mi rămânea decât să cuget la straniul statut pe care-­l conferim noi, oamenii, ideii de „iubire“. E unica emoție căreia îi recunoaștem puterea de a ne schimba viața; nici un alt sentiment – dacă prin „sen­timent“ înțelegem eliberarea unor substanțe dezor­donate în creier – nu are voie să producă o judecată, alături de rațiune și intelect. Nici o persoană întreagă la cap n­-ar lua o decizie care să-­i schimbe viața pe baza invidiei, furiei ori disperării, dar lăsăm bucuroși ca cele mai importante opțiuni de viață să fie determinate de emoția „iubirii“.
Mai mult, suntem mândri de asta...“

„O iubisem prea intens, asta era realitatea. T.S. Eliot, un poet descoperit de mine târziu, era adesea citat cu butada că omenirea nu poate suporta prea multă realitate. Mie mi se părea că lucrul pe care omul nu-­l putea suporta în exces era iubirea. Faptul că o iubisem pe Luisa Neri prea mult, după standardele normale ale lumii – din perspectiva familiei, paterni­tății, relației agreabile cu semenii – îmi ruinase viața.“

„Am strâns­-o la piept, și absolut toate orele tuturor anilor irosiți au dispărut în neant când timpul s­-a închis peste noi.“

[Kelly Furniss · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers Faulks reoccurring subjects War, love, loss, psychiatry and the effects extreme circumstances have on a person, a soldier.
Psychiatrist Robert Hendricks is asked by a stranger Alexander Pereria an elderly doctor who used to serve alongside his Father in the First World War to meet up. Through this meeting he is forced to reflect upon his war involvement and look at the losses, loves and friendships. This book is about trying to understand the world around you when it feels at it's worst, understanding the damage done to you and trying to make sense of it all.
Although not as demanding as his other books his descriptions of war are heart stopping, atmospheric and yet beautifully written. Mental health is so masterfully handled. I struggled in parts to engage with the main character but overall a very thought provoking story. To me Birdsong by Faulks will always stand high on that pedestal as one of my all time favourite books ever which is why I had to rate this a four.

[Stef Smulders · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This is a book of ideas as well as a novel. The author has his main character Robert state sophisticated views about the human mind, memory, mental illness and evolution that are clearly his (the author's). These views are fascinating and are part of the teason why you want to continue reading. The story itself is slowpaced, not spectacular but also has an element of mystery that keeps you interested. The writing is very fine. A book to reread. An author to watch.