Human Traces
by Sebastian Faulks
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 252)
This is an incredibly incredibly ambitious and thoughtful, much more subtle and wide-ranging than the previous works by Faulks that I've read. It deals with some of the same issues that he's dealt with in his previous works—the spectre of the First World War hangs over this as it does in Birdsong—but this is a much more expansive book, one which looks at sanity and insanity, what it is to be human, what it is to think.
This can, admitt...more
This can, admitt...more
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Read in August, 2008
It's a while since I tried passing my failing eyesight over a Sebastian Faulks tome and they don't come light. This is no exception. Birdsong and Charlotte Gray were easier page turners set against all the drama and gore of WW1 and 2, with more compelling human dramas. This one starts earlier and ends just after WW1, following the lives of two pioneering doctors who become unlikely friends and are trying to make break-throughs in 'mad doctoring'. Cue some rather bleak scenes in Victorian lunatic...more
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Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
all interested in the history of psychology and psychiatry.
(I'd give this 3½ stars if I could)
Faulks loves the pre-WW1- and WW1-era, always researches his topics well, and creates very believable characters.
All of his books could be shortened by about a third, though, and this is certainly no exception.
In Human Traces, two friends decide to devote their life to the study of and possible cure to mental illnesses.
We follow the two during medical training, work in an asylum (which is more or less just storage) and as they eventually set up thei...more
Faulks loves the pre-WW1- and WW1-era, always researches his topics well, and creates very believable characters.
All of his books could be shortened by about a third, though, and this is certainly no exception.
In Human Traces, two friends decide to devote their life to the study of and possible cure to mental illnesses.
We follow the two during medical training, work in an asylum (which is more or less just storage) and as they eventually set up thei...more
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Read in October, 2006
recommends it for:
all psychologists!
aaah to be born during the time when psychoanalysis was blooming away in europe! :)
charcot's hysteria.. most delightful! what would it have been like to sit in front of him and hear him deliver a lecture on the female neurosis?!?! to be informed of a scientific breakthrough! rather than read it a million years later in some boring old psychology textbook !
a most passionate and detailed account of two young people, who both want the same thing: to make the world a better place for the m...more
charcot's hysteria.. most delightful! what would it have been like to sit in front of him and hear him deliver a lecture on the female neurosis?!?! to be informed of a scientific breakthrough! rather than read it a million years later in some boring old psychology textbook !
a most passionate and detailed account of two young people, who both want the same thing: to make the world a better place for the m...more
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Read in September, 2008
recommends it for:
anyone interested with the human mind
It was amazing…that I can finish a book about lunacy this thick… But this book is by far one of the finest fiction novel I have ever read. All throughout, more than 600 pages (have i mentioned how thick it is..) of Human Traces, this novel has been fun and by fun I mean emotionally scarring….! Approaching the end of this novel I found myself regretting; why did I went and picked this book to read, I regret having to read this book not because it was badly written but because the story was ...more
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Read in August, 2006
i was stuck in the airport in dublin waiting for my flight to new york, without any reading material (the horror!!). thus, i picked this out of the meager selections the airport store had. they were featuring Faulks, obviously, as an Irish author. thus, i was skeptical (i hadn't ever heard of him before). but i loved this book -- partially because i like complex philosophical/psychological/scientific ruminations, and this book had plenty of that. it's as if he was trying to answer the question o...more
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I went to a lecture on the History of the Asylum, and this book was recommended by the lecturer as a fairly accurate portrayal of that particular period and the kinds of attitudes and treatments that existed. It follows two would-be psychiatrists from their late teenage years onwards as they search for a way to accurately describe and cure various forms of mental illness.
It's a bit dark and drags occasionally (the author has a tendency to put in the academic papers that the characters write i...more
It's a bit dark and drags occasionally (the author has a tendency to put in the academic papers that the characters write i...more
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Read in January, 2008
There's no point in writing a review about just HOW good a writer Faulks is. The word on this fellow has long been out. But I am amazed to see just how deep and wide his toolbox is.
This book just hits the ground running in a way that reminded me of T.C. Boyle, Michael Ondaatje and the late great Robertson Davies. Yeah, he's THAT good.
The puzzle for me is why he is also the new James Bond novelist. I'm quite sure this will be the best written and possibly most intricate Bond novel eve...more
This book just hits the ground running in a way that reminded me of T.C. Boyle, Michael Ondaatje and the late great Robertson Davies. Yeah, he's THAT good.
The puzzle for me is why he is also the new James Bond novelist. I'm quite sure this will be the best written and possibly most intricate Bond novel eve...more
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Like Lonesome Dove and The Poisonwood Bible, this big novel engrosses the reader with a fast-moving story with much incident and believable characters, all written in a smooth but unobtrusive style. HT tells the personal and professional stories of two psychologists, one English the other French. The love stories are affecting, too plausible is the adulterous affair one has with the passionate – what else?—Russian Roya. Readers looking for a novel of ideas will be happy with the primer on th...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
those obsessed with the history of psychiatry
While I have loved all of Sebastian Faulks other books, this one did nothing for me. It starts off in a promising fashion but goes downhill from there... he barely develops the characters and in his quest to prove a sweeping development of the history of psychiatry rushes through what should have been key moments in the characters lives, giving the reader very little insight into two men that we are supposed to care about. There are flashes of his past storytelling genius - a small bit about Wor...more
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Read in June, 2008
I am a training to be psychiatrist and throughly enjoyed reading this book. I felt it was a very well researched book, full of fact, that also managed to incorporate a group of characters and take you though their lives. I loved the parts where the boys were studying to be psychiatrists and actually felt quite motivated through their thoughts! I less enjoyed the ending when more of the familial story came to the front. I also felt the ending was a bit weak but would recommend this to any medical...more
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Read in June, 2006
What a grand and satisfying novel of ideas! I don't know how to begin to sing its praises. Two young men become "mad-doctors" at the end of the 19th century and during the course of their lives and careers begin to unravel and practice the various theories of brain function as related to insanity. So much is going on here, but if you boil it down, I suppose the one overwhelming theme is the discovery that what makes us "mad" is the same evolutionary mutation that also makes u...more
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Read in July, 2008
I really enjoyed this book, although I was expecting to find it hard to break into. I am a Faulks fan and really enjoy the challenge I find in reading his books. This one was very thought-provoking and interesting. The descriptions for instance in the asylum were great and I felt very drawn into the book. I think the ending of the book was slightly weak but that encourages you to think about the whole story and draw the conclusions about the message of life and humanity Faulks was trying to tell...more
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Read in June, 2006
It was interesting, the way it ended, with Thomas getting Alzheimer's and the whole thing with Jacques and Roya...i don't know, it all felt very *resolved* at the end, but i did find the couple of really long passages where lectures were quoted word for word quite boring and tended to skim over them somewhat, which possibly led to me thinking there could have been a bit more explanation on the 'is madness the price we pay for being human?' theme. But overall it was exlained very well and it was ...more
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Read in February, 2008
Interesting book which takes place at the end of the 1800's up through the start of World War I, a transition time for psychiatry and understanding the workings of the mind. After this I'll start re-reading 'War of the Nerves' - I read the beginning, which starts around the same time period, but exploring the issue of defining PTSD and 'shell-shock'.
This is a book of ideas, which often gets stalled by the discussion of ideas - is insanity necessary in our definition of being human?
This is a book of ideas, which often gets stalled by the discussion of ideas - is insanity necessary in our definition of being human?
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
amateur psychiatrists
Great characters with captivating storylines and incredible backdrops from gruesome Victorian asylums to mountains of Switzerland to African deserts - but too educative to make an enjoyable and satisfying read. It reads like a deliberate attempt at the construction of a story around the history and theories of psychology, I'm not sure that characters or plot necessarily came first which is maybe why the book plods a little.
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This was a very interesting book about the origins of psychiatry, as well as a story of two young men who gave their lives to the study and discovery of the medical science of psychiatry. Amid a sweet story of their love lives, friendship, and valiant adventures, we read of thier struggles and angst to grasp the evasive mysteries of the mind. Not a light read, but a worthwhile book to enjoy...1800's, France & Austria, Vienna...
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Read in October, 2006
recommends it for:
No one. Ever.
I found this book slow-moving and, in parts, dull meaning this novel actually took me several weeks to finish, and I consequently got bored with the plot fairly quickly. However, I loved the characters in the story, and Sebastian Faulks' style of writing made them develop into real, 3D human beings, really connecting them with the reader making 'Human Traces' an emotionally involving and thought provoking read.
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Read in October, 2007
This is a heavy book, but it is a very interesting look at how they dealt with mental illness in the 19th century. I was especially interested in the doctors' perception of schizophrenia, and the idea that it is a necessary result of the evolution process which gave humans self-awareness.
I recommend this book only if you can curl up in a corner and devote your concentration to it. It is not light reading!
I recommend this book only if you can curl up in a corner and devote your concentration to it. It is not light reading!
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"What if Freud had never lived? Our everyday explanations of motives -- repression, defensiveness -- might differ. Novels might contain less stream-of-consciousness narration. But sexual intercourse would still have begun, as Philip Larkin put it in a much-quoted line, in 1963. And psychiatry might be right where it is today."
The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
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