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322nd out of 724 books
—
660 voters
Human Traces
As young boys both Jacques Rebi�re and Thomas Midwinter become fascinated with trying to understand the human mind. As psychiatrists, their quest takes them from the squalor of the Victorian lunatic asylum to the crowded lecture halls of the renowned Professor Charcot in Paris; from the heights of the Sierra Madre in California to the plains of unexplored Africa.
As the con...more
As the con...more
Paperback, 787 pages
Published
July 6th 2006
by Vintage
(first published September 26th 2005)
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I'm on page 638 of 787 of Human Traces: Really enjoying this book, a fictional story based around fact and the early stages of attempts to understand mental illness and psychosis; the beginnings of psychiatry and psychology. It offers a fascinating, insightful, as well as beautifully-articulated understanding of the origins of such 'illnesses', drawing together various schools of thought and much of the scientific theory we have come to understand as providing the most sensible (and sensical) ex...more
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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, as an Irish British author. 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 of "what i...more
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I was really looking forward to reading this book: highly recommended, by an author I enjoy and on a fascinating topic. The idea of two young Victorian psychiatrists [or alienists as they were called] meeting and forming a new method of treating insanity interested me greatly, and so I started the book with great anticipation. The female characters in the story were even more interesting, Sonia with her eye for organisation, and those that turned from being patients to being part of the family a...more
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Angst. The sea. Absent parents. Madness. The development of psychiatry and neurology in the latter part of the 19th century. Great, provocative subject matter. And yet, with such interesting material, Faulks manages to create the sloggiest slog of a book that ever needed to be slogged through. It was like historical fiction at its worst: the characters were a flimsy prop used to explore the themes of madness and mad doctoring. Faulks wrote much more interestingly and passionately about the theor...more
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Faulks seems to like researching the heck out of it of his chosen subject, and using it as architecture for weighty novels. Here his structure is the treatment of mental illness and the historical development of psychiatry and psychology from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century. The building blocks are two young men, one French, the other English, who meet on a beach in Deauville and, rather rashly, commit themselves to a future partnership in mad doctoring. They go their separate ways...more
On the whole I enjoyed this; it was a wide scope, from the 1860s to the 1920s and ranges across Europe the US and Africa. It tells the story of two men, Thomas Midwinter and Jacques Rebiere and their dreams of working out how the human mind functions and solving the problem of madness. There are lengthy descriptions of nineteenth century psychiatry and the development of some modern ideas with the theory of evolution and the human condition thrown in.
The book is at its strongest when dealing wi...more
The book is at its strongest when dealing wi...more
A difficult book to rate and review. Parts of it were sublime; the rest tedious and didactic. If it had been 250 pages shorter it would have been outstanding. As it stands, the beginning (full of hope) and the end (full of despair) were worth the read. I cried twice in this book: at the beauty of the opening pages and the pathos of the closing pages. It's a pity that the middle was such heavy going.
Obviously authors who've already made their name are allowed to ignore basic writing rules such as...more
Obviously authors who've already made their name are allowed to ignore basic writing rules such as...more
Oh dear. This is one of the most unfortunate books I've read in quite some time. Sebastian Faulks has a name in popular historical fiction and Human Traces, which seemed to promise a fascinating tale of two 19th century pioneers of psychiatry - a subject I have a strong interest in - gave me high hopes for a quality read. It is clear that Faulks is a functional writer who knows how to construct a novel, but while the subject has obviously been meticulously researched I found the prose somewhat b...more
An ambitious monster from the ever reliable faulks. This tells the story of friendship, marriage and families of two imminent doctors, specialising in mental health.
Jacques Rebeire is from poor french stock and has an elder brother with mental issues. This explains his desire to unlock the histories of the human brain.
Thomas Midwinter is richer and more interested in literature. There is a running theme between the book about literature and mental health, referring to health problems as like typ...more
Jacques Rebeire is from poor french stock and has an elder brother with mental issues. This explains his desire to unlock the histories of the human brain.
Thomas Midwinter is richer and more interested in literature. There is a running theme between the book about literature and mental health, referring to health problems as like typ...more
This is an absolutely fascinating book that weaves medicine, travel, psychology, paeleo-anthropology, religion, evolution, history, literature - and probably a few more things besides - into the tale of the sometimes strained relationships between two fallible people from very different backgrounds. Thomas' theory to explain the existence and continuation of the apparantly maladaptive trait of hearing voices is a masterly synthesis that is intriguingly credible: even though I know that it would...more
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This was the second book of Faulk's I have read, the first being Engleby which I absolutely enjoyed. I found Human Traces quite laborious to read, not just because it is very large but because it seems, at times, quite obvious and tedious. Perhaps this is partly due to the era in which it is set (late 1800s to early 1900s) and the language this subsequently calls for; and that the fact that the book is very long - but these things shouldn't matter t an engaging story. I couldn't help asking, at...more
Human Traces sits alongside Birdsong as one of Faulks's masterpieces. The backdrop are the events of the last half of the 19th century and first half of the twentieth - not just the First World War, but more especially developments in science, evolution, medicine, psychiatry and psychology. The intense relationship between the two main characters is soured over a fundamental disagreement - the hubris of the worst excesses of Freudian psychobabble against the groundedness of neuropsychology. But...more
The book has a protracted plot spanning decades from the childhood life of Jacques Rebiere into his adulthood and finally old age. It passes as a tiring read and it is easy to forget events and details at the beginning due to many settings and failure of an overriding setting. However, the research done for the psychological ailments in the story is excellent, details are accurate and fascinating too, it might fit the bill of a psychology fan facts book. But the again, it seems there was too muc...more
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.
At first, I was indulged with the book. I was wondering about the future of Jacques and Thomas. What was wrong with Jacques' brother? How was their friendship going to be like? Somehow, in the beginning, I thought, "Hey this should be a good story. I like Medicine, I might like this."
I was not even halfway when I realize, "This is going to be another story that will be in my shelf for the next few months stuck two hundred pages till the end." Indeed, that was true. I read it when I could, stopp...more
I was not even halfway when I realize, "This is going to be another story that will be in my shelf for the next few months stuck two hundred pages till the end." Indeed, that was true. I read it when I could, stopp...more
The story of two pioneering 'alienists' struggling to find a cure for 'madness' in the 19th century was at most times enjoyable and enlightening, though sometimes a bit hard going.
I preferred the parts of the book that dealt with the personal lives of the two main characters, their personal relationships, families and other loved ones. The book covers quite a long span, from their childhood to old age, I do love a good saga!
Less enjoyable were the long parts detailing what might or might not be...more
I preferred the parts of the book that dealt with the personal lives of the two main characters, their personal relationships, families and other loved ones. The book covers quite a long span, from their childhood to old age, I do love a good saga!
Less enjoyable were the long parts detailing what might or might not be...more
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For reasons I no longer recall - perhaps it was because I thought Birdsong very good - I decided several years ago to read all of Faulks novels. Unfortunately, early attempts at both Charlotte Gray and On Green Dolphin Street failed, and it was only last year that I tried again and managed to finish both books. Charlotte Gray, though glacially-paced, was worth reading; On Green Dolphin Street less so. Nor was I that impressed by Engleby, which I last Christmas. Human Traces, which must be Faulks...more
This book is set around 1876 and is about two young men from different backgrounds both wanting to develop their career and expertise in the area of neurological disorders. It starts off great and captured my attention at the start but I found half way through the momentum slowed and lost my attention. It was very interesting at the start, especially if you are into how asylums and institutions of that kind were run back then. It explores the development of treatments and diagnoses which I did f...more
I read this after Engleby, and it was very different and not really something that gripped me, even though I was interested in the subject matter and history of psychiatry/mental health etc. A lot of the history, medical knowledge and speeches was dealt with in tedious detail and the lives/stories of the people seemed incidental. In some ways perhaps there were too many characters and you didn't get to empathise with them sufficiently. What was the point of Jacques' affair, for example - just an...more
In my opinion, Sebastian Faulks is right up there with the best of our writers. He studied English at Cambridge. He worked as a features writer for The Telegraph papers before becoming Deputy Editor of The Independant on Sunday. This is the third novel of his I have read. Birdsong was excellent and Charlotte Gray very good, but for me Human Traces is superior.
Is the writing any better in this novel? Mr Faulks writes beautifully throughout all three of these books.
Is it the subject matter? There...more
Is the writing any better in this novel? Mr Faulks writes beautifully throughout all three of these books.
Is it the subject matter? There...more
When I started reading 'Human Traces' for the first fifty pages I was unsure it was going to appeal to me. Once the introductions to the two protagonists had been made and the author went on to describe their first meeting it was starting to work for me.
The first protagonist we meet is Jacques Rebiere, a farmers son from Brittany with an interest in science and a love for his mentally disturbed brother Olivier. Olivier is treated like an animal by the rest of his family, only Jacques seems to ha...more
The first protagonist we meet is Jacques Rebiere, a farmers son from Brittany with an interest in science and a love for his mentally disturbed brother Olivier. Olivier is treated like an animal by the rest of his family, only Jacques seems to ha...more
As the first book by faulks I have ever read, I really didn't know what to expect. I've also never really read a book about turn of the century mad-doctoring so this is quite a hard one to rate. But I will say on the whole, this is a great read. I found the pacing hard to take at times, with several years between some chapters and character development that seemed to change direction at random. Thomas and Jacques were great characters in their own right but their constantly referenced close frie...more
This could have been a fantastic book. A brilliant beginning to what promised to be an interesting story but it never happened. The two main characters were interesting enough to have carried a story and, when Faulks allowed them to do so, it was as good as anything he's written.
However, huge chunks read like an outdated psychology text book and added nothing to the narrative. The love affair between one of the characters and his wife was odd in that he saw her in the corridor one day and was vi...more
However, huge chunks read like an outdated psychology text book and added nothing to the narrative. The love affair between one of the characters and his wife was odd in that he saw her in the corridor one day and was vi...more
This isn't a book you can dip in and out of, it requires some serious attention. But that's not to say it doesn't reward you for spending the time on it. There are passages that are a delight to read, capturing perfectly the emotional peaks and troughs of being human. The text is somewhat technical, with lots of discussion of psychology, physiology, neurology and the like. A glossary would have helped, I feel. There is something of that nature, but it appears at about page 175, by which time you...more
Aug 06, 2011
Mya
added it
Not too sure what to say about this book. It's just one of those books about the life and times of particular people over many years (which means it doesn't hurry along or have any real climax). It deals with the early days of psychiatry and brain surgery type stuff and some of the theories expounded by the characters (e.g. Thomas's theory that everyone heard voices in the days pre-dating written language) quite interesting. Towards the end, I did wish it would hurry along a bit. He did well to...more
I'd be interested in others' opinions on this book. It's a 'landscape' book, looking at the sweep of existence and whether it means anything to be human through the eyes of characters working at the forefront of psychiatry and psychosis at the end of the nineteenth century. Dealing with the big questions, the characters lives are swept over: there is no detail of the minutiae of their lives (falling love etc). At first, this is freustrating but then you realise it is the point: in the mass of ti...more
The narrative fell into the deep pitfall of being obscured by the author's own opinions and viewpoints - the personalities of the two main characters blurred together as both of them had a tendency to have the same thoughts (about religion, love, women, society in general...). All too soon I could no longer see the characters, only the author's opinions behind the writing, so it did not feel like a real story.
The reader feels cheated at sensing a half-hearted and very boring plot disguising wha...more
The reader feels cheated at sensing a half-hearted and very boring plot disguising wha...more
I will avoid all books in the future that open with "An evening mist, salted by the Western sea . . ."
I picked this book up in an airport bookstore to pass the time on the 9.5 hour flight from Houston to Paris. The story itself gave me jetlag before we had even reached cruising altitude. After we landed, A kind flight attendant with the best of intentions came scurrying up behind me softly declaring "sir, sir, you've forgotten your book". "No, I didn't" I said.
While it's certainly better than an...more
I picked this book up in an airport bookstore to pass the time on the 9.5 hour flight from Houston to Paris. The story itself gave me jetlag before we had even reached cruising altitude. After we landed, A kind flight attendant with the best of intentions came scurrying up behind me softly declaring "sir, sir, you've forgotten your book". "No, I didn't" I said.
While it's certainly better than an...more
Anyone interested in the development of psychiatry and psychology as well as enjoying a strong story line should read this book - fascinating, I wished it would keep going...
This was a bit of a slog for me. If I was reading it mainly for the evolution of the study of the mind and the mind/body relatiionship, it would have been rivetting. However, I wanted to learn more about the personal lives of the two doctors, and ended up skimming a lot of the analyzing and theorizing included in the text. It was a revealing glimpse into the early thoughts on the subject and demonstrated just how far we have come in our understanding, but so dry in parts. There was potential but...more
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Faulks is the son of Pamela (Lawless) and Peter Ronald Faulks, a Berkshire solicitor who later became a judge. He grew up in Newbury. His mother was both cultured and highly strung. She introduced him to reading and music at a young age. Her own mother, from whom she was estranged, had been an actress in repertory. His father was a company commander in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, in which h...more
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