Where My Heart Used to Beat Synopsis
The new bestseller from the author of Birdsong and A Week in December."e;You don't live the life I have without making some enemies."e;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.
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Sebastian Faulks Press Reviews
'A masterpiece...a terrific novel, humming with ideas, knowing asides, shafts of sunlight, shouts of laughter and moments of almost unbearable tragedy' -- Toby Clements Sunday Telegraph
'A pleasure from start to finish...WHERE MY HEART USED TO BEAT is that rare book, a page-turning read that also has a significant intellectual and emotional charge.' -- Alexander Larman Sunday Express
'Compelling...profoundly moving' -- Leyla Sanai The Independent on Sunday
'Faulks writes in the grand tradition of realist fiction...Fans of Faulks - and they are legion - will find a great deal to admire and ponder and sorrow at within these pages. Its aspirations are sincere and noble' Spectator
'Faulks gets better and better with every book. This is surely one of the year's best novels.' -- John Harding Daily Mail
'a powerful and moving novel' Daily Express
'This is not a wartime tragic romance, or a simple story of trauma. It is much more affecting than that.' -- Rosemary Goring Herald
About Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Faulks was born and brought up in Newbury, Berkshire. He worked in journalism before starting to write books. He is best known for the French trilogy, The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray (1989-1997) and is also the author of a triple biography, The Fatal Englishman (1996); a small book of literary parodies, Pistache (2006); and the novels Human Traces (2005) and Engleby (2007). He lives in London with his wife and their three children. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1993 and appointed CBE for services to literature in 2002. He lives in London with his wife and their three children.
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