I loved this book and hoped it would never end. For me, it could easily have continued past its 570 pages. I've read some reviewers who thought the book was too long, but a lot of the material on the brain, the history of psychiatry and neurology was not new to me, and therefore not a struggle or tedious for me to read. In fact, I enjoyed reviewing so much that had fascinated me when I was younger, and I also gained some biological insights into consciousness that were new to me, from the thinking of Julian Jaynes, Thomas Szasz, J. Crichton-Browne, among others.
I developed an interest in neurology and psychiatry early in life, because of a friend who suffered from grand mal seizure and who also had to deal with a psychiatric diagnosis. I seriously considered studying psychology and neurology, and wrote some fairly decent papers on the brain for school, although I never pursued this interest professionally. I thought that Faulks did a great job of covering many aspects of mental illness - illustrating in fictional form what it might have meant to be mentally ill or working with the mentally ill back in those days (and still today in some parts of the world, which I've also read about, and believe me, it is colorful). Some of the lectures, and the case study of Katharina von A, for example, were a bit longish, but in a certain way, these elements, for me, made the book even more compelling because of their educational value, being quite authentic for the period, and presenting the various competing psychiatric points of view in a straightforward almost didactic style - yet all the while tempered by the personal interest we take in the lives of the members of the little Midwinter-Rebiere family. The cow-shed in rural France, the asylum in Britain, the hospital in Paris, the sanatorium in Austria all recreate the modalities for 'treating' the mentally ill in nineteenth-century Europe.
Yet surrounding the 'educational' dimension of this book is a plethora of the kind of detail and beauty we've come to expect of contemporary 're-creations' of 19th century literature. (There must be a better expression for conveying what I mean!) The book is like a living, moving painting in its vivid descriptions of nature, place, and character. In fact, I found the characters believable, sympathetic and, also in terms of their inner lives, rich. I loved the way the author took us through time with the main characters Sonia, Thomas and Jacques. Found them thoroughly believable and was interested at every turn in their unfolding lives.
I would love to see this as a film, if they could recreate the texture, color and moodiness of the novel (as was done, for example, with Charlotte Grey) but I don't wonder if the psychiatric dimension might be too disturbing for a popular audience. Maybe not, modern films are quite disturbing, after all. Anyway, films always manage to truncate, abridge and change novels, so perhaps it's best to keep it as a fabulous book that takes a nice long while to read.
Honorable Mention: I also enjoyed the side-trips to California, Africa and - having never read Faulks before - the scenes from world war 1 were just stunning in their vividness, beauty, and horror. I felt the sketching of the character of the young soldier was revelatory of a passion that finds a fulfillment in the situation of war - not in the killing - but in other aspects that I think we see in the best literature and art on the subject of war. Apparently, Faulks is well-known for war-writing.
But in this book, that is only one chapter. The rest is devoted to something else, the quest for healing, for wholeness, for 'being human' - a quest which has been a part of my own life (I did choose a medical profession, in the end), and I enjoy books that explore that quest intelligently.
This book is superb on so many levels, I really can't praise it enough.
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