Human Traces by Sebastian Faulkes

[janeite]

I have read 300 pages but still have at least that still to go.

Some of it I am liking a lot and other bits (the sciency lectures and pages and pages of Jaques' speech about the mind etc etc) are making me lose the will to live. Can I skip those pages and carry on reading? Do I want to carry on reading? Does it get better or worse?

Thanks.

it's a bizarre book isn't it, half story, half undigested research....i didn't get very involved with the characters and only kept reading in a "vaguely intereted in educating myself" way

engleby is a much more integrated book about mental illness than this one

ie i wouldn't bother really if you are expecting the story to grip you

Just read Engleby, which was the first of his I'd read and the reason I picked up this one. I quite like the character interactions - but this is interspersed with whole chunks of tediously written science, which doesn't seem to be adding anything to the story.

It's been ages since I read it - so quite vague - is this the one with the married couples running the sanatorium in the Alps.
If so I liked it, in a textbook with story kind of way, rather than as a novel with facts.

Janet & John learn Psychiatry.

I think I had doubts about it around half way through, but enjoyed it in the end, worth persevering with having come this far I think

That's the one. Just found an old Guardian review of it which said,
'The problem with the novel is that it is alarmingly dominated by expository argument. As the narrative progresses, characterisation falls away, to be replaced by talking heads discussing the nature of cognition, the relationship between man as thinking animal and the human predisposition to madness..'

Spot on I think - he gave up trying to tell a story and started to pontificate instead.

i think that's what i meant...with engleby, you know he has done his psychiatric research but it is in the fabric of the story, not undigested lumps

Must try Engleby, if it's a better version of this.

Exactly. Engleby was flawed but at least it was a story, that the reader could remain engaged with on an emotional level.

S Faulkes is a bit like that with all his novels, I think. Everyone raved about Birdsong, tbh I found parts of it quite tedious. He does tend to wander off into pointless cul-de-sacs, which add nothin g to the plot, the atmosphere, the context. Characters and plot remain frozen while we learn something pointless about inedible fish in the small rivers of Northern France (for example).

I hate it when writers try to be clever.

Or is it that's thick?

No it doesn't get better. It is all about an author who thinks he is so good that he can bore us with his current interests without making the slightest effort to craft an interesting novel for readers with multi dimensional characters. And what was all that stuff about the mountain railway about?

Is it ME that's thick?

Ans: Well...yes.

I haven't got to the mountain railway yet! I think I probably never will....

Wukter.

Since me 15 year old read Madame Bovary last week and I have never managed to get past about page 12, I've been thinking that about myself too!

Meant 'my' not 'me' 15 year old - told you I was thick, innit?!

more entertainment on this thread than in the damn book.

Madam Bovary annoyed me. Get some cop on woman!

Janeite - We read Human Traces for our book group. I hated it...I felt SF had just written realms and realms and then realising he had done too much, edited out about five years here and there in the 'plot' for no reason but to shorten the book. I was very bored by it.
I have read several of his books, and Birdsong to me was the best of them. The rest have been a massive disappointment, including Engleby.
If you ditch it, my view is you'll miss nothing!

I ditched it! Took it back to the library this morning and replaced it with White Tiger and another of those silly Giles whatshisname Oscar Wilde mysteries. Oh and I bought the new one by whoever it was that wrote This Brutal Art.

Think I'll leave over-wordy Mr Faulks alone for a while.

I lost the will to live reading Human Traces.

definitely skip the rest and use it as a doorstop ... had to read it for my book group and as the pages went on and on my irritation mounted .... it is absolutely a 'losing the will to live' book

I'm so glad it's not just me!

Yes - it would make an excellent door stop,or maybe a stool for a small child?

I used to really like SF but he's gone right up his own botty recently and not yet emerged.