>>REVIEW
HUMAN TRACES
Sebastian Faulks
Random House, 609 pp.
Sebastian Faulks’s latest novel is not for the faint of heart, nor for the faint of wrist. At a hefty 609 pages, it takes us back to the Victorian era both in subject matter and in its lengthy, leisurely discourse. It’s also a book that asks a number of big questions, such as, what is the nature of madness, what makes us human and, indeed, what is life itself? It’s a novel devoted to ideas rather than to plot or to character.
Faulks hangs those ideas on the story of two doctors, Jacques Rebiere and Thomas Midwinter, who first meet in the mid-19th century when they are in their early 20s. Although from very different backgrounds, the two immediately click and decide to devote themselves to psychiatric medicine, at that time a fledgling discipline. Thomas works in a lunatic asylum where people are locked up for all sorts of reasons, not all to do with madness. Meanwhile, Jacques trains in Paris, observing Prof. Charcot – a character drawn from history rather than fiction – hypnotize his patients so they can act out their traumas in what amounts to a public performance.
Jacques eventually marries Sonia, Thomas Midwinter’s sister, and the three set up a clinic where the two men can treat patients with mental health problems and also study the connections between mind and body through observation and laboratory work. One of the patients is Olivier, Jacques’ brother, who has what today we would probably call schizophrenia, but many of the patients are young women suffering from "hysteria."
This category of patient includes Kitty, whose diagnosis serves to show how far the two doctors have drifted apart in their quest for answers. Jacques believes that suppressed childhood trauma is responsible for mental illness, while Thomas increasingly puts his faith in a genetic component, trying to tie it in with what was understood then about evolution.
Thomas correctly diagnoses Kitty’s condition, which has much more to do with a benign tumour than with the rather bizarre scenario that Jacques has concocted around her case history. To make matters worse, Thomas and Kitty fall in love. They tiptoe around Jacques, but the damage has been done and the two doctors go their separate intellectual ways.
Fans of Faulks’s previous novels, especially Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, shouldn’t expect a similar kind of book. This one is in some ways much more ambitious and its attempted reach takes readers to the very edge of what many will find acceptable in a novel. Some will pronounce it totally unsuccessful and others, including this reader, will be fascinated by the examination of the early treatment of madness and by the brilliant insights into the mind of Olivier, the sacrificial lamb.
Human Traces is a serious, thought-provoking novel and one that will richly reward a second reading. |
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