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.

An enjoyable read by the author who impressed me so much with Birdsong, set around World War 1 some years ago.
The two main characters, Thomas and Jacques, meet as young men with a shared desire to diagnose and treat psychiatric illness, in particular, for Jacques, the condition of his older brother Olivier.
The story is a walk through the historical development of psychiatry, using the two men to carry the plot. Their dedication and perseverance is admirable, as they confront their lack of ability to test for the psychiatric conditions but
learn to diagnose the conditions in their experience.
They start a sanatorium to care for patients, providing nourishing meals, massage and a healthy care environment. Their lives continue together, Jacques marries Thomas's sister Sonia, Thomas marries Kitty, a patient whose misdiagnosis by Jacques creates a barrier between the two men.
Kitty and Thomas marry, and have two daughters whereas Jacques has a son called Daniel with Sonia.
What makes the story interesting are the digressions the men and their wives experience through the story; both men setup a sanatorium and establish a cable car to the summit of the nearby mountain, Jacques' affair with a young woman called Raya, Thomas's trip to Africa and his impromptu postmortem of a warrior.
It has a a detailed account of the knowledge gained in the early development of psychiatry, and many of the doctors named had discovered a crucial aspect of the puzzle.
Sadness visits Jacques as his brother who he rescued from an asylum acts on his delusions and kills himself. His son Daniel also dies during service in the War, and both events weigh on him, particularly the death of his only child. Sadly the successful seance that Jacques attended achieved a link to his dead son which upset him further. He and Sonia remain happy together, in fact it is revealed that she knew about his affair and ensured he was able to recover his professional and private life after Raya left.
Sadly Thomas succumbs to dementia as.he ages but he has a chance to tell his family about his problems prior to his final deterioration in a reunion at his family home in England. The following is a touching quotation
" ' As a doctor I have achieved absolutely nothing. Nothing at all, though God knows I tried. But in love I have been rich'..….' He looked one last time down the table of anxious faces. ' My mind may not know you,' he said, ' but in my heart you are remembered' "
Having worked with people experiencing dementia I can relate to the honesty that Sebastian Faulks has portrayed throughout this touching portrayal of psychiatry and human beings

Not sure why this one took me so long. It was pretty good, which is always a nice surprise when you go into a book blind. Wished the ending was a bit long but then I suppose it would've turned into a Dan Simmons thing where the last part of the novel feels like the beginning of a new story.

The back cover overview is a good summary of the book's broad themes, and based on my reading of Birdsong, I eagerly looked forward to this large novel.

Set in the late 19th and early 20th century, the story is based around two young friends, who have an interest in the human mind, which leads them into psychiatry. One, Jacques, has a mentally damaged brother, and the other, Thomas, a wonderful sister, Sonia, who will be integral to their long connection.

There are, of course, meaty relationship developments, with love lost, maintained and changed, but the major theme is the story around the start of psychiatry, and alternative views on the human mind and its frailty. The two friends' theories and resultant treatment views are nicely encapsulated by their plans for how to treat one of the patients in their sanatorium in Austria.

Clearly some huge research has been done for this novel around historical viewpoints about 'human thought' and coping with or helping the mentally damaged or different.

A good read, although I struggled with some of the lengthy sections that gave background and detail to the development of modern psychiatry/psychology, especially in Europe.

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 is the meaning of life and consciousness" but at the same time managed to create a compelling character story, with an interesting plot. i highly recommend.

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 have any sympathy and an interest in the way his brothers brain works. With the local Cure Abbe Henri encouraging Jacques in his education he studies medicine and it is while holidaying with the Cure after successful examination results that he first meets Thomas Midwinter.

Thomas a young man from Lincolnshire, England also studying medicine is staying in the same boarding house in Deauville, France, with his sister Sonia and her husband, as Jacques and Henri. Despite initial language difficulties which the young men soon overcome, they find they share more than just medicine in common but both have a specific interest in psychiatry. A desire to learn more about how the human brain functions. As Thomas explains to Sonia he feels he has found a friend that although coming from a completely different background thinks in the same way as him. When they part at the end of the holiday they make a pact to remain friends and one day work together when they have finished their degrees.

What a complex and enjoyable novel this turned out to be. It took me so much longer than normal to read as I needed to really concentrate on the scientific information. It was no surprise to learn that Sebastian Faulks spent five years researching Victorian psychiatry before writing this novel. There was just so much information to take onboard, some of which is quite disturbing but important as we follow the life story of these two young men as it unfolds after their chance meeting. The drama of their lives is blended seamlessly with the ongoing exploration of the human mind.

It was absolutely fascinating and I would recommend it highly to any fan of Sebastian Faulks, he is a master storyteller. However be warned this is not a quick or light read and some of the descriptive passages are not for the faint hearted.

This is huge novel whose main characters are two boys with very different backgrounds who meet in the latter half of the nineteenth century and both become psychiatric doctors or alienists as they were then called. They go into partnership and start a clinic in Switzerland with ambitions to discover the true causes of mental illness and as a consequence understand the way the mind works. It is an epic story in the manner of War and Peace and includes a lot of detailed psychological and psychiatric theory from the end of the nineteenth century as well as being an operatic and dramatic story. It contains an astonishing amount of detailed research and includes some very interesting theories most notably the one that schizophrenia or dementia praecox as it was also called is a necessary condition of being human. It proposes that consciousness or self awareness is an evolutionary development which was an inevitable outcome of the development of language and writing. The two doctor's search for knowledge about the mechanism of the mind takes them from adventures in the unexplored plains of central Africa to the mountains of California. It also encompasses the tragedy of the first world war. Like all the author's books it is beautifully written and describes the extremes of human emotions and experience with precision and lightness of touch. The author is clearly passionate about the subject and combines complex ideas and theories into a very readable and satisfying novel.

An insightful, thought-provoking and at times difficult and challenging read walking the reader through the world of nineteenth century psychiatry from a number of perspectives, including from the doctor's point of view and that of the patient. Although requiring some fortitude at times (!) I enjoyed learning about the science of psychology and understanding of the human brain in those few decades at the turn of the last centuryl. The novel stimulates pause for thought as it grapples with what it is that makes us human.

The first thing to say about this book was that it is very long, with nearly 800 pages to get through. Sometimes those pages were littered with extremely detailed recounts of lectures on the ins and outs of the brain and psychology, which to someone who has minimal interest or knowledge in such things may be a tad excessive. I for one was recommended this book because of my interest in the way the mind works, and I did find a lot of the more scientific aspects of the book very intriguing, however having a full chapter devoted to the retelling of a lecture can disrupt the flow of the story somewhat, and it often gave me the impression that the writing was trying to be too clever for its own good. Putting that aside, the overarching plot of the relationships between the main 3 characters which take place over 50 plus years is enthralling and heartfelt. You do really feel like you're going through this journey of their lives with them. Often the characters make mistakes and do questionable things, but it is that which keeps them relatable and well-rounded human beings. The author's main aim of the book I believe was to explore the reasons behind what makes humans as we are, and on that I would say he did a pretty good job. It will be a story that will stay with me for the years to come.

Human Traces feels like 2 books strangely combined. It is presented as historical fiction and is indeed a novel about Thomas, Jacques & Sonia, the first 2 being “alienists” or psychiatrists as we would know them now. Within it, however, mainly dressed up as narrative, there are extensive sections which are effectively treaties on the history of mental illness and the development of psychiatry, psychoanalysis & neurology in the late 19th/ early 20th century. This makes the story become disjointed and less moving and even though I am interested in these subjects, I lost interest due to the didactic style.

The book itself is also EXTREMELY long, overly so. Was Mr Faulks paid by the word, I wonder? What are editors doing these days? It is undoubtedly underpinned by extensive research but did the author really have to put it all in the book? if Mr F wished to share this, it would have been better to publish it as 2 separate pieces of work, one fiction and one factual.

I have long been a fan of this author but I am afraid I now have no interest in reading the rest of this trilogy.

It is a book that I have enjoyed reading through slowly, there was not the urge to keep going except at certain passages where it was more of a don't put me down book. So an ideal bedside book where you read for an hour or so and then put the book down. The subject matter also is one that makes one think so it's perhaps good it is not a pageturner. There were one or two areas that were less interesting and longwinded, the sort of thing you might well skip but I persevered as was wondering why they were in the book and maybe they had a bearing on the whole story. The human brain and insanity, what an interesting subject. I believe that Sebastian took five years to research this book and it shows, some of the 'thinking' of the time that he incorporated I had read about before. Organic disease or it all being in the mind? Or both? Good questions and a good story written around that. On the strength of this book I will take on reading more of Sebastian Faulks work.

I was tentative beginning this book because I so loved Engleby, the first book by Faulks I read, and was afraid I would be disappointed. I wasn't. In Human Traces Faulks traces the early history of psychiatry from the alienists of the late 1900s through to the end of the first world war, but does so through the lives of two extraordinary men, Englishman Thomas and Breton Jacques driven by personal history and their own youthful intelligence and fire to understand how the mind works and to solve and cure mental illness. Towards the end I got a little confused with characters but this was more than made up for by Faulks bringing to life a time in history when the fields of psychology, psychiatry and neurology were in their infancy. His research into different areas of study must have been intense: the sanotoriums in the Alps, fossilised human footprints in the Great Rift in Africa, fin de siecle Paris and London, fighting in the Italian Alps in World War One, Faulks brought all of these alive for me with heartbreaking force.