Where My Heart Used to Beat Synopsis
On a small island off the south coast of France, Robert Hendricks, an English doctor who has seen the best and the worst the twentieth century had to offer, is forced to confront the events that made up his life. His host, and antagonist, is Alexander Pereira, a man whose time is running out, but who seems to know more about his guest than Hendricks himself does. The search for sanity takes us through the war in Italy in 1944, a passionate love that seems to hold out hope, the great days of idealistic work in the 1960s and finally - unforgettably - back into the trenches of the Western Front.
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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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