A beautifully written novel.

Would you consider the audio edition of Where My Heart Used to Beat to be better than the print version?

Faulks is a brilliant writer and I'm sure that the print version would be just as enjoyable to read as the audio version was to listen to. I have read a few of Faulks' novels and enjoyed them nearly as much as the audio version.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Where My Heart Used to Beat?

I enjoyed the whole fascinating story. It was a pleasure to try and guess where the twists and turns of the plot were leading.

What about David Sibley’s performance did you like?

It was well read and easy to follow. I would guess that David Sibley enjoyed reading it.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, I found it difficult to stop listening, but life goes on back in the big bad world.

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7 people found this helpful

Engaging Story

Any additional comments?

I very much enjoyed listening to this book as Sebastian Faulks never fails to deliver. But can you really believe that two intelligent, strong individuals, (spoiler following) who are madly, deeply in love could lose each other so easily, and not put in a supreme effort to seek and search each other out, when the time was appropriate? I found it hard to believe, and a great deal of the book centers around this affair de l'amour.

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2 people found this helpful

Heartbreaking and Beautiful

This is an original and profoundly moving novel that moved me emotionally in ways I had not thought possible. I urge everyone to experience this book which is everything a great novel should be. The reading is flawless.

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2 people found this helpful

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this is a very moving and intriguing story could not stop listening highly recommended ..

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1 person found this helpful

Great read. Marvellous story.

A book that includes the sad tales of both world wars, exposes the shameful psychiatric services of the early twentieth century, but has romance and depth is a great achievement.
Descriptively astonishing and complex.
Some of the medical references were not perfect IMHO

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3 people found this helpful

Enthralling and moving

What an engrossing novel beautifully written and well-read, I had not foreseen some of the revelations at the end and, after I'd finished listening, sat for a long time reflecting on it. I felt incredibly moved by it.
I have only one complaint - why do the producers, editors, or whoever, not listen to the recordings right through? Near the end of Chapter 15 is an interruption, where the narrator stops and speaks out of character, to re-records something - it completely broke the spell! This seems to occur quite often in audiobooks and it's irritating and unprofessional. I'm just glad it wasn't in the final chapter or it might have completely ruined the experience.
Other than that, a fabulous listen.

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A magnificent and heart rending story

This book speaks of the angst of the two world wars, of love and friendship and sadness and loss
It is an affecting story and one of Sebastian Faulks best. I did not want it to finish

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A memorable and moving novel

As with the author’s other fine novels, Birdsong and Charlotte Grey, this is a book about love and war, but even more about memories. Set in the 1980s the narrative switches back and forth recounting the experiences of the two main characters. One lived through the horrors of the first World War and the other survived the second. Both are psychiatrists with approaches to treating the mentally ill that were out of step with the accepted dogma prevailing in their time. Psychosis is a thread through the book and is extrapolated into 20th century history scared by devastating wars that shook the world. Inevitably there is a veil of melancholy over the novel as thoughts of lost comrades, friends and lovers are recalled, but more I was moved by the veracity of people's feelings and how they coped with life.

The book is rich in allusions to classical and more modern literature as well as medical and psychiatric theories, all seamlessly incorporated into the narrative without seeming contrived.

It was a pleasure to listen to fine writing performed by a narrator who took care to give authentic voices to a range of characters.

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A slice of life as it was for some.

I drifted in and out of the story. The naration was good and I only fell asleep twice in the whole book, but was able to recover. Again we face the stark reallity of military law as was then. Save a mans life to shoot him tomorrow, how many have we pardoned now?

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"I had lived the wrong life."

Would you try another book written by Sebastian Faulks or narrated by David Sibley?

Yes.

Would you recommend Where My Heart Used to Beat to your friends? Why or why not?

Yes, with reservations (see below)

What three words best describe David Sibley’s performance?

One-paced.

Was Where My Heart Used to Beat worth the listening time?

Yes.

Any additional comments?

There are a number of instances in this novel when Sebastian Faulks seems to include episodes -- on aspects of war (both World Wars), debates in psychiatry, air-travel, a childhood home, and romantic encounters – as much because his fluency with words and careful research allow him to do so as for their relevance to his story. Writing so effectively about psychiatry, Faulks gives the impression that he could easily write a monograph on the subject, as he has written books in the style of Ian Fleming and P. G. Woodhouse. Moreover, in some of the episodes Faulks sets loose potential stories that come to very little. As a consequence, there are a few novels competing with each other within this one novel. The best example is the opening scene when the main character and narrator, Robert Hendricks, pays for sex in New York and then, on returning to London, receives a threatening message on his answer phone that, inexplicably, overrides his answer-message. This creates a disturbing edge and there are other hints that this could be a thriller but they come to nothing. At the other end of the novel, Faulks creates real sadness and regret when Hendricks opens a letter sent to him by his father but undelivered until the son is in his 60s, but the emotion is not commensurate with the character whose life we have followed and, moreover, followed mostly in Hendricks’ own words. That letter is the moment that truly catches one, much as Faulks caught readers throughout "Birdsong".

Even allowing that Sebastian Faulks is not Robert Hendricks, “Where My Heart Used to Beat” displays a curious lack of sustained or deep commitment to the terrors that this novel of the twentieth-century encompasses. Accordingly, there is quite a difference between “Where My Heart Used To Beat” and another novel that tells a first-person story of the “benighted century”, as Faulks/Hendricks puts it, and even shares a titular reference, William Boyd’s “Any Human Heart”. Boyd’s novel catches one throughout, while tracing a life-time of Logan Mountstuart’s experiences, private and public. Conversely, for a novel that explores a character somewhat lacking in human qualities, I would look to Faulk’s “Enderby” because, unlike “Where My Heart Used to Beat”, its tone and control of episodes and genre is very sure.

For all these shortcomings, “Where My Heart Used to Beat” is full of passing and acute insights, as is any Sebastian Faulks’ novel. One example is Hendricks, watching his widowed mother die and observing that so much intimate knowledge of himself in the two or so years before he became self-conscious had died with his mother. Hendricks even understands that for thirty or more years since a wartime love affair ended, he "had lived the wrong life". Yet the facility with language and form that so distinguishes Sebastian Faulks’ work means that when the novel gets to the above point of insight I still felt that the character of Robert Hendricks could have gone in a number of different directions: a novel of exposure and shame; terrifying self-revelation; thriller … Instead, there is an odd late episode in Hendricks’ professional life set in his childhood home. For me, “Where My Heart Used to Beat” should have been more sad or should have been a different novel altogether.

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5 people found this helpful