Whilst this book is the second in a planned trilogy, it can be read as a stand alone: it runs to 351 pages and was published in 2021. The first book Human Traces (2005) is set in the pre-first world war world, this one deals with a subsequent generation of characters and covers just pre-war to just pre world war two. The central setting is the enlightened Austrian sanatorium Schloss Seeblick, run by Martha, daughter of a previous owner.
The action runs through time in five parts. The centre of the narrative is the story of Lena a girl from a deprived background, in rural Austria, who grows and develops and older journalist Anton who is traumatised by the war and the unexplained loss of his partner, Delphine, at home in Vienna. They both gravitate towards each other and Schloss Seeblick, which reveals itself as a sanctuary for them and others.
Action is too strong a word for most of the story. One to one dialogue and a gentle third person narrator dominate between the disruption of the few action scenes. This is really a study in incremental development and quiet reflection following loss and pain, physical and mental, in an increasingly mad world, where the Schloss (asylum by a lake) can seem as an island of normality.
Themes of duality, consciousness and fate are dealt through relationships, like that of Martha and her twin sister and the increasingly parallel spiral of Lena and Anton’s lives, supported by detailed descriptions of scenes and thought.
To quibble, one or two developments seem to stretch coincidence. Also, Anton is a journalist, shouldn’t he have tried harder to find Delphine immediately after the war, why settle for the dead fly? These things though don’t compromise the fiction, which reads very easily and has cinematic qualities.
Overall, it must be that Faulks developed this novel in the sixteen years since the publication of part one. It is crafted in way that is literary and popular at the same time, carrying the readers attention with a calmly assured technique and serious empathetic thought about the nature of reality, life and living. Equally, as a third part is anticipated (not another sixteen years!) the ending, in the context of Austria in the thirties, feels provisional. As is speculated, maybe all endings are episodes in a repeating cycle of life and learning.
Mark's Reviews 