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Snow Country: SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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Snow Country (2021) by Sebastian Faulks intrigued me because of its setting and premise … and I may also have been hooked by the cover. The story is in two parts and is set just before the First World War and then again in the inter-war years and tells of a number of young people in Austria who have in common that they meet at a sanatorioum in the Alps. Apart from each character’s individual story, there is a whole lot of detail of life at the time and even more discussion of life at large. Both Anton and Lena are to find help with their mental health issues from the strong and independent therapist, Martha Midwinter, the daughter of one of the founders of the Schloss, with Anton aided by learning what happened to Delphine, and Lena finally overcoming her sense of shame over her time in Vienna. Austrian psychiatry had moved on from the early mistakes of the influential Freud, his unhealthy and unhelpful obsession with hysteria, and it is Martha who embodies the forefront of the profession with her more compassionate, less judgemental talking therapies, and the hope it offers for a wide variety of prevailing mental health issues. They provide people with the potential of moving on and being able to live and love in a Europe and Austria that seem determined to be at war, damaging, killing and destroying the lives of countless millions in the run up to WW2. I will start by confessing I’m a big fan of Sebastian Faulks writing, and this is another great read. He is most definitely a master craftsman and this is another brilliant work of art. Both Anton and Lena are to find help with their mental health issues from the strong and independent therapist, Martha Midwinter, the daughter of one of the founders of the Schloss, with Anton aided by learning what happened to Delphine, and Lena finally overcoming her sense of shame over her time in Vienna. Austrian psychiatry had moved on from the early mistakes of the influential Freud, his unhealthy and unhelpful obsession with hysteria, and it is Martha who embodies the forefront of the profession with her more compassionate, less judgemental talking therapies, and the hope it offers for a wide variety of prevaling mental health issues. They provide people with the potential of moving on and being able to live and love in a Europe and Austria that seem determined to be at war, damaging, killing and destroying the lives of countless millions in the run up to WW2.

Snow Country | Sebastian Faulks | 9781786330185 | NetGalley Snow Country | Sebastian Faulks | 9781786330185 | NetGalley

Anton – a roaming journalist who witnesses the building of the Suez Canal before experiencing the horror of war. Following the success of Birdsong (1993), Faulks quit journalism to write full-time. [8] He has since published eight novels, the most recent being Where My Heart Used to Beat (2015), Paris Echo (2018) and Snow Country (2021). Faulks was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1993 and appointed CBE for services to literature in 2002. [9]The historical context is done well, we get a real sense of places and their atmosphere and the political changes are conveyed clearly. There are some good fairly brief scenes in the trenches and some quite graphic medical scenes which shows the frantic and difficult conditions of field hospitals. Through the Schloss the focus switches to treatments and views on mental health and this is interesting. A particularly strong element of the writing are the beautifully written descriptions of the area in and around the Schloss and these are so easy to visualise. Freud not mentioned in Human Traces. Too overwhelming a person. He cited a cancer diagnosis as proof of hysteria problems

Snow Country by Sebastian Faulks review — a blizzard of big ideas Snow Country by Sebastian Faulks review — a blizzard of big ideas

Through the gradual convergence of his characters’ lives, Faulks powerfully evokes the mood of a continent that still has not processed its collective trauma, even as the threat of another looms. “This is not the great age of belief any more,” Martha tells Anton. “We’re a third of the way through the new century. But the great advance in medicine and science has stopped. Instead, we’re trying to understand the death of 10 million men.” And of course, it also did not help that the story just felt like a badly done regurgitation of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. I hated reading The Magic Mountain, but even I have to concede that it was written well. I would never discourage anyone from reading it for themselves. I’m not sure I can do the same with Snow Country. I have read Sebastian Faulks’ other books over many years and this book is definitely as powerful as his others. This book follows the story started in Human Traces, published in 2005. I remember reading it on honeymoon in Thailand in 2006 and loving it. I wish the gap between reading these wasn’t as long, I can only remember the actual story vaguely (it was a long time ago!). This novel is set in Austria around the beginning of the 20th Century. The action centres on 3 characters: Lena, a young woman with minimal education, brought up by an alcoholic mother and learning to be self-sufficient at an early age she moves between suspicion and romance. Rudolf is an idealistic young student, the member of a radical Christian political group, and Anton, who loves Delphine, an older woman he meets in Vienna, until his country declares war on hers and he goes off to fight, returning to Vienna with a damaged lung and damaged psyche.The novel has a broad scope, covering love and loss, the politics of Austria at the beginning of the century and the aftermath of the First World War as the country moves to the right and the growing influence of Hitler. What was real was the smell of coffee from the kitchen next door, the sound of Delphine singing to herself as she tidied, her footsteps on the wooden floor. He went in, stood behind her and put his arms around her waist, then pressed himself against her. Among the tangled minutiae of human connection, Faulks laces the political and social upheaval of Europe in the first 30 years of the last century. The scope of this is remarkable; characters’ lives play out in immense detail while retaining the observational quality Faulks has perfected rather than crossing over into mundane exposition. Lena and Anton’s stories spin off in tangents, with the reader following down the rabbit hole, eager to see where it leads.

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