Review
Have you ever thought about how remarkably different people's lives are - that an intricate arrangement of choices, chance meetings, unforeseen circumstances, and relationships can combine to create a unique life path? Or, on the other hand, have you ever marveled over the universal sameness of the human experience? In
A Possible Life: A Novel in Five Parts, Sebastian Faulks explores these seemingly contradictory yet complimentary ideas through five main characters, living in five different places, during five different time periods.
First, there's Geoffrey (1938), a young and naïve schoolteacher who enlists during WWII ("…there would be, he imagined, an intense but brief struggle in Europe") only to find himself in Nazi-occupied Poland in an unspeakable situation; Billy (1859), an industrious Englishman who works his way out of poverty and gets...
Beyond the Book
It's no surprise that Sebastian Faulks might consider himself a Francophile. After all, a good number of his 14 books are set (or at least partially set) in France, including his three most famous novels, known as the "French trilogy":
The Girl at the Lion d'Or;
Birdsong; and
Charlotte Gray, which in 2001, was made into a movie starring Cate Blanchette.
In 1961, when Faulks was eight, he first visited France with his family. He recalls in an interview, "…we stayed in Deauville, which was an old-fashioned resort in Normandy, in a boarding house... Very nice food,...
