Product Description

This B-format paperback brings the story of one family through four generations, and the scars that mark their shared history, to its optimum audience. Winner of the Prix Femina 2006, it is reminiscent of Nicole Krauss' "The History of Love" in its scale and passion.Narrated by four children from different generations of the same family, "Fault Lines" is a tale of a present haunted by the past. Moving from California to New York, from Haifa to Toronto and Munich, its stories unwind back through the years until, reaching the Holocaust, the devastating secret at the heart of the family's history is finally revealed."Fault Lines" is a riveting and poignant novel in which love, music and faith rage against the spectre of evil. Domestic in focus, epic in scope, and with powerfully drawn characters, it is an irresistible showcase for Nancy Huston's talents.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #147924 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
"* 'Spanning four generations, this ambitious, tightly crafted novel combines the psychological tension of a thriller with sweeping literary brilliance. It's a book that demands a comfortable sofa and a decent bar of chocolate. Savour it: you'll regret it if you don't.' - Sydney Morning Herald * 'Nancy Huston is a brilliant, lyrical, unforgettable writer.' - Janette Turner Hospital * 'Masterful; the language is direct and arresting; the story is engaging to the end. It's both a very human story and a novel of ideas, and it's challenging on both levels.' - Globe and Mail"

Clare Drewett, South Wales Argus
The novel's form both creates and deconstructs its own ambiguities leading to a fascinating read. Domestic in focus and epic in scope, Fault Lines is a captivating piece of storytelling.

About the Author
Nancy Huston was born in Calgary, Canada, in 1953 and studied in New England and New York. When she was twenty she went to Paris and decided to make it her home. Writing in both French and English, she translates her own work and is the author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, as well as plays, children's books and screenplays. Fault Lines, her eleventh novel, won France's prestigious Prix Femina in 2006.

Customer Reviews

Mixed bag of faults and strengths
Story of four generations of a family with a secret written through the narrative voice of each generation as a six year old. The secret turned out to be the 'legal' abduction of the main character by Nazis because of her blond features being a prototyype of Arian. Based on a true policy intitative known as the 'Fountain of Life' that affected some 250,000 children, the book covers a fascinating and little known abuse, but the plot fails to satisfy my curiousity or convince me. The first narrative - in the present day - is a peculiarly nasty and self-satisfied child and as the story unfolds we never find out why. It ends so abruptly I found myself looking to see if some pages had fallen out. The book's pitfalls are odd as it is clear the author has a real talent. It is as if the book was published before the writer had completed the novel.

However, I would recommend you read it yourself. It is interesting and I may have missed something obvious.

Interesting but flawed
"Fault Lines" is an interesting book. Presented in four sections going back in time, each section is twenty years after the next section, the book creates puzzles about the characters and then slowly reveals the answers as their past is revealed. Each section is presented as written by the parent of the child who wrote the previous section until the final section is written in 1944-45 by the great grandmother of the writer of the first section.

The story presented involves an aspect of Nazi history rarely written about and the author does a nice job of linking the sections together. But each section of the book is supposed to have been written by a six year old and the writing makes this unbelievable. Right from the start, we are presented with a character, Sol, who at six years old likes to look at videos of beheadings and rapes. He doesn't chew his food but lets it soak in his mouth and is overly concerned with his bowel movements. His oddities make him unbelievable and completely unlikeable but worse his behaviors are unexplained. Each of the other voices are from children who have been damaged but the reasons for their damage is part of the puzzle that is revealed as the story unfolds. The other three children, although not sounding like any six year old, are at least sympathetic. And each section also discusses a piece of history: the war in Iraq, the massacres in Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon, the Bay of Pigs (why is the US sending pigs to Cuba?), and finally the bombing of Dresden.

If you can get past the narration by these adult six year olds, there is an interesting story here. There is a unique humanity to the characters (other than Sol) that makes the book hard to put down. It is worth giving a try. I will add that the final section of the book was by far the best. It made me interested in finding a novel about life in Nazi Germany from the viewpoint of a child.

Half a book
I would have to agree with the previous reviewer in that this did feel like a half-written book that created four open-ended stories that only hung together tentatively, and which did not resolve themselves.

I was not aware of the Lebensborn (Fountain of Life) policy so found this aspect of the book particularly interesting. However, this was not explored in much depth and I was left feeling a bit short changed. The author herself had to write a note at the end of the book giving more explanation of this aspect of Nazi regime.

The style of writing was good I agree that the author is a talented storyteller. Nevertheless, I think a better approach to writing the book would have been to have journeyed forwards in time again having unravelled the secret that was being alluded to throughout the book. In this way the themes and character motivations could have been developped.