The Scottish Mail on Sunday - You
YOU READING GROUP SPECIAL
Join us at the Henley Literary Festival ofr a Q&A with bestselling author Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Faulks, author of this month’s book choice, is appearing at the Henley Literary Festival in October at a special YOU Reading Group event. He will be discussing his latest bestseller Where My Heart Used to Beat – hailed as ‘a masterpiece’ – and answering questions from our audience. We aim to make it just like one of your own book group get-togethers, but bigger and with the author himself! Plus, there will be a glass of prosecco for everyone on arrival from festival sponsor Laithwaite’s Wine.
The one-hour session, chaired by YOU books editor Kate Figes, will be on the afternoon of Saturday 1 October and promises to provide a unique insight into the novel. There’s plenty of time between now and Sebastian’s festival appearance, so order the book and get reading! After the event, Sebastian will be signing copies of his books, a selection of which will be on sale at the venue.
The Henley Literary Festival, supported by The Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail, takes place from 26 September-2 October in the riverside town of Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. For full programme details, visit henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk.
WHERE MY HEART USED TO BEAT THE STORY
It is 1980 and Robert Hendricks receives an unexpected letter from Alexander Pereira, an elderly French neurologist, asking him to make contact. Dr Pereira claims to have served in the First World War with Robert’s father, who died just before the conflict ended when Robert was two. Somewhat reluctantly, he travels to the remote island off the South of France where Dr Pereira lives with the promise of learning about the father he never knew. But, over a series of visits, it is Robert’s own moving life story which gradually emerges, and with it that of a 20th-century scarred by carnage. Now in his mid-60s, we learn of his solitary childhood, his liberating university days, his brutalising combat role in the Second World War and his pioneering work afterwards as a psychiatrist. Most heartbreaking is his consuming love affair with a beautiful Italian Red Cross worker, Luisa, in the summer of 1944. His experiences leave him with a jaundiced view of the world and relationships. But there are secrets which he has yet to discover and a reconciliation which may finally bring him peace of mind. ‘I think it must have been on this day that I first kissed her. I was anxious, as I did so, about how it might alter the balance between us; that she might from then on think of me not as a man in whom she’d found something of herself miraculously distilled, but as a venal soldier like the rest… It was life, it was heavenly. I was lost, I was found.’ Sebastian Faulks is one of the UK’s most acclaimed writers. His books include Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, which was made into a film starring Cate Blanchett. He reveals why Where My Heart Used to Beat is a watershed novel for him in an exclusive piece for youreadinggroup.co.uk, where you will also find suggested topics for your own book club discussion.