I could not get into this book, ultimately it was not form me and I could not finish it. It may be one for other readers

Despite the slow pace and the large ambitions that the story often fell short of, the characters were compelling and the setting descriptions were utterly enthralling.

Snow Country is a novel by Sebastian Faulks that was published in 2021. The book tells the story of two people, Anton Heideck and Delphine, who are brought together by love and war.

Anton is a young journalist who arrives in Vienna in 1914, just as the First World War is about to break out. He meets Delphine, a French woman who is studying music. They fall in love, but their relationship is soon tested by the war.

Anton is sent to the front, and Delphine is forced to flee Vienna. They are separated for years, but they never forget each other. When the war finally ends, they are reunited, but they find that the world has changed.

I loved the way Faulks captured the emotions of his characters. He did a great job of conveying the pain of loss, the joy of love, and the hope that can be found even in the darkest of times.
I also appreciated the way Faulks used setting to create a sense of atmosphere. The novel is set in Austria during the First World War, and Faulks does a great job of evoking the sense of a world on the brink of chaos.
Overall, I thought Snow Country was a beautiful and moving novel. It's a book that I would definitely recommend to others.

This was my first time reading a book from the author but I am delighted to say I thoroughly enjoyed the story and I look forward to reading more books from the writer in the future

This is faulks at his best a fascinating read and a convincing and moving love story set in a well researched historical period.

I really tried hard to complete this book but was unable which is not something that happens often.

Difficult to follow, a bit repetitive and was not enjoyable to read.

A brilliant follow up to "Human Traces". Sebastian Faulks is a really skillful storyteller. This can be read on its own but hopefully there will be another soon to complete the trilogy

I am normally a huge Faulks fan but this did not feel as though it were one of his stronger novels. It takes the usual big themes, here Europe in the early 20th century, and a focus on psychology however I felt the book somewhat repetitive. It almost felt as though Faulks wants to show-off his knowledge and understanding of the human condition at the expense of the reader who wants to be entertained

This book is written from a distance. It is like casual observations and you don't feel the people are real. There is a bunch of irrelevant details about mental health treatments, but really there is just an abstract attempt at a plot that does not end with any surprise or any feeling. Disappointing from this author

Set in Austria in the early part of the twentieth century, this is an ambitious novel that fails to hit the spot. The characters are fairly nondescript and lack depth. Despite being set during a volatile period in history, the novel lacks dynamism and is almost plodding in places. All of that being said, some of the historical sections, particularly those dealing with the history of psychoanalysis, were engaging and well-written.

I'm a huge Sebastian Faulks fan, and 'Snow Country' is truly Faulks at his masterful best. A profoundly moving love story set within the blinding terror and ruins of war, it is tender, intelligent and evocative. Though second in a trilogy, this can certainly be read on its own. I highly recommend to anyone who loves books brimming with social history, conflict history, politics, luminous prose, love and loss.

I hate being a defeatist, unfortunately, there are times when I simply have to walk away. At first, I was delighted to see that Sebastian Faulks had written a new book. I tried, I really tried to get into the storyline, without success. It's happened before with the author. I either can't put his books down and will read until there are no more words or I start and try and get nowhere!

Am I the only person to feel this way? Hopefully not!

What a wonderful book! I love this authors writing. So immersive, emotional and a brilliant storyteller. I love stories that span different time periods, and this was one fascinating read. Such a poignant novel that I will think about for a long time.

Emotive and in depth character driven historical fiction. Fantastic reviews speak for themselves definitely recommend this book!

I received an ARC of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. He is such a highly rated author and although I have not really liked any of his previous work this one's scenario appealed.
The opening was excellent but had precious little to do with the rest of the book. I was doing reasonably well with it - I could even say enjoying it but the cumulative effect of nothing happening, multiple characters with very little to make the reader warm to them and turgid narrative meant thet overall it was like wading through treacle.

I have really struggled to pick the book up and getting through it was no mean feat

Some incredibly brilliant parts where I just couldn’t put the book down but feel there were times when the plot meandered too much. However definitely recommend and worth a read.

Snow Country
Sebastian Faulks
Hutchinson Heinemann
Four stars
This is the second in a loose trilogy, following on from 2005’s Human Traces, a sprawling novel of ideas about two late-19th century pioneers of psychiatric medicine, Thomas Midwinter and Jacques Rebière, who opened a sanatorium on an Austrian lakeside.
It is 1914 and Anton Heideck, an aspiring journalist in Vienna, falls in love with a Frenchwoman called Delphine. The outbreak of war conspires to separate them and he is heartbroken.
Fast forward to the late 1920s where Lena, daughter of a drunkard mother, is growing up poverty-stricken and yearning for her father. After a disappointing love affair and dabbling in prostitution, she takes a job as a cleaner at the sanatorium.
There she encounters Martha, Thomas Midwinter’s kind daughter who competently and humanely runs the institution and resolutely brings out the best in Lena, who like her mother, has a penchant for drink.
When Anton is commissioned to write a magazine article about mental health he arrives at the sanatorium, and ends up staying, having found it a balm to his tortured soul.
He and Lena’s paths inevitably collide – not for the first time, it turns out -- and as they search their own souls for meaning in a chaotic world, they find each other in unexpected ways. This is a melancholy, slow-paced novel, yet which leaves the reader filled with hope in the end.

Absolutely wonderful. Decades later I am back to the first book of this author I ever read. I didn’t need a film or images I conjured them up myself it is a stunning stunning book congratulations and thankyou for producing such work.

A well written book. Set between 1903 and 1933 this character driven novel focusses on 3 main characters who at meet in 1933 at the Schloss Seeblick, a sanatorium known for successfully treating patients with mental imbalances. It was insightful getting to know the characters and in his own unique writing style, Faulks builds these characters slowly, and at times I did find the pace of the novel a little slow, but that's just my personal view. This is part of a trilogy, but having not read the previous books, this can be read as a standalone.
Thank-you to Sebastian Faulks, Random House UK, and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.

Hearts and minds…

As a younger son, Anton Heidick is expected to stay at home in his small town in Styria and take over his father’s sausage-making business. Anton wants to go to Vienna to study, though, and his parents don’t stop him although they refuse to support him financially. So he works his way through by tutoring the young son of a wealthy family, and there he meets Delphine, who is paid to teach French to the daughter of the house. This will be the beginning of a love affair that will have a major part in shaping Anton’s future. On leaving university, Anton decides he wants to be a journalist, and gradually builds a small reputation as a foreign correspondent, sent off to witness major events around the world. But it’s now 1914, and the clouds of war are gathering across Europe…

We meet Lena in the late 1920s, and learn of her difficult childhood as the child of an illiterate and often drunken woman, who earns a living partly through prostitution and partly by working as a cleaner at the Schloss Seeblick, a kind of mental health sanatorium in a mountain valley in Carinthia. Lena too makes her way to Vienna, where she becomes involved with Rudolph, a young left-wing activist. But things don’t work out as she expected, and when her mother dies she returns to Carinthia, and is offered her mother’s old job at the sanatorium. It is to here that, a few years later, Anton too will come, firstly to write an article about the sanatorium, and then to seek help for his own mental health problems, a leftover from his experiences during the war years.

The underlying plot in this is rather slight, based around Anton’s love for Delphine and Lena’s search to find a place for herself in a world that hasn’t shown her much sympathy or opportunity. But the story is in some way simply a vehicle to allow Faulks to show us various aspects of Austrian society and to create a general picture of the period from just before the First World War to within sight of the Second.

Anton and Lena are the main characters, but three others play significant roles and give us different perspectives: Delphine, a Frenchwoman who will find herself living in an enemy country when the war starts; Rudolph, the young socialist that Lena is involved with in Vienna, who allows us glimpses of the complex political situation in this part of Europe; and Martha, the daughter of the founder of the Schloss Seeblick, who now acts as both administrator and therapist, and who gives some insight into the development of psychoanalysis in Austria in the wake of Freud’s theories. Unusually for contemporary fiction, all of the characters are likeable, and all are fundamentally decent people trying to do their best, despite their normal human weaknesses and flaws. I found that deeply refreshing, and was happy to find myself totally involved in each of their stories.

Anton’s career as a journalist also takes us to other places, giving little vignettes within the main story, designed to show the state of the world at this uneasy time. He visits Panama to witness the completion of the canal, and muses on the roles of France and America, the rise of the new powers in the world and the decay of the old. He casually mentions the workforce, treated little better than slaves, but as a man of his time, he accepts this without much question. Later he attends the trial in Paris of Mme Cailloux (a real person), wife of a prominent politician, who stands accused of shooting the editor of Le Figaro. This gives Faulks room to give an excellent picture of France just before the war, with half the population wanting peace and the other half clamouring for war to wipe out the stain of past defeats and show that France is a major power yet.

I would have happily had a whole book of Anton travelling from place to place, showing us the world through major news events. The sudden change to Lena’s life makes sense and works well in the end, but on the whole I didn’t find her life as interesting at Anton’s. However it’s through her relationship with Rudolph that we see the rise of extremism at both ends of the political spectrum initially, before fascism won out. Rudolph’s story also lets us see the growing resentment between the politically sophisticated and relatively wealthy Viennese urbanites and the people of rural Austria, poorer, less well educated and with fewer opportunities.

I feel I’ve made this book sound horribly heavyweight and a bit polemical, so let me correct that. Faulks writes with a light hand, and all these background events are never allowed to stop the flow of the human story of our characters’ lives. There are some tragic incidents which are treated with welcome restraint, some occasional humour to lift the tone, and affairs of the heart – not hearts and flowers romances, but grown-up, complex relationships with a feeling of truth about them. Of course I have some criticisms – perhaps a little lack of depth, too much discussion of Freud for my taste, a rather too neat ending – but none of these seriously affected my overall enjoyment. I was completely absorbed throughout and sorry to leave the characters behind when the last page turned. Apparently the book is the second in a loose Austrian trilogy, although each also stands on its own, and I’m looking forward to going back to read the first, Human Traces, and seeing where Faulks takes us in the third. Highly recommended.