Sebastian Faulks's novel conundrum

It's a book that deals with quite mysterious and difficult subjects; and it also leaves room for the reader to work things out, writes ARMINTA WALLACE

SEBASTIAN FAULKS’S new novel will surprise – possibly even shock – his legion of fans. The opening pages of A Possible Life introduce Geoffrey Talbot, a teacher of small boys at a school in the English countryside.

When Geoffrey signs up for the second World War and finds himself recruited as a secret-service operative, it appears that Faulks has returned to the familiar territory of his bestselling war trilogy Birdsong, Charlotte Gray and The Girl at the Lion d’Or. But then things get a little strange. Geoffrey’s story ends on page 83; and on the next page, there begins a totally new story. There are four such gear-changes in the book, resulting in five discrete sections. A boy is sent by his penniless father to a Victorian workhouse. In the year 2069, an Italian neuroscientist solves the mystery of consciousness. A maidservant looks after two children in a sleepy French village. A skinny female singer-songwriter becomes a sensation in 1970s California.

We’re not talking about a series of linked short stories here. A Possible Life is unquestionably a novel. As the pages turn the reader spots links and connections, hints and allegations that invoke such mystical-philosophical topics as identity, compassion and even life after death. So what’s it all about, Mr Faulks? How would he describe what has been called an “enigmatic” book?

“Well, it’s not a book that rams a message down your throat, or grabs you by the lapels and says ‘This is what it’s about,’” he says. “I mean, it’s a book that deals with quite mysterious and difficult subjects; and it also leaves room for the reader to work things out for themselves. It’s quite a quiet book, too – unlike the last book I wrote, A Week in December, which was angry and violent and did grab you by the lapels and say ‘You’ve got to understand this and this.’”

With A Possible Life, Faulks pursues the fascination with human self-awareness which drives his novels Human Traces and Engleby. “What is the human creature, and why is it so very, very weird?” he muses. “If natural selection and Darwinian evolution can explain everything so well, what was this unnecessary mutation that made us so different? A pure biologist might argue that the important speciating change was something to do with the larynx, or the voicebox, or memory or something – but what it has given rise to is this self-awareness which is so perplexing. And so burdensome, really.”

Tall, bearded and looking younger than his 69 years, Faulks is a more reserved, laconic presence than his lengthy career as a newspaper editor, or his regular stint as a team captain on BBC Radio Four’s light-hearted literary quiz, The Write Stuff, might lead one to expect. But when it comes to discussing the details of A Possible Life, he is enthusiastic and articulate.

“Because this book is about individuality and whether we have such a thing as a self or a soul – whether we are entities in ourselves, or part of some larger consciousness – it seemed to me that to write it in a rather fragmented way could express that view quite dramatically,” he says. He doesn’t imagine for a second that he has invented anything new. “Tons of writers have used a similar form before.” But it may help, he suggests, to think of the novel as a five-movement symphony – or an album with five tracks.

Given how carefully he has constructed his interlinked narratives, would Faulks prefer readers to ferret out specific connections between characters and stories, or simply register them in passing, almost subliminally? “I’d slightly prefer the latter, actually,” he says. “I feel I’ve done the work, and the reader should relax and – when they close the book – just feel, ‘That was mysterious, something that has touched me and made me think, but I wouldn’t necessarily be able to spell out what it is.’ It’s not like a crossword. There isn’t a buried answer.”

Even so, he says, readers have been eager to point out connections they’ve spotted in the text – some of which have come as news to Faulks himself. “Someone said, ‘A lot of people in your book seem to have only one eye. Are you making some point about monocularity?’ And someone else said to me, ‘Of course, it’s all about hope. Isn’t it?’ Well, not really. At least I didn’t think so.”

FAULKS BECAME interested in the idea of a universal consciousness when he was researching Human Traces, the mammoth 2005 novel which dramatises the history of psychiatry. A character in the earlier book writes a letter to his wife in which he worries that when he dies, his consciousness will somehow continue. This, it turns out, is Faulks’s own greatest nightmare.

“I was talking to a friend about it and they said, ‘Well, try not to worry about it too much. What about your parents, who both died some time ago – do you not think of them as having satisfactorily passed away?’ And I said ‘Yes, I do think they have.’ Although at the time they died, I found both their deaths rather sort of provisional and unsatisfactory.”

Whimsical though it may be, he insists that A Possible Life approaches the question from a totally materialistic angle. “If you accept that there is no such thing as a self, or a spirit, or a soul, and that our sense of ourselves as separate from other people is a delusion – albeit a useful one, in evolutionary terms – and that we’re composed entirely of matter, that matter decomposes and is then reused, then literally there is no end.”

The central, pivotal story of A Possible Life concerns an Italian neuroscientist who is trying to find a physical explanation for the mystery that is consciousness. It’s the question everyone in the field of contemporary science wants to answer. “I know,” says Faulks, “but there isn’t an answer, is there?” In the book, Elena Duranti solves the problem, but it doesn’t help: it doesn’t take away her own personal pain, and it doesn’t make the business of living any easier.

Does that reflect Faulks’s own views? “Well it would depend, I suppose, on what the solution was,” he says. “I ran this section past a couple of people I know who work in this field, and they were very helpful.” He wrote 20 pages on the science behind the discovery – then cut it back to a page and a half. “I think they were sorry to see the 18 and a half pages go. But what they liked was the fact they believed that, when the answer comes, it may well be a bit of anti-climax. It will answer the question, but it won’t answer the question.”

While he was working on the book Faulks was also corresponding with an Australian rock musician, who was very taken with some of the lyrics in the final section – and came up with a melody to one of the songs, You Next Time. “I think I might have it on my phone,” Faulks offers; but a search proves fruitless. Still, you never know. We may yet get A Possible Life: the album. Who says reincarnation isn’t a runner?

A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks is published by Hutchinson