Le diable l'emporte

Starred Review. British bestseller Faulks's latest (after Human Traces) comprises the dark confessional of Mike Engleby, an intelligent but strange university student suspected in a woman's disappearance. His journal-like account of his life, which begins in the turbulent 1970s and extends to 2006, includes day-to-day accounts of college life, pontifications on time, politics and the nature of thought, and flashbacks to his childhood—particularly the years he spent as a scholarship student at the exclusive Chatfield, where he was taunted and abused by his classmates (they, among other things, called him Toilet). As the journal progresses, his obsession with university student Jennifer Arkland deepens: he reads her mail, sits in on her classes, joins her political society and becomes involved in her student film. When Jennifer disappears after a party and is presumed dead, Mike finds himself under police investigation. The case remains open for over a decade, and Mike continues on with his life, but Jen is never far from his thoughts, and as he continues to return in his mind to Jen's disappearance, he reveals more about that night and about himself. Though sometimes heavy with the tropes of self-deception and misdirection, this is a compelling psychological portrait of a man who is at once profoundly disturbed and wryly funny. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Deauville, 1880. Jacques et Thomas, deux étudiants liés par une fascination commune pour le fonctionnement du cerveau humain, se jurent de révolutionner ensemble la médecine et de soigner le frère de Jacques, atteint d'un mal étrange qui a contraint sa famille à l'enfermer. Les deux amis poursuivent leurs études, l'un à Paris sous l'égide du grand Charcot, l'autre en Angleterre dans un asile où les fous sont parqués comme du bétail, et parviennent finalement à créer dans les Alpes l'institution de leurs rêves. Au fil des années, ils empruntent des routes divergentes. Jacques adhère à la psychanalyse naissante, risquant même par son obstination la vie d'une patiente, alors que Thomas recherche les causes des maladies mentales dans la chaîne de l'Évolution. À travers cette grande épopée initiatique, Sebastian Faulks fait revivre un siècle en pleine mutation, et nous plonge dans ses débats scientifiques et philosophiques les plus fascinants.