Fault Lines

I absolutely loved this book. The translation I found to be excellent. The tone of the stories within this book are so gray, so sad, so haunting that when they all come together at the end, it's positively shocking and exhilarating. This book is certainly not a light read. It will take much stomaching to get through some parts, but it is well worth the effort and steadfastness. Her writing style flows so smoothly between the narrators and characters within the story. I don't want to give away any parts of the story because that would ruin the book, but I could not put this down until I was finished. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to make a movie out of this conjoining stories, but I don't think it would due the book justice.

FAULT LINES is such an interesting novel technically, and so engaging on the page-by-page level, that the question of whether it all hangs together seems almost irrelevant. Each of the four parts of the book has a different narrator, all of whom are six years old at the time of telling. We start in 2004 with Sol, a precocious superkid in California. Then back to 1982 with his father Randall, in New York and Haifa. Then Randall's mother Sadie in Toronto in 1962, and finally to Sol's great-grandmother Erra in Germany in 1944. There is a secret behind this family tree, that readers with a knowledge of the byways of 20th-century history will probably guess long before it is revealed. But Huston is as clever with misdirection as she is with revelation, and while many details of what later happens to the family turn out to be unrelated to this central secret, they all form an ironic commentary on the complexity of mixed bloodlines in the American postwar era. The brilliance of the book is the use of the six-year-old narrators. Children this young see more than their parents think, but they cannot place what they discover within an understanding of its adult context. So the entire book is a sequence of explorations pushing backwards one generation at a time. This is fascinating, and there are a lot of wonderful discoveries along the way, especially about the beliefs, affections, envies, and experiences that both knit a family together and break it apart. Tone is another matter. Occasionally, the child's voice breaks into a poetry that is clearly that of the author, as in the opening of the fourth section: "A scattering of ecstasies. Amaze me, I say to the world. Whirl me, thrill me, stun me, never stop." This scintillates even more in the author's original French, which may help explain why the book was such a success over there. But for the most part, the voice has a more obvious connection to childhood; this is Sol in 2004: "Fortunately God and President Bush are buddies. I think of heaven as one big Texas in the sky, with God rambling around in a cowboy hat and boots and checking to make sure everything's in order on his ranch. Taking an occasional pot shot at a planet for the fun of it." Politics aside, this is precocious, as I say. But not so much as Sol's reactions to the sadistic images he finds on the internet; the persistent thread of violence and age-inappropriate sexuality will disturb many readers. Read to the end, and you will find that the damage to Sol's psyche is only an extreme form of an underlying disturbance expressed more subtly in the other characters, but going back seventy years -- the fault lines of the title. None of the others is quite so weird, and there are many beauties along the way, including some fabulous descriptions of music (Erra is a singer). But I think you are meant to understand that all the family problems -- their phobias, their paranoias, their battles over religion -- stem from this one terrible event in the

"Fault Lines" traces a secret back through history through the lives of four six-year old children: Sol (2004), his father Randall (1982), Randall's mother Sadie (1962), and Sadie's mother Kristina (1944-5). Their perceptions, though often not truly childlike, are striking and insightful, and often distasteful, especially in the case of Sol. I am a fan of well-crafted and unusual story structure, and this book is a great example of this as we meet Sol during the 6th year of his life, then his father, his grandmother, and great-grandmother, or GG. But in each of their stories, the other characters play their parts for that moment on the family timeline. These stories give us threads which are carefully woven together throughout the book until the tapestry is complete and the deeply- buried secret is revealed. A thoughtful and well-written book that doesn't feel like a translation at all.

Randall's mother, according to his son, Solomon, is Grandma Sadie. His wife is Tessa. Randall works in Santa Clara and commutes to work two hours each way. His son has a small computer on his desk. The family lives in a child proofed house. Randall has conferences scheduled in Munich and other German cities and so Solly, Tess, Randall's mother and grandmother take the opportunity to accompany him to Germany. Solomon is the narrator of the first section of the book. The tale shifts to a back story, Randall 1982, and Randall is the narrator. His mother Sadie is the chief breadwinner. She lectures on evil. Sadie is doing a thesis on the holocaust. To continue her research, the family moves to Haifa. Another section is the venue for Sadie's childhood story, 1962. Her mother is a singer and often absent. Sadie lives with her grandparents in Canada until moving to New York City to live with her mother. Finally, the last section of the book, Kristina, 1944-45, presents a revelation. The subject matter of the book turns in part on eugenics, a regrettable Nazi fixation, and, it should be added, a pseudo-science. This gives rise to a larger and more contemporary theme, that of selection as practiced in instances of adoption and as a product of genetic testing. The structure of the book uses childhood scenes of members of the family to drill down through the generations to the supposed truth. In the process of doing this, the author pulls off the neat stunt of presenting child-like perceptions in realistic fashion. The book is memorable.

Fault Lines is a well-told story about a family with a "defect" that has been passed down through the generations. For some the mole is a burden, the prospect of cancer and an embarassment. For others it is a friend and a comfort. As time goes by, each generation loses some knowledge of the previous, but they will always have this connection and the desire to know more about it. This story is separated into four parts, each one is through the eyes of the six year old family member. It begins with Sol, the youngest and newest member of the family. Then it switches to his father Randall in the 80s. Next is Randall's mother Sadie in the 60s, and finally Kristina during the 40s. The time periods play an important role in their lives but do not overshadow the humanity of the people. It is more interesting to read about each person during childhood because of their frankness and their acute observations. Huston's story is well devised and powerful.