Editions

A Possible Life

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099549222

  • Length: 304  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 19mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 216g

  • RRP: £9.99

A Possible Life

Terrified, a young prisoner in the Second World War closes his eyes and pictures himself going out to bat on a sunlit cricket ground in Hampshire.

Across the courtyard in a Victorian workhouse, a father too ashamed to acknowledge his son.

A skinny girl steps out of a Chevy with a guitar; her voice sends shivers through the skull.

Soldiers and lovers, parents and children, scientists and musicians risk their bodies and hearts in search of connection – some key to understanding what makes us the people we become.

Provocative and profound, Sebastian Faulks’s dazzling novel journeys across continents and time to explore the chaos created by love, separation and missed opportunities. From the pain and drama of these highly particular lives emerges a mysterious consolation: the chance to feel your heart beat in someone else’s life.

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099549222

  • Length: 304  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 19mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 216g

  • RRP: £9.99

Reviews

  • "Both intriguing and unsettling… [Faulks’s] versatility as a writer is showcased in A Possible Life"

    Discover Your History

  • "Most easily appreciated as a series of compelling short stories. Poignant, powerful and tender, they are lined by the pain and passion, hope and hardship, accident and design which make up the drama of an individual life"

    John Koski, Mail on Sunday

  • "It does what any good novel should – it unsettles, it moves, and it forces us to question who we are"

    Sunday Times

  • "A delight… A tightly written, moving and exciting"

    Daily Telegraph

  • "Faulks is a writer who gets better and better; he understands how to draw a reader in."

    Daily Mail

  • "A Possible Life is more than the sum of its parts . . . the stories acquire power as resonances between them accrete. Only at the end do you realise you’ve been won over by their quiet, glinting virtuosity"

    The Times

  • "Profound… Faulks evokes a deep compassion for all his troubled characters…exploring big ideas without compromising the human drama"

    Observer

  • "Faulk’s most intriguing fictional offering... Moving...engaging...poignant"

    Independent on Sunday

More from this Author

View all View all
View all View all

About the Author

Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Faulks was born in April 1953. Before becoming a full-time writer in 1991, he worked as a journalist. His French trilogy - The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray (1989-1997) - established him in the front rank of British novelists. UK sales of Birdsong exceed 2,500,000 copies, and for this novel he was named "Author of the Year" by the British Book Awards in 1995. It is regularly voted one of the nation's favourite books. Charlotte Gray has also sold over a million copies and was filmed with Cate Blanchett in the main part. Faulks's other novels include A Fool's Alphabet (1992), On Green Dolphin Street (2001), the epic Human Traces (2005), and most recently Engleby (2007). His biographical study of three doomed young men of the 20th century, The Fatal Englishman, was published in 1996 and a book of literary parodies, Pistache, in 2006. Sebastian Faulks lives in London with his wife and their three children.

Sebastian Faulks

Related articles

/content/dam/prh/articles/company/Paris-Echo-Snippet.png

Extracts

Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks

08 May 2018
/content/dam/prh/articles/archive/where-my-heart-used-to-beat-sebastian-faulks-snippet-788x306.jpg

Extracts

Where My Heart Used to Beat

13 July 2016
/content/dam/prh/articles/archive/seb-faulks-inline-image_v1.png

Features

An interview with Sebastian Faulks

02 May 2014

We use cookies on this site and by continuing to browse it you agree to us sending you cookies.

For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here.