This work, like many good or even great books, becomes a wonderful read once you close the last page and reflect.
Besides being well written, Sebastian Faulks uses research and I am sure personal experience in the creation of this engaging story.
Many of us can take something from this story and become better people - being understanding and supportive of others and less self centred.
I enjoyed the read, not being able to leave it unread one day to the next! ( )

Snow Country (2021) by Sebastian Faulks intrigued me because of its setting and premise … and I may also have been hooked by the cover. The story is in two parts and is set just before the First World War and then again in the inter-war years and tells of a number of young people in Austria who have in common that they meet at a sanatorioum in the Alps. Apart from each character’s individual story, there is a whole lot of detail of life at the time and even more discussion of life at large.

And this is one of the main reasons that the book was completely lost on me: there was a lot of generalised navel-gazing that was not even done well stylistically. One of the first things to put me off in the book was the way that the author actually tells us what the characters think and feel. There was no challenge to the reader to empathise or even figure out what the characters were all about. It was even more disappointing because I know that Faulks can write and that he has heard of the old advice “show, don’t tell”.

The next thing that put me off was that the story seemed really fragmented and that the characters seemed rather forced to interact with each other the way they do. I just wanted to forget all about the insta-love element of one twist as soon as I read it.

And of course, it also did not help that the story just felt like a badly done regurgitation of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. I hated reading The Magic Mountain, but even I have to concede that it was written. I would never discourage anyone from reading it for themselves. I’m not sure I can do the same with Snow Country.

Actually, no …. Before picking up Snow Country, please consider reading The Magic Mountain instead. There I said it.
At least, when Mann writes about psychology that is heavily based on Freud it is done as a contemporary and does not come across as an authorial choice that borders on cliche. ( )

I finished this novel - just. Either I or it was missing something. Maybe like most of its characters. ( )

A novel of intrigue, mystery, and style set from the end of the 1st WW to the 1930’s. Filled with images of struggle examining the meaning of love and survival in Europe at the start of the rise of facism and the world wide destruction that would inevitably follow. My first Sebastian Faulks read was Birdsong and have been an admirer of his writing style ever since. Recommended. ( )