This is a good book by a great novelist, but it didn't really grab me.
It's set in the first half of the last century as the world recovers from one world war and a second is looming.
The main characters are Austrians Anton, a journalist, and Lena, the spirited daughter of an alcoholic single mother.
In Vienna Anton meets Frenchwoman Delphine with whom he falls madly in love and whom he can never forget. But the the first world war separates them for ever.
Lena is also looking for love. But to make ends meet she has to resort to prostitution. That's how she meets Anton, although he soon forgets her. She leaves Vienna to work as a maid at the snow-capped Schloss Seeblick - a sanatorium for the mentally ill which was the setting for 'Human Traces' - the first novel in what will be a trilogy. Here, years later, she meets Anton again (although he doesn't recognise her) because he's been sent to write about the work of the sanatorium.
It's about sex and love, hope and despair, death and new life, and psychology and psychiatry. And I found it a bit heavy-going.
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