Human Traces - Sebastian Faulks

I was totally absorbed in this ambitious and thoughtful saga about two men who bring very different backgrounds and beliefs to their shared passion for unravelling the mysteries of the human mind. As their careers develop and their professional and personal relationships grow more complex, their experiences serve to illustrate different aspects of our psychological makeup. I was particularly interested in the theory (attributed to one of the central characters based on his readings of historic and religious texts, but acknowledged by the author as based on Julian Jaynes' concept of bicameralism) that hearing voices used to be a near-universal experience, only fading with the evolution of a self-aware consciousness. I found this an engrossing and satisfying read, with the only false note being a rather incongruous hint of the supernatural at the end, which seemed a rather heavy-handed way of making the point that "there were things that could not be explained".