Having accepted an intriguing invitation to a French island, psychiatrist Robert Hendricks meets the man who has commissioned him to write a biography. But his subject seems more interested in finding out about Robert's past than in revealing his own. Moving between the present and the past, France and Italy, New York and London, this is a tender and thoughtful novel from the author of BIRDSONG.



On a small island off the south coast of France, an established British physician and author, Robert, finds himself unable to escape memories of his involvement in the allied forces' World War II ''Italian Campaign,'' and of a woman he met then. When he is enlisted to write a biography of an older physician, Dr. Pereira, a renowned specialist in dementia and memory loss who had once come close to a cure for psychosis, Robert, at first, welcomes the distraction. But as Robert begins to interview his subject, it becomes clear that Pereira knows more about his interlocutor than expected-and knows things that Robert, in his recounting to the reader, may not be so eager to reveal. Crackling with surprises and ambiguities, Where My Heart Used to Beat is a powerfully affecting narrative that sweeps through the madnesses of the 20th century and brilliantly unravels the coil of one man's intertwined losses and desires.