Synopses & Reviews
Sebastian Faulks's new novel is a bolt from the blue: contemporary, demotic, angry, heart-wrenching, and funny, in the deepest shade of black.
Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, he rises without trace in Thatcher's England and scorches through the blandscape of New Labour.
In the course of his brief, incandescent career, he and the reader encounter many famous people — actors, writers, politicians, household names — but by far the most memorable is Engleby himself.
Sebastian Faulks's new novel can be read as a lament for a generation and the country it failed. It is also a meditation on the limits of science, the curse of human consciousness and on the lyrics of 1970s' rock music. And beneath this highly disturbing surface lies an unfolding mystery of gripping narrative power. For when one of Mike's contemporaries unaccountably disappears, the reader has to ask: is even the shameless Engleby capable of telling the whole truth?
Review
"Faulks knows exactly how to keep the reader off-balance in this deft, funny, scary combination of suspense and psychic exploration." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
Meet Mike Engleby, a second-year student at university. Despite the fact that Mike is obviously intelligent, and involved in many clubs, it is clear that something about Mike is not quite right. When he becomes fixated on a classmate named Jennifer Arkland, and she goes missing, we are left with the looming question: Is Mike Engleby involved?
About the Author
Sebastian Faulks worked as a journalist for fourteen years before taking up writing full-time in 1991. In 1995 he was voted Author of the Year by the British Book Awards for Birdsong, his fourth novel and his second, following A Fool's Alphabet, to be published in the United States. He is also the author of Human Traces, On Green Dolphin Street, Charlotte Gray, The Fatal Englishman, and The Girl at the Lion d'Or. He lives in London with his wife and three children.