Books we like ... and books we're not too fussed about
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Sebastian Faulks
Hutchinson 2009
This is Faulks’ Bonfire of the Vanities for the credit crunch. In it he details the events of seven days in December 2007 as a newly elected Tory MP prepares for a dinner party which will bring together many of the other characters. These include a ruthless hedge fund manager, a Polish footballer, a struggling barrister defending London Transport against a claim for negligence after a suicide on the Underground, and a Kashmiri pickle magnate whose militant Islamist son is preparing himself for a terrorist attack. It’s always engrossing, but it does seem a little too obvious at times what Faulks is up to in this state-of-the-nation novel, ticking off the usual suspects: radical Muslim, skunk-smoking neglected rich kid, self-made man, greedy banker, overpaid sportsman, Eastern European glamour model - and the usual themes: “reality” television, virtual networking, the compensation culture. At times, his attempts to paint a picture of the times we live in becomes very clunky indeed (for example, the explicatory conversations characters have about the history of Islam and the development of religious extremism are very unconvincing). However, despite the impression that Faulks has done a lot of research and is determined not to let it go to waste, I enjoyed this novel immensely. The central character, and to my mind the most interesting is John Veals, the hedge fund manager whose whole existence is centred on deals in the market and whose actions will ultimately prove more devastating than any bomb. Since the collapse of Lehmann Brothers a year ago, there has been a lot of speculation about what makes such men tick, and how they could have got everything so wrong, and Faulks’ portrayal is depressingly convincing (although I must admit the precise details of the complicated financial jiggery-pokery Veals instigates passed me by). The funniest character is a jaded book reviewer and failed novelist (Faulks settling an old score?); the most sympathetic ones the poorest: the struggling barrister and the Tube train driver. In a book where human values triumph over ideology if not over financial ones, this is reassuring. This certainly isn’t as innovative and unusual a novel as Engleby; I’ve read others which attempt to paint pictures of their own times and places in a similar way: Crusaders and The Bonfire of the Vanities (already mentioned) spring to mind. However, A Week in December does what it sets out to do very well; it is well-written, nicely grumpy about the modern world, and, above all, interesting. Recommended.
11th September 2009
http://www.sebastianfaulks.com/index.php
See also: A Fool's Alphabet
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