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Sebastian Faulks
Vintage 2008
This is the first novel I’ve read by Sebastian Faulks – the others have never really appealed, I'm not sure why – and it is highly recommended. He tells the story, in the first person, of Mike Engleby, a working class boy at Cambridge in the early seventies, and his involvement in the disappearance of a young woman. Engleby is a highly convincing character who draws the reader into his world so successfully that his disturbing views seem all too normal. At the same time the plot is highly involving and the evocation of the time very successful. I won’t spoil the ending by revealing too much, suffice it to say that Faulks cleverly plays with the conventions of fiction, and reveals what a highly complex and well-constructed novel he has written, without ever undermining its air of reality or making it any less engrossing. It's often very - blackly - funny too. Great stuff.
1st July 2008
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,2265683,00.html
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