This is a brilliant book: disturbing, amusing, thought-provoking, playful, real, unreal. All the usual Faulks intelligence and enjoyment of language is here.
Yet Engleby is different from his other books. This time, you get the feeling Faulks has let you into his own life: school, university, Notting Hill, journalism (the interviews with Jeffrey Archer and Ken Livingstone just can’t have been made up).
There is a catharsis here – and, despite the disturbances in Mike Engleby’s brain, you can feel Faulks really enjoying his writing, making this book perhaps more approachable than some of his other subjects.
Time is one of the themes running through Engleby. Make sure you take time to read it.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Recommendations: |
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Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think.
When the novel opens in the 1970’s, he is a university student, having survived a ‘traditional’ school. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, Engleby provides a disarmingly frank account of English education.
In the course of his subsequent career, which brings us up to the present day, he and the reader encounter many famous people - actors, writers, politicians, household names - but the most memorable is Engleby himself.
For beneath the disturbing surface of his observations, lies an unfolding mystery of gripping power. When one of his contemporaries unaccountably disappears, the reader has to ask: is even the unembarrassable Engleby capable of telling the whole truth?
Engleby can be read as a lament for a generation and the country it failed. It is also a poignant account of the frailty of human consciousness.
Engleby features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Book Club Recommendations, eBooks of the Month, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Engleby is available in Paperback, Ebook, Hardback
Engleby was written by Sebastian Faulks and published by Vintage an imprint of CCV
Engleby has 342 pages
