Product Description

London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days, we follow the lives of seven major characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and, a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life. Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this savagely humorous book. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it - and party on as though tomorrow is a dream. Sebastian Faulks probes not only the self-deceptions of this intensely realised group of people, but their hopes and loves as well. As the novel moves to its gripping climax, they are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #473 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
`Readers will race through the pages like bankers through cash.' --Guardian

'During times of momentous change, men of letters are driven to produce works that fictionalise the state of the nation, linking individuals with historic events. The 19th century gave us Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Dickens's Our Mutual Friend and Trollope's The Way We Live Now; the 21st has given us Sebastian Faulks's A Week in December.' --Sunday Times

`Faulks's most vivid character is the odious John Veals, a hedge-fund manager, who relishes all the money that he makes and the power that he quietly exerts... Veals is brilliantly insidious... A thoughtful page-turner ... The handsome sunset is heavily, and rightly, weighed down by dark clouds.' --The Times

`As cold, impassive and deadly as a coiled rattlesnake, John Veals will endure as the epoch-defining villain of early 21st-century British fiction.' --Independent

`His book could not be more topical or bang up to date ...Faulks holds a mirror up to our drug-addled, money-obsessed society. The novel is full of Russian babes, venal politicians and bank fraudsters. What more could any reader want? Eat your heart out Charles Dickens.' --Tatler

`This vast novel, well-plotted and gripping throughout, is the first that Sebastian Faulks has set in our time... the ambition and scope of the book are to be applauded. The conclusion is suitably nail-biting and, pleasingly, love triumphs. Sebastian Faulks has probably got another best-seller on his hands.' --Spectator

`A portrayal of modern London that is both richly entertaining and highly rewarding. Faulks has come as close as anyone to completing the jigsaw that is this crazy, fascinating city of ours.' --Evening Standard

`Faulk's latest novel has been hyped as the defining novel of the noughties - and it doesn't disappoint... The book makes for uncomfortable reading at times, as Faulks explores many of our daily habits - but it is also brilliantly funny.' --News of the World

`There are moments ... that truly hit home...this book is an old-fashioned call to retrace our path, return to a more connected existence.' --Independent on Sunday

`This is a compelling page-turner depicting both the humanity and apathy that permeate contemporary London.' --Sunday Mercury

`The dark conclusion on which everything converges is that there are two types of terrorist in this country: one type universally reviled and against whom no measure is unjustified, and the other, the one who arguably does more damage, who gets invited to dinner with the Tory party leader. As the days pass, finding out who will succeed with his act of terrorism, and who will fail, makes for a thoroughly thrilling ride.' --Literary Review

`This is a Balzacian enterprise, to which the social and physical labyrinth of London is central and in which the characters are propelled through the plot by a tumult of urban energy and events... It is impossible not to enjoy Faulks's vitality, his rich detailing, language and timing.' --Prospect

`From crosswords to computers, Mr Faulks commands and re-creates our contemporary culture with aplomb.' --Country Life

About the Author
Sebastian Faulks was born and brought up in Newbury, Berkshire. He worked in journalism before starting to write books. He is best known for the French trilogy, The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray (1989-1997) and is also the author of a triple biography, The Fatal Englishman (1996); a small book of literary parodies, Pistache (2006); and the novels Human Traces (2005) and Engleby (2007). He lives in London with his wife and their three children.

Customer Reviews

Unconvincing But Enjoyable
Having never read anything by Faulks before, I was surprised by how trashy-feeling this book was - it reads sort of like a lad-lit novel. My interest was piqued by all the talk of this being an attempt at parsing the State Of The Nation and by the fact that it is an early post-credit crunch novel by a major author. But despite all this hype and the portentous cover art and the fact that bankers and hedge-fund managers are among the many characters featured, the book is much more light-weight than I thought it was going to be.

I did enjoy it but I would have to say it is basically missable. The way it is made up of a large ensemble of characters following various intersecting storylines does mean it is probable you will like some stories more than others and may groan when you see you have to trudge through another passage from your least favourite strand. But it does add variety and by the last 100 pages I was eager to find out how each storyline concluded.

My problems were mainly with authenticity: some characters were much less convincing than others, time after time people spoke in highly contrived rants, points the writer was trying to make were often conveyed heavy-handedly and there were too many unlikely coincidences and unbelievable plot points. In fact talking of authenticity, it kind of annoyed me the way Faulks avoided using the real-life names for so many things in the novel, or invented parts of pop-culture. The big female pop group are called Girls From Behind, the big reality show (on Channel 7) is called It's Madness and consists of a snippy panel of judges taking the piss out of the (literally) mentally-ill contestants who then go on to stay in a big-brother style house etc etc. It reminded me a lot of the clever-clever pastiches Faulks does on the radio only with a despairing, misanthropic edge. The angry satire of these things is not a good fit with the general tone of the piece and a lot of the invention doesn't even serve a satirical purpose anyway: I know the footballer is fictional but why can't he play for Arsenal, why does it just coyly have to be "one of the London clubs"? By all means make up the hedge fund, but was it really necessary to invent the names of most of the banks? What would have been the problem with having the gamer play a game that actually exists (so to speak)? The novel is about people being cut off from the real world, but if that is the reason behind this fakery then I don't think it works successfully. It is not funny enough, not angry enough not consistent enough or well-judged and is basically just distracting.

All in all, it was an ok read, it rattles along at a decent pace and is sometimes amusing, but it is not the important book that you may have been lead to expect.

A sheep in Wolfe's clothing
This is an attempt to encapsulate modern Britain: its conflicts, fragmentation and lack of mutual understanding; in short, a topical 'state of the nation' novel.
Unfortunately, with the possible exception of the characters in a sub-plot about literary rivalry (of which he writes with relish), Faulks chooses to analyse his subject through a parade of rather unsubtle stereotypes, the kind of figures you might expect to see in a sketch show or a TV commercial. The different story lines are competently engineered to produce overlaps and conflict, but beyond the rather obvious suggestion that we are all, despite our differences, 'connected', the result feels distinctly hollow.
It would have been far more interesting if Faulks has tried to look behind the stereotypes, and shown us something insightful about the humanity beneath.
All in all, this is like Tom Wolfe ('Bonfire of the Vanities') without the teeth.

What would RT say?
RT, being a completely poisonous book reviewer in the story who hates everything written in the last 50 years, would hate it. I have some sympathy. The opening chapters made me feel that Faulks, in some type of existential crisis, had been going to Andy Mcnab's creative writing class - jumping from scene to scene, clearly intended to weave a tense, none-too-complex tale with one-dimensional characters and an explosive conclusion. I almost chucked it in the bin, but I met RT just in time and was hooked until just before the end, where Faulks's sentimental tears dampen the fuses to all the potential blasts. In the end I guess we have to be satisfied with the novel idea that love redeems.

I'd guess Faulks knows people like a lot of the characters (if so, at least as far the Holland Park set are concerned, he has my sympathy). However, oddly, the most interesting person in the book for me was Hass, the terrorist, the one of whose type Faulks likely has least direct knowledge. I felt the examination of Hass's character, motives and experience of Islamic extremism was convincing and worthwhile.