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Engleby | 
 enlarge | Author: Sebastian Faulks
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £2.96
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Avg. Customer Rating:  70 reviews
Sales Rank: 80
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0099458276
EAN: 9780099458272
ASIN: 0099458276
Publication Date: March 27, 2008
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| Customer Reviews: Read 65 more reviews...
 Compelling, thought provoking and brilliantly written July 26, 2008
Most reviewers of this book describe the character Engleby as unlikeable and detached. I'd have to disagree - hopefully that's not a poor reflection on myself! Most people are bound to have come across someone in their lives with at least some of the traits of Engleby - somewhat odd, detached, etc. The idea that events in our early life determine our character in later life has been presented many times before but maybe not with the same clarity as achieved by Faulks.
Another notable aspect of the book is the super intellect possessed by Engleby and his analysis of people and events. You've got to wonder if Faulks doesn't share these characteristics. To me there doesn't seem to be any other way he could have attained such a writing style.
This is certainly one of those books that inhabits your being whilst reading; during your working day you'll be looking forward to the evening to read the next few chapters.
Highly recommended - a top book.
A hauntingly real character July 19, 2008
There is very little to criticise about this novel. The whole book pivots around the complex and disturbing central character, Mike Engleby, and his reaction to the mysterious disappearence of his university "friend", Jennifer. The subsequent account of his life details his attempts to fit into life in the seventies and eighties, as the police investigation attempts to discover Jennifer's fate.
Engleby is a novel which shouldn't be read as a murder mystery; instead, read it as a fascinating study of the character and nature of Engleby, an individual so fully formed, yet flawed, as to be completely believable.
The Curious Incident of the Undergraduate in the Night Time July 18, 2008
Mike Engleby is a man at one step removed from the world. He is estranged from his violent father, a working class boy at a minor public school, a self contained student at Cambridge and a journalist who shuns the company of his colleagues.
Central to the story of his life, about which we learn through his diaries, is Jennifer, a lively and attractive student whom he admires, also at one step removed. Her disappearance and its subsequent effects on Mike's life are the core strands of this dark, touching and intriguing novel.
Mike is an engaging but troubling companion to his own life. Faulks gives us a character who could be an innocent thrust alone into a world he hasn't the skills to understand, or could be a disturbingly creepy stalker. Or maybe both. In some ways his voice resembles that of the narrator of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" in its elliptical, unemotional and disconnected tone.
Engleby has much in common with Faulks' earlier "Human Traces" in its use of mental illness to explore themes of humanity and reality.
While writing a bleak, unsettling and eventually tragic novel, Faulks is also playful and entertaining in his structuring of Mike Engleby's story.
So, is it any good ? Yes, absolutely. It is very black, it is not a comfortable book, but it is beautifully written, highly intelligent and very moving. It is certainly his best since Birdsong and maybe even surpasses it.
Very definitely recommended.
Creepy and yet compassionate July 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
My wife and daughter both read this and recommended to me, with some muttering about how I'd "get" more of the allusions to 70's music. They were right, but the fact that the allusions were being made by such a disturbing person made me wonder whether I shared any other traits with Mike Engleby. It's that sort of book, where you find yourself thinking about the characters after you've put it down. At first, this is because Engleby seems to be a classic example of the unreliable narrator (I was initially reminded of the lonely Frederick Clegg and his obsession with Miranda Grey in John Fowles's "The Collector"), so you spend a lot of the time while reading his story trying to work out what's really going on. This isn't too taxing - indeed, when the central incident of the plot occurs on p86, it's pretty easy to see past Engleby's account and guess what's happened.
But Faulks works hard to make him into more than just a creep with something of a fixation on music - although I found myself involuntarially nodding in agreement when he passed Focus's "Moving Waves" onto a friend with a note giving the locations of the most "sublime moments", and when he puzzled out a mondegreen in Steely Dan's "Brooklyn" as a diversion from feeling nervous before a party. Instead, he gives him moments of penetrating insight and wry humour, often expressed in pithy - even poetic - asides. The most memorable of these comes on p155, where he suggests that, although time really is non-linear (which allows new possibilities for occupying it), our brains can only think of it as linear (which dooms us into thinking that our lives are pointless). He thinks that this inability to grasp one of the dimensions we inhabit makes us like deaf musicians - playing the music without hearing it. This is thought-provoking stuff, and all the more remarkable when you think about all the other things that Engleby has been doing.
Thinking about those other things seems to make it unlikely that you could feel pity, or compassion, or regret for Engleby. And yet, by the end of this book (which finishes with a heart-wrenching passage that cuts right back to that central incident), that's what I was feeling, which is a testimony to the technical skill of the author, and the way in which this extraordinary story resonates in your head.
What IS Normal? July 14, 2008
Written as a journal, Sebastian Faulks has done a wonderful job in creating the setting for the novel, namely: Engleby's mind! What exactly is 'normal' when applied to the human mind? And isn't it true that even the most seemingly 'normal' person sometimes experiences feelings or ideas that could be thought of as 'strange'? The line between normality and abnormality can easily be crossed if a person is continually subjected to treatment or experiences that are disturbing to the psyche. As we read, we find ourselves thinking: 'What if?' From an early age, Engleby is aware of his superior academic ability and as he matures he becomes an intellectual snob - setting himself apart and above those with lesser ability. As a little boy, he's beaten by his father and when he goes to public school as a scholarship boy, he's placed into classes with boys older than himself. This gets him 'noticed' and for two years he's systematically bullied by a number of older boys. The bullies eventually leave school however, and then it's a case of the bullied becoming the bully. During his time at public school he becomes a skilled thief, with no conscience as he makes money by distributing his ill-gotten gains of alcohol and tobacco. By the time Engleby moves on to University, he's a real solo act; popping pills and drinking exessively further helps him to inhabit the world inside his head. He meets Jennifer at university and Jen is different, but even this is a relationship nurtured by his own imagination - and then she goes missing! Despite his lack of social skills, he goes on to hold down a job as a journalist, but only on his own terms. Many years later he admits to wanting to return to the past in his mind in order to 'make it better' - to re-write it! But then events occur that mean the past must be faced without a re-writing and we listen as he, and others, try to relate 'his' world to the real world and everything starts to unravel. Nature or nurture? It's not all heavy stuff as many of Engleby's sardonic observations are very amusing.
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