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Engleby
Meet Mike Engleby, a second-year student at university. Despite the fact that Mike is obviously intelligent, and involved in many clubs, it is clear that something about Mike is not quite right. When he becomes fixated on a classmate named Jennifer Arkland, and she goes missing, we are left with the looming question: Is Mike Engleby involved?
319 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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5498 people want to read
About the author
Sebastian Faulks
63 books2,587 followersSebastian Faulks is a British novelist, journalist, and broadcaster best known for his acclaimed historical novels set in France, including The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong, and Charlotte Gray. Alongside these, he has written contemporary fiction, a James Bond continuation novel (Devil May Care), and a Jeeves homage (Jeeves and the Wedding Bells). A former literary editor and journalist, Faulks gained widespread recognition with Birdsong, which solidified his literary reputation. He has also appeared regularly on British media, notably as a team captain on BBC Radio 4's The Write Stuff, and authored the TV tie-in Faulks on Fiction. Honored as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and appointed CBE for his services to literature, Faulks continues to publish widely, with The Seventh Son released in 2023.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 915 reviews
November 5, 2022
Is there anything more fun than an unreliable narrator? :D
January 31, 2016
This was a weird experience. The book was very good and very very well written, but I don't know. I loved it but didn't enjoy it. Maybe because it spoke so well of human nature. Too close for comfort.
Parts of it were undeniably hilarious. Then I realized it wasn't funny at all and yet being human is a funny business.
February 21, 2011
“In panic, time stops: past, present and future exist as a single overwhelming force. You then, perversely, want time to appear to run forwards because the ‘future’ is the only place you can see an escape from the intolerable overload of feeling. But at such moments time doesn’t move. And if time isn’t running, then all events that we think of as past or future are actually happening simultaneously. That is the really terrifying thing. And you are subsumed. You’re buried, as beneath an avalanche, by the weight of simultaneous events.” These are the words of Mike Engleby, Sebastian Faulks’ socially awkward, darkly comic, overly intellectual, morally ambiguous and immensely unreliable narrator for whom consciousness is nothing short of a disease. Borrowing from Patricia Highsmith, Samuel Beckett and Norman Bates, Faulks’ compelling, psychological character-study begins slowly but builds to an almost unbearable level of suspense. It’s one of the most exciting books I’ve read this year. Initially, the novel is quite restricted in its perspective, centering on the protagonist’s first-person narrative. The product of a poverty-stricken, working-class background—beaten by his father and cruelly tormented by schoolmates—Engleby earns a place for himself at Cambridge during the early 1970s where he lurks on the edges of social intercourse, spending most of his time obsessing over a young woman he first notices in a tea room of the University Library. When this young woman disappears, I found myself both questioning Engleby’s motives and his voice, yet, empathically, I couldn’t help but root for him; Faulks has a way of making the reader feel both complicit and compassionate. As the story moves forward to 2006, and the puzzling truths flower into multiple layers of self-deception, self-loathing, and self-analysis; Faulks delivers an Atonement worthy shift in narrative perspective that elicits a kind of self-reflexive interrogation of readerly desires. Indeed, the novel offers multiple pleasures as it negotiates the fluidity of identity, the mystery of identification, the need for closure and the inconsolable want for happiness. It’s a smart yet sad novel and very much worth the effort.
September 10, 2011
This is a great book, despite the narrative awkwardness that shows up in the end.
It's true that Mike Engleby has a mental illness, but that's not why he's an important character. He's important because there's something of him, sick as he is, in every smart outsider. (And every truly smart person should be at least a bit of an outsider, don't you agree?)
He is fascinated with the popular music of the time, finding significance in it. He politely goes along with people around him, while privately holding them in contempt. He things they're just doing meaningless or pretentious things. Arrogant yet painfully shy (a lot of shy people are really hostile if you get right down to it), he maneuvers to spend time near (not with) his fantasy girl. When she disappears he's not sure he had anything to do with it, because he tries to blot things out with alcohol and pills, even though he has a phenomenal memory.
Almost the whole story is told from Mike's point of view. One of the most amazing scenes, however, is when a couple of pages toward the end are told from the point of view of Mike's "best friend," and we see Mike from the outside. The change in perspective in wrenching and enlightening.
What Faulks does, and I think most of the reviewers simply missed this (I won't say that it's because they're not smart enough!) is to put us under a magnifying glass so that we see our own anti-social yet painfully aware selves blown up to giant-insect proportions. Of course, if you're a "nice person" and a real "team player," you're not going to get it.
It's true that Mike Engleby has a mental illness, but that's not why he's an important character. He's important because there's something of him, sick as he is, in every smart outsider. (And every truly smart person should be at least a bit of an outsider, don't you agree?)
He is fascinated with the popular music of the time, finding significance in it. He politely goes along with people around him, while privately holding them in contempt. He things they're just doing meaningless or pretentious things. Arrogant yet painfully shy (a lot of shy people are really hostile if you get right down to it), he maneuvers to spend time near (not with) his fantasy girl. When she disappears he's not sure he had anything to do with it, because he tries to blot things out with alcohol and pills, even though he has a phenomenal memory.
Almost the whole story is told from Mike's point of view. One of the most amazing scenes, however, is when a couple of pages toward the end are told from the point of view of Mike's "best friend," and we see Mike from the outside. The change in perspective in wrenching and enlightening.
What Faulks does, and I think most of the reviewers simply missed this (I won't say that it's because they're not smart enough!) is to put us under a magnifying glass so that we see our own anti-social yet painfully aware selves blown up to giant-insect proportions. Of course, if you're a "nice person" and a real "team player," you're not going to get it.
February 18, 2024
I remembered, I did not remember. And the strange thing was that, in the end, it came to exactly the same thing.
Just one of the best dark character studies™ I’ve ever read. Like The Collector and God’s Own Country in that we’re entirely immersed in one person’s dishonest and unreliable viewpoint, with direct glimpses into their victim/target’s perspective (in this case via the letters and diaries Engleby steals from Jennifer) underlined by an undertone in the storytelling (Engleby speaks of Jennifer as though she’s a friend, yet there’s never any dialogue between them). But this is also the story of its narrator’s whole life, and at points – especially when Engleby becomes a journalist and has some bizarre meetings with famous politicians of the 1980s – it felt like I was reading some unhinged alternate version of Any Human Heart. Faulks is also incredibly good at threading cutting insights into the bile: Engleby can be droning on about something and suddenly there’s an observation so arresting it stops you dead. I never wanted it to end.
Just one of the best dark character studies™ I’ve ever read. Like The Collector and God’s Own Country in that we’re entirely immersed in one person’s dishonest and unreliable viewpoint, with direct glimpses into their victim/target’s perspective (in this case via the letters and diaries Engleby steals from Jennifer) underlined by an undertone in the storytelling (Engleby speaks of Jennifer as though she’s a friend, yet there’s never any dialogue between them). But this is also the story of its narrator’s whole life, and at points – especially when Engleby becomes a journalist and has some bizarre meetings with famous politicians of the 1980s – it felt like I was reading some unhinged alternate version of Any Human Heart. Faulks is also incredibly good at threading cutting insights into the bile: Engleby can be droning on about something and suddenly there’s an observation so arresting it stops you dead. I never wanted it to end.
March 3, 2008
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
Too awful to finish: #5 in an ongoing series.
The Accused: Engleby, by Sebastian Faulks
How far I got: 220 pages (two-thirds of the way through)
Crimes:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, unlike most of the other books at CCLaP that were too awful to finish, Engleby stands accused of only one crime -- of simply never telling an interesting-enough story for me to want to stick it through to the very end. Oh, I tried, ladies and gentlemen, oh how I tried, especially with the book itself being founded on a serviceable-enough premise: it's the bildigsroman (life story) of a young British wisp of a nobody named Mike Engleby, an anti-social everyman who never really engages with his fellow humans nor ever really lives a full human life; who has some sort of dark story in his past regarding a female classmate and a violent death, but that we don't know in detail because of Engleby's habit of binge-drinking combined with the constant popping of mysterious blue pills, leading to giant holes in his memory that he can only recall with dreamlike haziness as he tells us his story.
But ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that turns out to be it; after setting up this intriguing premise in the first 25 pages, Faulks then spends another 300 basically saying, "Yep, he's still anti-social and a little creepy. Yep, he still binge-drinks and takes little blue pills. Yep, we still don't quite know what if anything he had to do with the mysterious disappearance of some girl in college he barely knew, and that he can barely recall anymore why he liked in the first place." Engleby isn't badly written, not by a long shot; it's just that it's pointless, it's so f--king pointless, with a storyline that would barely fuel a short story under other circumstances and characters that you never grow to love or hate or understand or experience any other emotion at all. By the end, the entire thing feels more like a literary exercise than a piece of entertainment, something forced on you against your will in a classroom environment to analyze for a grade, instead of something you voluntarily choose as a hard-working adult to read and enjoy. I felt bad about ultimately abandoning this book, because like I said there's nothing wrong per-se about what's actually there; but after three days of being stymied around page 220, not feeling any enthusiasm about picking the book up again (and having my entire reading queue suffer for it), I finally just had to admit that this book was simply not worth trying to finish.
Verdict: Reluctantly guilty.
Sentence: A quiet retirement to an undisclosed health facility in the country. God have Mercy on Sebastian Faulks' Earnest Yet Plot-Challenged Soul, Amen.
Too awful to finish: #5 in an ongoing series.
The Accused: Engleby, by Sebastian Faulks
How far I got: 220 pages (two-thirds of the way through)
Crimes:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, unlike most of the other books at CCLaP that were too awful to finish, Engleby stands accused of only one crime -- of simply never telling an interesting-enough story for me to want to stick it through to the very end. Oh, I tried, ladies and gentlemen, oh how I tried, especially with the book itself being founded on a serviceable-enough premise: it's the bildigsroman (life story) of a young British wisp of a nobody named Mike Engleby, an anti-social everyman who never really engages with his fellow humans nor ever really lives a full human life; who has some sort of dark story in his past regarding a female classmate and a violent death, but that we don't know in detail because of Engleby's habit of binge-drinking combined with the constant popping of mysterious blue pills, leading to giant holes in his memory that he can only recall with dreamlike haziness as he tells us his story.
But ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that turns out to be it; after setting up this intriguing premise in the first 25 pages, Faulks then spends another 300 basically saying, "Yep, he's still anti-social and a little creepy. Yep, he still binge-drinks and takes little blue pills. Yep, we still don't quite know what if anything he had to do with the mysterious disappearance of some girl in college he barely knew, and that he can barely recall anymore why he liked in the first place." Engleby isn't badly written, not by a long shot; it's just that it's pointless, it's so f--king pointless, with a storyline that would barely fuel a short story under other circumstances and characters that you never grow to love or hate or understand or experience any other emotion at all. By the end, the entire thing feels more like a literary exercise than a piece of entertainment, something forced on you against your will in a classroom environment to analyze for a grade, instead of something you voluntarily choose as a hard-working adult to read and enjoy. I felt bad about ultimately abandoning this book, because like I said there's nothing wrong per-se about what's actually there; but after three days of being stymied around page 220, not feeling any enthusiasm about picking the book up again (and having my entire reading queue suffer for it), I finally just had to admit that this book was simply not worth trying to finish.
Verdict: Reluctantly guilty.
Sentence: A quiet retirement to an undisclosed health facility in the country. God have Mercy on Sebastian Faulks' Earnest Yet Plot-Challenged Soul, Amen.
February 1, 2011
My taste in contemporary fiction tends towards authors - Coetzee, Saramago, Barrico, DeLillo, Gustafsson, Murakami, Oshiguro - that master the art of meshing the darkly epic, the philosophically profound and the mildly surrealist into a compelling literary edifice. A few weeks ago I hurriedly picked up a copy of Faulks' Engleby in an airport bookshop. To be honest, I had never heard of Sebastian Faulks but there was something in the introductory paragraph - a mixture of matter-of-factness and grating irony - that made me want to read on ("My name is Mike Engleby, and I'm in my second year at an ancient university. My college was founded in 1662, which means it's viewed here as modern. Its chapel was designed by Hawksmoor, or possibly Wren; its gardens were laid out by someone else whose name is familiar ..."). I was hooked before even the plane had left the tarmac. The fascination endured, and deepened into exhilaration, as the narrative unfolded over its 340 pages and culminated in a spellbinding finale.
This book can be convincingly read as a murder mystery, a complex psychological portrait and a dark metaphysical fable. Each of these layers raises the stakes associated to developments at underlying levels. As a portrait it digs deeply into the mental furrows of a character that is desperate to understand the workings of its own convoluted mind. As a fable it subtly sets in scene the archetypal confrontation between the life-confirming forces of light and the nihilistic powers of darkness. The "light vs darkness" metaphor is, perhaps, less appropriate as Engleby is a diabolical, luciferan character. Emotionally detached, superbly gifted as an observer and intellectually ruthless he is able to shed a cold, piercing light on the machinations of evil.
The exhilaration from reading this book is due to Sebastian Faulks' ability to match the tonality and rhythm of his prose exactly to the complexity of his lead character and the carefully unfolding, layered plot. Engleby's reflections are cast in a wonderfully precise and luminous prose. It is hard etched, grammatically and lexically precise, but it also convincingly recaptures the informality of working class and student slang. And there are occasional flourishes of great, moving empathy when Engleby ruminates on the object of his veneration ("Jennifer sat back against the wooden settle in a slightly defensive posture; she wore a floral print skirt. I could see her bare legs. She had a sharp patella that gave a fetching inverted-triangle shape to the knee. She was smoking a cigarette and trying not to laugh, but her eyes looked concerned and vulnerable as Robin's low voice went urgently on. She is alive, God damn it, she is alive. She looks so poised, with that womanly concern beginning to override the girlish humour. I will always remember that balanced woman/girl expression in her face. She was twenty-one.")
More than anything else it is the quality of this prose that exposes the reader to the complexities and contradictions endemic in diabolical violence. "Engleby" is a marvelous, masterly study and a great contemporary novel.
This book can be convincingly read as a murder mystery, a complex psychological portrait and a dark metaphysical fable. Each of these layers raises the stakes associated to developments at underlying levels. As a portrait it digs deeply into the mental furrows of a character that is desperate to understand the workings of its own convoluted mind. As a fable it subtly sets in scene the archetypal confrontation between the life-confirming forces of light and the nihilistic powers of darkness. The "light vs darkness" metaphor is, perhaps, less appropriate as Engleby is a diabolical, luciferan character. Emotionally detached, superbly gifted as an observer and intellectually ruthless he is able to shed a cold, piercing light on the machinations of evil.
The exhilaration from reading this book is due to Sebastian Faulks' ability to match the tonality and rhythm of his prose exactly to the complexity of his lead character and the carefully unfolding, layered plot. Engleby's reflections are cast in a wonderfully precise and luminous prose. It is hard etched, grammatically and lexically precise, but it also convincingly recaptures the informality of working class and student slang. And there are occasional flourishes of great, moving empathy when Engleby ruminates on the object of his veneration ("Jennifer sat back against the wooden settle in a slightly defensive posture; she wore a floral print skirt. I could see her bare legs. She had a sharp patella that gave a fetching inverted-triangle shape to the knee. She was smoking a cigarette and trying not to laugh, but her eyes looked concerned and vulnerable as Robin's low voice went urgently on. She is alive, God damn it, she is alive. She looks so poised, with that womanly concern beginning to override the girlish humour. I will always remember that balanced woman/girl expression in her face. She was twenty-one.")
More than anything else it is the quality of this prose that exposes the reader to the complexities and contradictions endemic in diabolical violence. "Engleby" is a marvelous, masterly study and a great contemporary novel.
June 11, 2025
‘It is a small part of life we really live. Indeed, all the rest is not life but merely time.’ 🧐
Page one, first sentence, we are instantly hit with a very blunt introduction to Mike’s character: "My name is Mike Engleby, and I'm in my second year at an ancient university." This seemingly obtuse start to the book sets the tone perfectly 👌🏽
‘Engleby’ is essentially a fascinating look inside a young man’s mind. It has a remarkable intellectual depth to it. With all the vibes you would expect from a campus, academia novel. However, Faulks has gone a step further with his narrative, using a an incredibly complex and insightful voice, that belonged to Mike Engleby, himself. To say he is a complex character would be a great understatement. Faulks portrays nuances of this personality that I couldn’t even begin to describe. However, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed this vivid, and witty, character study.
Furthermore, I loved how Faulks causally includes very thought-provoking phrases into his narrative. There were many moments whilst reading this book that actually made me stop reading and think about what Mike had just said…moments such as these:
👉🏼 “What was future when I started is now already passed. What is the present, then? It’s an illusion; it’s not reality if it can’t be held. What therefore is there to fear in it?”
👉🏼 “Significant things happen so slowly that it’s seldom you can say; it was then - or then. It’s only after the change is fully formed that you can see what happened.”
His obvious intelligence provides a compelling voice. It is also clear that young Mike is a solitary character, who becomes easily fixed on things and people. One of his greatest, and potentially dangerous, obsessions is with his classmate Jennifer Arkland. This becomes more apparent, and alarming, when Jen goes missing…Mike doesn’t understand? What has he missed? Is he involved? We are very much left in limbo, grappling at fragments of information scattered throughout the book. And then suddenly, caught completely off guard, his whole life unravels before his very eyes 👀
You cannot imagine how the final few chapters of this book will play out…
“Well, maybe the love generated between people who behave well and kindly adds somehow to the available pool of existing good feeling in the world, and lives on after them.” 💖
🌟🌟🌟🌟
Page one, first sentence, we are instantly hit with a very blunt introduction to Mike’s character: "My name is Mike Engleby, and I'm in my second year at an ancient university." This seemingly obtuse start to the book sets the tone perfectly 👌🏽
‘Engleby’ is essentially a fascinating look inside a young man’s mind. It has a remarkable intellectual depth to it. With all the vibes you would expect from a campus, academia novel. However, Faulks has gone a step further with his narrative, using a an incredibly complex and insightful voice, that belonged to Mike Engleby, himself. To say he is a complex character would be a great understatement. Faulks portrays nuances of this personality that I couldn’t even begin to describe. However, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed this vivid, and witty, character study.
Furthermore, I loved how Faulks causally includes very thought-provoking phrases into his narrative. There were many moments whilst reading this book that actually made me stop reading and think about what Mike had just said…moments such as these:
👉🏼 “What was future when I started is now already passed. What is the present, then? It’s an illusion; it’s not reality if it can’t be held. What therefore is there to fear in it?”
👉🏼 “Significant things happen so slowly that it’s seldom you can say; it was then - or then. It’s only after the change is fully formed that you can see what happened.”
His obvious intelligence provides a compelling voice. It is also clear that young Mike is a solitary character, who becomes easily fixed on things and people. One of his greatest, and potentially dangerous, obsessions is with his classmate Jennifer Arkland. This becomes more apparent, and alarming, when Jen goes missing…Mike doesn’t understand? What has he missed? Is he involved? We are very much left in limbo, grappling at fragments of information scattered throughout the book. And then suddenly, caught completely off guard, his whole life unravels before his very eyes 👀
You cannot imagine how the final few chapters of this book will play out…
“Well, maybe the love generated between people who behave well and kindly adds somehow to the available pool of existing good feeling in the world, and lives on after them.” 💖
🌟🌟🌟🌟
January 31, 2016
This was a very strange reading experience. The premise was intriguing, but I didn't really like the book from the first chapter. Being a completist with OCD, alas there was no choice but to finish it, so I trudged on. For the first half of the book I positively hated it, then it either improved or made it seem so through a case of literary Stockholm Syndrome. Now, having finished it, from the rear view perspective, I can't say I liked it, but there was a grudging sort of appreciation. At least I didn't hate it all the way. Engleby is a dense (almost stream of consciousness style) tale of an unreliable, unlikable and unsympathetic narrator. He has some sort of a psychological disorder, possibly of an autistic variety. He doesn't emote, love or experience joy, yet he manages to make a pretty decent life for himself...for a time. It is only when a glitch in the precisely tuned machinery of his life, that it becomes a relatively compelling or at least interesting read. There is a murder, but it's barely a thriller. There is a mystery of sorts, but even an averagely perceptive reader will see it coming from a mile away. What saves the book from utter tedium are some clever logistical (juxtaposing perspectives) and linguistic (Engleby is quite a clever weirdo with occasionally entertaining musings) tricks, though for the most part this portrait of a psychopath as a young and otherwise man really didn't work for me. Yet I can see how it would for some. A definite acquired taste of a reading material. Fairly well written, but, much like its eponymous protagonist, lacked soul or charm or something along those lines.
July 16, 2012
'Engleby' gripped me from the start. I love books set in Oxford or Cambridge, the whole student scene fascinates me, especially when set in the seventies, it has that retro vibe of a scene I missed out on by a few years. If that wasn't compelling enough for me, the story moves on to London in the eighties, not only the same era I lived in London but also the same part of London I lived in. I ate in the same restaurants as Engleby, we used the same library!
I've been so immersed in Engleby's world (he narrates the story through the journal he keeps) he is lingering in my mind a day after I finished the book (which I read in a day and a bit by the way). I am absolutely sure I will reread the book, I'm tempted to read it again right now.
I've been so immersed in Engleby's world (he narrates the story through the journal he keeps) he is lingering in my mind a day after I finished the book (which I read in a day and a bit by the way). I am absolutely sure I will reread the book, I'm tempted to read it again right now.
April 10, 2021
Mike Engleby is someone I can't stop thinking about even now a few days after finishing the book.
It is not because he is a charming or even likeable character, in fact he is in large part unlikeable albeit in an acerbically funny way. It is more to do with the questions his life and existence throws up.
Are we more formed by nature or nurture?
Does brutality invariably beget brutality and if it does can the brute be punished for his actions?
Is social mobility ever truly possible – is there always the sense that you don't quite fit in.
The extent to which we can be different people to differing crowds.
These questions form the background to Mike's narration of his own life, but like a watercolour wash they are barely discernable and it is only when you reach the end that you see they form the ground for the tale, the support affecting the understanding of the events.
Of course the understanding of events is seen through the eyes of Mike himself as he narrates his life story, the only objective view of him comes towards the end and most enlightening is the study by his long standing friend Stellings which surprised me a lot in the physical description of Mike as it was so different from the image I had formed of him. It was an uncomfortable insight into how others' view of you may be very different from the one you have of yourself or indeed what you imagine their view of you to be.
A masterfully written novel that has you rooting for the protagonist even though you are aghast at some of his behaviours.
November 19, 2007
This was a really compelling read. I read Birdsong many years ago, and I think that's the only Faulks novel I've ever read--and I frankly don't remember too much about, including whether or not I liked it, so it's unlikely I would have picked this up on my own. An NPR interview steered me in the direction of this book.
A fascinating character study of a sociopath, more telling(particularly early on) in what isn't implicitly stated than in what is. I couldn't put it down. I find myself unable to say a lot about it, because I've now recommended it to several people, and the things I find that I'd like to discuss would spoil the plot too much.
A fascinating character study of a sociopath, more telling(particularly early on) in what isn't implicitly stated than in what is. I couldn't put it down. I find myself unable to say a lot about it, because I've now recommended it to several people, and the things I find that I'd like to discuss would spoil the plot too much.
November 4, 2013
My time is stretched, but I want to try to review at least one book a week. Time for Engleby.
This book was breath-takingly brilliant. It was one of those rare books where incredible writing and an intriguing storyline combine to create, for me, the perfect novel. I was completely bewitched by Sebastian Faulks in this novel. A lesser writer may have lost me. Who would have thought that an ex-Cambridge graduate looking back over his complex life and recounting ragged and random encounters of it, could make such compelling reading? Well, in the hands of a master craftsman in Sebastian Faulks, it was possible.
Engleby (surname of said protagonist) is revealed page by page to the reader, who feels a little puzzled about this character. Told in first person, being right inside the head of Engleby is slightly disturbing at times, and moving at other times and very amusing at yet other times! I've never been so close-up to a character and simultaneously felt as though I didn't really know them at all. It's impossible to describe the merits of this novel. It has to be experienced, felt, savoured. Novels, by their nature, are always going to be subjective. For me, this was supreme story-telling - novel writing at its very best. It bored my husband who gave up and didn't finish it. I'm so glad his negativity (he half-read it first) didn't deter me from an investigation of my own. I was filled with compassion and confusion and awe and distress by the end of this book. I don't always need a happy ending. Life is painful sometimes; bad things happen and don't always resolve. Escapism is wonderful. We all need it sometimes. But there is no escapism in this book, just stark reality; life as it is for some. Real and raw. Who would have thought that an ex-Cambridge graduate could have aroused such emotion in me, and cause me to reflect upon them for a long time afterwards?
Well, he didn't. It was down to the brilliance of one Sebastian Faulks, whose praises I cannot sing highly enough for Engleby. Loved it. LOVED IT!!
This book was breath-takingly brilliant. It was one of those rare books where incredible writing and an intriguing storyline combine to create, for me, the perfect novel. I was completely bewitched by Sebastian Faulks in this novel. A lesser writer may have lost me. Who would have thought that an ex-Cambridge graduate looking back over his complex life and recounting ragged and random encounters of it, could make such compelling reading? Well, in the hands of a master craftsman in Sebastian Faulks, it was possible.
Engleby (surname of said protagonist) is revealed page by page to the reader, who feels a little puzzled about this character. Told in first person, being right inside the head of Engleby is slightly disturbing at times, and moving at other times and very amusing at yet other times! I've never been so close-up to a character and simultaneously felt as though I didn't really know them at all. It's impossible to describe the merits of this novel. It has to be experienced, felt, savoured. Novels, by their nature, are always going to be subjective. For me, this was supreme story-telling - novel writing at its very best. It bored my husband who gave up and didn't finish it. I'm so glad his negativity (he half-read it first) didn't deter me from an investigation of my own. I was filled with compassion and confusion and awe and distress by the end of this book. I don't always need a happy ending. Life is painful sometimes; bad things happen and don't always resolve. Escapism is wonderful. We all need it sometimes. But there is no escapism in this book, just stark reality; life as it is for some. Real and raw. Who would have thought that an ex-Cambridge graduate could have aroused such emotion in me, and cause me to reflect upon them for a long time afterwards?
Well, he didn't. It was down to the brilliance of one Sebastian Faulks, whose praises I cannot sing highly enough for Engleby. Loved it. LOVED IT!!
March 23, 2020
Nice work - a look at modern Britain through the eyes of a unreliable narrator 'loner' with a mental condition… from his working class background through boarding school, to Oxford and more. A mystery emerges tied around the disappearance of an undergraduate that he admires from afar. With some nicely paced dark comedy this is a pretty good, am quite accessible story by Faulks. 6 out of 12.
August 22, 2018
Liked the first half - about school, college and the start of journalistic career - VERY much, then it got sort of pointless, and the last quarter was just meh. Also, Faulks sucks when he starts talking war, politics, our imperfect world etc.
August 19, 2018
Wow. This is an intense and heavy read, but worth it in the long run. It took me a while to get into it, and it floundered a little in the middle, but the overall feeling of this book was gripping, dusturbing, chilling and sad.
As this is written in 1st person, and as the protagonist is a 'loner' with definite social problems, most of the book is dialogue with himself. This can make for heavy reading at times, but it's also quite inthralling looking into the mind of a man whose view of reality and the world is so different from the ordinary.
The descriptions of Engleby's life at boarding school was absolutely chilling, and incredibly sad. The sections towards the end of the book, when his friend Stellings is describing him in a police statement is also incredibly sad - one of the few times we actually get to see Mike as others see him.
Of course, as a reader you have to be aware that everything he writes is subjective - can we really believe ANYTHING he says in his narrative? Even when he's quoting someone, or quoting from Jennifer's diary, can we really be sure that it's the truth?
A book that's interesting on so many levels - its literary devices, its content, its exploration of mental illness/'personality disorders" and as a portrait of an abnornmal person and his realtionship with the world.
Faulks is certainly an incredibly intelligent writer, and this book may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you can hang in there, it's worth reading.
As this is written in 1st person, and as the protagonist is a 'loner' with definite social problems, most of the book is dialogue with himself. This can make for heavy reading at times, but it's also quite inthralling looking into the mind of a man whose view of reality and the world is so different from the ordinary.
The descriptions of Engleby's life at boarding school was absolutely chilling, and incredibly sad. The sections towards the end of the book, when his friend Stellings is describing him in a police statement is also incredibly sad - one of the few times we actually get to see Mike as others see him.
Of course, as a reader you have to be aware that everything he writes is subjective - can we really believe ANYTHING he says in his narrative? Even when he's quoting someone, or quoting from Jennifer's diary, can we really be sure that it's the truth?
A book that's interesting on so many levels - its literary devices, its content, its exploration of mental illness/'personality disorders" and as a portrait of an abnornmal person and his realtionship with the world.
Faulks is certainly an incredibly intelligent writer, and this book may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you can hang in there, it's worth reading.
July 25, 2008
very interesting story - very disturbing. disturbing because the main character is complicated. you know there is something "off" about him yet you can probably relate to him on some level (unless you had a really "wonder-bread life"). by the end of the book it disturbs you that you were able to relate to him at all (and that such a character could exist - but you know he probably could). i like the twists and the complexity. i also like that it is written in 1st person - you feel like you stumbled across this guy's diary (which you sort of did). i wanted the book to be longer (which is a sign i really enjoyed it).
September 20, 2017
This is a sharp tale. Sharp all the way through. Sharp in its telling, sharp in it's delivery, sharp in its prose. Sharp enough to cut.
And it does.
A 4-star all the way through (mainly due to the narrowness of the story), but it claimed it's fifth in the final chapter.
And what a final chapter.
"Don't look for closure..."
And it does.
A 4-star all the way through (mainly due to the narrowness of the story), but it claimed it's fifth in the final chapter.
And what a final chapter.
"Don't look for closure..."
May 7, 2022
I found this neither entertaining or interesting. I failed to empathise with the main character, and didn't really get gripped by the plot. While these things don't have to happen for a book, I didn't really understand much of a message in the book either. I guess it's not bad, but it's not that good either.
December 2, 2007
I was quite captured by this character's voice and perspective. Engleby's relationship to the world around him, the way he views his peers for example, is subtly bizarre in the way he is rational and yet weirdly detached. I found the prose to be frequently stunning and almost always fluid and smart. This reads like a thriller at times. It was a intriguing, moody read that I found enjoyable despite its dark tone. I am glad I found this author and look forward to reading other books by him.
January 22, 2010
I had previously read Sebastian Faulk's Charlotte Gray, an historical novel of the best kind both for its historical accuracy and its dramatic characterization. In reading Engleby I found a psychological novel where characterization is brought to the fore with the presentation in the first person. That person, Mike Engleby, gradually becomes several characters as the novel progresses. Much like Dickens, notably in David Copperfield and Great Expectations, Sebastian Faulks's protagonist adopts different names for his persona over the course of the novel. The reader gradually begins to doubt the reliability of Engleby as narrator of his life story and with good cause, as he develops psychological characteristics that one may only categorize as pathological. Where these lead him I will leave to those readers interested in finding our for themselves. I found his story suspenseful, even as it began to repulse me. My interest was also piqued by his recurrent meditations like this one on time:
"What is this present then? It's an illusion; it's not reality if it can't be held. What therefore is there to fear in it?"(p. 65)
This is early in the novel, he has later meditations on the nature of thinking itself, and you gradually wonder if these are not symptoms of his gradual loss of the ability to distinguish reality from imagination. His pathology includes a variant of voyeurism that allow the author to incorporate diaries and other documents into the narrative - perhaps to confirm Engleby's own views. The combinatorial effect of the narrative techniques made this an intriguing psychological novel and raised the author in my estimation. I look forward to reading more of his novels.
"What is this present then? It's an illusion; it's not reality if it can't be held. What therefore is there to fear in it?"(p. 65)
This is early in the novel, he has later meditations on the nature of thinking itself, and you gradually wonder if these are not symptoms of his gradual loss of the ability to distinguish reality from imagination. His pathology includes a variant of voyeurism that allow the author to incorporate diaries and other documents into the narrative - perhaps to confirm Engleby's own views. The combinatorial effect of the narrative techniques made this an intriguing psychological novel and raised the author in my estimation. I look forward to reading more of his novels.
October 11, 2007
lead by great reviews and my wife's book club, i read this. started to fall apart around page 170, when the narrator suddenly reveals he has a rage problem. really? where's it been for 169 pages? other things i didn't like:
1. the book is set in the past, and characters make predictions about things that will happen in the future (now) and are of course right. cheap device.
2. There is a short rant about the Iraq war at the end that takes the stance that everyone already knows and embraces.
3. the whole thing (spoiler) is engleby's journal, and i was hoping he'd rigged it to fool people in case he were ever caught in his crimes. not that clever.
4. the ending is like the ending of Psycho: you get a 20-page explanation behind the psychology of engleby that any normal reader would have already inferred.
that's it.
1. the book is set in the past, and characters make predictions about things that will happen in the future (now) and are of course right. cheap device.
2. There is a short rant about the Iraq war at the end that takes the stance that everyone already knows and embraces.
3. the whole thing (spoiler) is engleby's journal, and i was hoping he'd rigged it to fool people in case he were ever caught in his crimes. not that clever.
4. the ending is like the ending of Psycho: you get a 20-page explanation behind the psychology of engleby that any normal reader would have already inferred.
that's it.
July 9, 2024
Mike Engleby is a strange mixture: in terms of class background and his extraordinary ability to learn, in terms of memory (he can learn huge chunks of text but his memory 'fails' him when it might be in his interests to forget) and in his narrative qualities (what we are told and how it is recounted). Or maybe he is just a 'typical' unreliable narrator (if such a person should exist). We notice that there is something unusual and creepy about him from the start and things do not improve. Although Mike is by no means a sympathetic character, I found the book fascinating and better than anything else I had read by Sebastian Faulks. (Some people may find Mike's explanations in the book too lengthy - he is not Trollope or Dickens by any means but nor could the book be described as short or succinct.)
July 18, 2014
Usually when I finish a book I am very clear of my opinion on it but this was a rare exception. I thought that it was a pretty average story which was superbly well told. Hence, confusion.
It's quite difficult to describe the whole plot without giving it all away. In essence it is ridiculously simple. Written in the first person, it sees Mike Engleby tell the story of his time at university, the disappearance of the girl he admired from afar and his life from then onwards.
Engleby is a great character, a supremely intelligent social outcast. The character is captured fantastically in the narration, there's a remarkable intellectual energy about it with constant reference to history and literature and science. But at the same time Engleby is an incredibly cliched character, being the way he is due to being beaten by his father and bullied at grammar school. For a character so grounded in his dislike of society, Faulks gives him exactly the background society expects him to have. Whilst obviously childhood trauma can affect someone mentally, it is entirely plausible for someone to have a similar disorder as Engleby does without having suffered it.
The plot here is not good at all. If you are anything like me you will read the blurb and immediately have an expectation about what will happen but are hoping to be surprised. Then you read it and exactly your expectation happens. The trouble is that this story only requires a few hundred words yet somehow Faulks manages to stretch it out for an entire novel. So much of it is pointless fluff which adds nothing to the story whatsoever.
I can see what Faulks was trying to do with this book but it just doesn't work. Despite this though there are moments of genius as the odd character rambles that you feel he is real. Faulks shows here he is a good writer but he just couldn't give us a plot which demonstrates he can be a good novel writer.
It's quite difficult to describe the whole plot without giving it all away. In essence it is ridiculously simple. Written in the first person, it sees Mike Engleby tell the story of his time at university, the disappearance of the girl he admired from afar and his life from then onwards.
Engleby is a great character, a supremely intelligent social outcast. The character is captured fantastically in the narration, there's a remarkable intellectual energy about it with constant reference to history and literature and science. But at the same time Engleby is an incredibly cliched character, being the way he is due to being beaten by his father and bullied at grammar school. For a character so grounded in his dislike of society, Faulks gives him exactly the background society expects him to have. Whilst obviously childhood trauma can affect someone mentally, it is entirely plausible for someone to have a similar disorder as Engleby does without having suffered it.
The plot here is not good at all. If you are anything like me you will read the blurb and immediately have an expectation about what will happen but are hoping to be surprised. Then you read it and exactly your expectation happens. The trouble is that this story only requires a few hundred words yet somehow Faulks manages to stretch it out for an entire novel. So much of it is pointless fluff which adds nothing to the story whatsoever.
I can see what Faulks was trying to do with this book but it just doesn't work. Despite this though there are moments of genius as the odd character rambles that you feel he is real. Faulks shows here he is a good writer but he just couldn't give us a plot which demonstrates he can be a good novel writer.
December 10, 2024
Woah there, now that was an EXPERIENCE, I can tell you. Fancy getting manipulated by the main character and the author as well!!!
A large portion of this story probably went over my head because I found it too intellectual for my reading capabilities. However, it is undoubtedly a phenomenal piece of work (a bit like Mike Engleby!) and thoroughly worthy of five stars, but because I struggled with it in places, and these struggles had an impact on my enjoyment, I’m giving it -
4 ⭐️ - very good, I liked it a LOT.
A large portion of this story probably went over my head because I found it too intellectual for my reading capabilities. However, it is undoubtedly a phenomenal piece of work (a bit like Mike Engleby!) and thoroughly worthy of five stars, but because I struggled with it in places, and these struggles had an impact on my enjoyment, I’m giving it -
4 ⭐️ - very good, I liked it a LOT.
May 2, 2008
Absolutely, positively, HATED this book. I could not even get past the first few chapters. If you enjoy reading about the minute and boring details of a character's daily activity you will like this book. Absolutely awful.
February 18, 2020
This book was not an easy read. It felt as if the author had all the right ingredients; he creates a character that has depth and a backstory, adding a pinch of mystery and drama, and yet the story never reaches its full potential. Instead we are forced to read the ramblings of a genius idiot for the first 2/3 of the book, where he spends ages listing every single food and drink he ever had and every song lyric he ever heard. Even the girl that catches his eye is as boring as him and I don't understand what type of college girl has the time or energy to write such long and tedious diary entries. There are a couple of good chapters in there, where Engleby's past is explored but the drama and any relationships (no matter how good or bad) are quickly forgotten in the clutter of unnecessary tales. I understand this is meant to reflect his mind but by the end of the book, I realised that I neither liked nor disliked him; I was just indifferent and tired of him. The last 1/3 of the book offers some more clarity to the story and moves at high speeds (hardly any shocking revelations there though) but at the same time it introduces way too many themes and questions to be explored.
February 14, 2009
Although well written this is not an easy read. If this had been the first Faulks novel I'd read I would not be keen to try more. Towards the end I understood why this book is written in such a way. One is looking into a very dark soul so it cannot be less than bleak. A condemnation of drug culture.
June 18, 2008
This has to be one of the most boring books I have ever read. So many times I nearly gave up on it and only carried on because of having to discuss it at my book club. My advice, for what it's worth, is to give this one a miss!!
December 7, 2021
Ikeas intrigued by the premise but wasn't able to get invested in the audiobook. Didn't find the story or characters very engaging at all
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