Eleven

by David Llewellyn

Told entirely in e-mails sent and received by Martin Davies, would-be author and frustrated corporate accountant, this debut novel is set on September 11, 2001, in Cardiff, Wales. In denial about his breakup with his girlfriend and baffled by the triviality of his life, Martin gossips online at his desk and makes plans for the weekend until—just after his crowd of young professionals returns from lunch—people start flying airliners into office buildings in New York City. Very funny and then brutally sad, Martin's messages by the time the day is over have run the gamut from nonsense straight out of The Office to something closer to a play by Samuel Beckett.

Genres: Fiction

130 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2006

About the author

David Llewellyn is a Welsh novelist and script writer. He grew up in Pontypool and graduated from Dartington College of Arts in 2000. His first novel, Eleven, was published by Seren Press in 2006. His second, Trace Memory, a spin-off from the BBC drama series Torchwood, was published in March 2008. Everything Is Sinister was published by Seren in May 2008. He has written two novels for the Doctor Who New Series Adventures: The Taking of Chelsea 426, featuring the Tenth Doctor, and Night of the Humans, featuring the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond.

In addition to writing novels, Llewellyn wrote the Bernice Summerfield audio play Paradise Frost and the Dark Shadows audio drama The Last Stop for Big Finish Productions.

Llewellyn lives in Cardiff.

Reviews

[Evelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you couldn't guess by the cover and the title, Eleven is a story set on 9/11, and is compiled as a series of e-mails throughout the day. Our protagonist is Martin Davies, a guy who is desperately stuck in a rut in his boring, pointless, corporate job, and who longs to be an author in control of his own life but doesn't know how to make it happen. Like anyone who has ever been trapped in the mundane hell of an office job that they don't like, Martin takes out his frustrations and boredom in a series of e-mails that he sends to his work colleagues and friends, and the constant replies that he receives back makes up this short and snappy novella.

As the day progresses, 9/11 finally happens and the conversation of the emails (most about unrequited love, break ups, drunken exploits, office politics and bad management etc) takes on a somewhat different tone, or does it? Eleven makes you stop and think for just a moment about how short and precious life is, and whether you want to spend it working in a job that you hate or whether it's time to go out there and do something different. It'll appeal to anyone who loved The Office, and movies like Office Space, as it has a very similar kind of satirical theme.

[Jamal Hadjkura · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting concept that didn't reach to its full potential.

The narrator and a few of the other characters had great voice and personality to them. they felt very real and authentic. However, the plot just didn't reach up to the quality of these characters.

I like that it just felt like a general day at work and the nonchalance of office work. but when you have a setting like 9/11, there is so much more that could have been done.

I think the biggest issue was that it felt like it cut short too early. It had a beginning and middle but didn't really have an ending.

It just felt like I finished a book 3/4 of the way into it.

[Lucie Flagg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had been wanting to read this book for a while but couldn't get my hands on it. I finally caved and ordered it from ebay. I was super excited to read it, but I was definitely left disappointed. The idea is fantastic in theory, but I don't think it was executed well. The plot was lacking in many areas. Just as I thought we were getting somewhere in the story and character development, it ended. It's certainly a quick and easy read, but I didn't really feel my usual satisfaction when I finished. Perhaps it's my fault for having such high expectations...

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting format, funny, sad, of our times. Short book, simple read, huge ideas.

[Julia Harrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Readability: Pretty much the most readable thing ever - it's not a big book anyway, and it's made up entirely of e-mails which breaks it up into tiny little sections of text, so it's literally the easiest thing to read ever. I read it in one day - I started it on the short train ride to work, read for about half an hour on my lunch break, and was finished before I was even halfway into the train journey home. I think it's also incredibly readable if you have ever worked in an office, specifically in an office doing a job that you don't necessarily detest but find to be pretty pointless, and Llewellyn captures that feeling absolutely in Martin's e-mails.

Impact: The trouble with such a brief, skimmable style, and with the e-mails stretching out over one single - albeit very important - day, is that the actual story has to pack some kind of major emotional wallop to - not quite compensate, but to offset in some way the sparseness of language and form. I'm not convinced that Eleven does this. Martin, the protagonist, suffers from no lack of acquaintances to e-mail in his boredom, and no lack of relationship issues of varying degrees with all of them - almost too many, to the point of ridiculousness, although Llewellyn does manage to convey his feelings quite effectively using a fairly limited form. When the inevitable event that marked the date of all those e-mails does occur, though, the whole thing starts to fall apart a little - which is possibly Llewellyn's intention: my attention becomes torn between my memories of that day and the footage of it that is burned on my brain, and the way it affects Martin and the issues he is facing. The climax of Martin's day seems strangely flat yet at the same time perversely melodramatic against that backdrop, and ultimately it left me rather cold. It is interesting, and some of the reactions in other e-mails are accurately callous and detached, but, whether due to the brevity of information we get about these characters and especially Martin, I'm not sure what to make of his final decision. The novel works best as a very realistic insight into the boredom and frustration of people in jobs they don't feel rewarded by, but it is less successful in dissecting the effect of large events on people more focused on small ones.

[Maura Heaphy Dutton · Rating 1 out of 5]

This felt incredibly thin, as if I was supposed to be impressed by the giddy creativity of combining emails and 9/11. NOT emails from the Twin Towers on or before 9/11, mind you: just random, silly emails, of the kind we've all sent or received, between co-workers in an unidentified office in the UK -- grumbling about annoying co-workers, moaning about hangovers, plotting escape to other, better jobs. I believe the author thinks this most ephemeral of ephemera achieves a Deep Poignancy when, one by one, the emailers realize what's happening to Young People Just Like Them in an office tower on the other side of the Atlantic, and start to wonder What's Iit All For.

I decided that what's it's all for was a wasted couple of hours of my time, and a contribution to the local charity shop.

[Leslie]

From the Guardian:
A compulsive read, written entirely in the form of emails sent by the characters over the course of one day. Martin and his friends work in the offices and call centres of Cardiff; and in its hilarious depiction of the grim hypocrisy of modern working life, Eleven is on a par with The Office. But Martin also writes a series of soul-searching emails to himself, which he then saves in Drafts, which form a moving contrast to the razor sharp comedy. Though it takes place on 9/11, most of the characters are too drunk or stoned to grasp what's happening.

[Trashpalace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breve romanzo interamente composto da messaggi e-mail.
11 settembre 2001: una giornata come tante in un ufficio come tanti. Tra amicizie, gelosie e resoconti delle avventure della sera prima, l'angoscia esistenziale del protagonista si riversa in una serie di e-mail mai inviate, mentre sullo sfondo si dipanano avvenimenti epocali ancora troppo sconcertanti per sembrare reali.

[Judith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although it has excellent reviews (and is probably written before them), I can't help but compare the novel to Matt Beaumont's 'E' and, to a lesser extent, Joshua Ferris' 'Then We Came to the End', as they all have some or all of the novel written via e-mail. If I'd read this first, I probably would've given it 3 stars, but the others are better (especially Ferris' novel.)

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a whole genre of 9/11 fiction now...this one is pretty good. Still, nothing really compares to the book 102 Minutes, which is a nonfiction account of that morning. This book gives a view from "across the pond," showing how the events that day affected other people in other countries.

[Ben Cooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

An account of a man frustrated by his situation losing himself as the events of September 11th 2001 unfold but told via emails between him and colleagues in his dead end job. Really interesting way to tell a story and a very strong debut novel.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it's a weird, funny and most of all disturbing story showing how and about what people communicate in our time of insteant e-mailing, I found that it is a bit overrated. Also, 9/11 doesn't really play a major role in it.
I quite liked the e-mails that were not sent, though.

[Nivi Engineer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great modern take on the epistolary novel, composed entirely of email messages. It uses the backdrop of 9/11 to show a day in the life of Martin. It condemns modern society as it draws in the modern reader and makes you think.