Melding the moral heft of Dickens with the satirical spirit of Tom Wolfe, A Week in December fearlessly tackles greed, the dehumanizing effects of the electronic age, and the fragmentation of society with savage humor. Here is a powerfully compelling novel that holds a mirror up to the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life, with all its ironies, conflicts, and discontinuities. My main disappointment is how the book ends."In Sebastian Faulks' panoramic and masterful new novel, we follow, over seven eventful days, 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 with more blades out than a Swiss Army knife, a schoolboy hooked on genetically enhanced pot and reality TV, and a Tube train driver with a secret online life whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. The book is made up of several stories running in parallel that hardly impinge on one another and so the expectation is that by the end some connections will be formed. Through the voice of a character who is a writer and critic Faulks airs some of his criticisms of other writers, albeit disguised for those of us not in the know.
There are over-long polemics about the genesis of the banking crisis and much about the rise of Islamic extremism. A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks - Reading Guide: 9780307476623 - : Books In the blustery final days of 2007, seven characters will reach an unexpected turning point: a hedge fund manager pulling off a trade, a professional football.
The book is largely a dystopic commentary on modern urban life in Britain.
Despite an excellent reader, who helps the listener differentiate among the large number of characters, I was confused for the first few chapters as to who was whom as so many were introduced at the start of the book. He has written some splendid and moving books, but "A Week in December" is not one of them. I've read most of Sebastian Faulk's books and am impressed by his versatility across a range of genres.
0 kommentar(er)
