A Week in December
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Review
A vicious satire on modern life. -- Daily Telegraph, review in the best of the recent financial fiction
`Page-turning portrait of noughties' London.' -- Woman&Home
'The novel is cleverly plotted and eminently readable...' --The Sunday Times
`Faulks never writes a hackneyed or lazy sentence, polishing each with care' --Independent on Sunday
`a zeitgeisty novel about the effects of greed, celebrity, the electronic age and the fragmentation of urban life.' --Cath Kidston Magazine
'It's gripping stuff [...] Sweeping and satirical, A Week in December is a thrilling state-of-the-nation novel.'
--Cath Kidston Magazine
`This intriguing book... takes the reader on a whistle-stop tour of society...' --Waterstone's Books Quarterly, November 2010
`One can't mistake Faulk's ambition, and his take on the contemporary life is never less than readable' --Sunday Herald
`Page-turning portrait of noughties' London.' -- Woman&Home
'The novel is cleverly plotted and eminently readable...' --The Sunday Times
`Faulks never writes a hackneyed or lazy sentence, polishing each with care' --Independent on Sunday
`a zeitgeisty novel about the effects of greed, celebrity, the electronic age and the fragmentation of urban life.' --Cath Kidston Magazine
'It's gripping stuff [...] Sweeping and satirical, A Week in December is a thrilling state-of-the-nation novel.'
--Cath Kidston Magazine
`This intriguing book... takes the reader on a whistle-stop tour of society...' --Waterstone's Books Quarterly, November 2010
`One can't mistake Faulk's ambition, and his take on the contemporary life is never less than readable' --Sunday Herald
Book Description
Powerful contemporary novel set in London from a master of literary fiction
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Things fall apart,
By
This review is from: A Week in December (Paperback)
In this book, Sebastian Faulks seems to be attempting to sum up mid-noughties London in the same way that Tom Wolfe crystallized the Manhattan of twenty years previously in The Bonfire of the Vanities. A large cast of contemporary characters (including a hedge-fund manager, an Asian chutney tycoon, a barrister, a recently-appointed MP, a Polish footballer and a literary journalist) are briskly assembled as the guest-list of a dinner party which is to take place at the end of the book, and we follow several of them (plus subsidiary ones such as the son of the hedge-fund manager who's interested in mind-altering drugs and a reality TV gameshow, and the son of the tycoon who's a suicide-bomber in training) around for the period of time that gives the novel its title. It's a promising idea, and the reader is carried along for the most part by some interesting stories, but I didn't think the book held together as well as it could have.The main problem, I think, is (what seems to be intended as) the central character: John Veals the hedge-fund manager. A lot of effort has been put into establishing him as someone who's only interested in making money, but - while this is clearly not intended to be a sympathetic trait - it has the effect of rendering him invisible. Nothing he says or does is of any interest to the reader (a fairly detailed technical account of option trading has been included by way of background to his job, but this stuff is tedious even for people who think they understand it, and it has no place in a work of entertainment). The obvious comparison is with Tom Wolfe's Sherman McCoy, who carried the full weight of The Bonfire of the Vanities; by contrast to Veals, he was a vibrant, memorable character (and the author was able to explain where his money came from in a much more entertaining fashion) who - in spite of his ultimately fatal flaws - the reader felt involved with, and we cared about what happened to him. The characters that take up the rest of the novel are somewhat better-realised (although it seems that some of them are introduced only to illustrate some aspect of the zeitgeist before being quickly discarded), but I found that the gap at its heart made the book feel like it was always falling apart instead of coming together.
40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Love, Actually...in literary,
By
This review is from: A Week in December (Paperback)
The idea behind "A Week in December" is similar to that of the Richard Curtis film of a few years back. We follow various of London's inhabitants in the week before Christmas and discover their interconnectedness. And, at the end, love is the answer - parental love, romantic love and love of money, status and power.It's an ambitious idea but, as a whole, it didn't work for me. In the first few pages of the book, the reader is exposed to a "bullet -point" list of about 30 characters (rather like a particularly dreary Powerpoint presentation), many of whom play no significant part in the following four hundred-odd pages. This "data dump" is followed up by (to my mind) tedious lectures about high finance in unnecessary detail. The funniest sections of the book concerned the literary critic, but I felt there were far too many in-jokes about the literary establishment for this to be effective. The parts intended as satire - concerning the reality TV show and the online parallel universe game fell flat for me, partly because these already seemed dated - the parody is of "Second Life" rather than today's ubiquitous Facebook. Many of the characters seemed to merge into one stereotype - I had difficulty in particular with distinguishing most of the women from one another. The character that I found of most interest was the would-be suicide bomber Hassan - his story of all, was well-told. His parents were also drawn with warmth and humour. There were one or two other minor characters who were of interest, or added a light touch - such as Roger - and I felt I would have liked to have seen more from these people's lives rather than yet more information on hedge funds. Normally, I love books from Sebastian Faulks - and I even forgave the psychology lectures in "Human Traces" as the book was so powerful and full of humanity. Towards the end of "A Week in December", I found a passage which made me wonder - like other reviewers - if the whole thing is some kind of weird joke on Faulks' part: "From now on, you can only write about the nineteenth century...no more stuff about today...but...anything from before you were born, that should be alright, shouldn't it?" "I, er...I think you may be right. The truth is I can't bear contemporary stuff." Reading "A Week in December" was, for me, rather like being on Jenni's Circle Line train. I was looking forward to a journey round the people and places of London but instead I was stuck in a claustrophobic carriage packed too full of people that ground to an unexplained halt in the middle of nowhere.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enthralling story telling,
By smartesthorse (Suffolk uk) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Week in December (Paperback)
I like this author. I don't care if some people think he is an overhyped lovey I don't know or expect to know him personally I just like a good story. That's what you get with Faulks, well written intricately plotted stories. Is this old fashioned? Possibly, this one certainly is 19th century in its scope and its attempt, successful in my view, in showing a slice of life in present day Britain.It is rich in ironical humour, savage humour, directed particularly at a reality TV show called It's Madness, starring real life mental patients..far fetched? I thought that about Big Brother when the idea was first mooted! A dreadful book reviewer type is also victim to this wicked irony. The week in question is described from the view points of several widely different individuals including the above mentioned and also an Asian pickle king, a woman tube train driver and a student involved with a group of extreme Islamists. From these various some time interlocking, viewpoints, Faulks tells a masterly tale that really does expose us for what we have become in the 21st century. Recommended, for splendid story telling and intellectual stimulation.
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