Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2010
400 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
London: the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days we follow 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; a schoolboy hooked on reality TV and genetically altered pot; and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop.
With daring skill and savage humor, A Week in December explores the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life; as the novel moves to its gripping climax, its characters are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they—and we all—inhabit.
"Starred Review. [Faulks] shows us a world in which money rules, tunnel vision destroys and love remains the touchstone and redeemer. With its inexhaustible curiosity about the way the world works, this funny, exciting work is another milestone in a distinguished career." - Kirkus Reviews
"The novel is unequivocally successful [as a] narrative . . . Readers will race through the pages like banks through cash." - The Guardian (UK)
"A Week in December might as well be called 'State of the Nation’’ it is so nakedly a diagnosis of Britain’s current woes, from the hazards of walking down to the shops to, of course, the credit crunch. There is often more than a whiff of the newspaper column as Faulks fulminates and throws lightning bolts like Zeus on crack, blasting every aspect of life in London. ... Despite its comic élan, the novel is a little uneven. Faulks has probably reached that level of success where no editor will have the temerity to point out weaknesses." - The Telegraph (UK)
"Producing such a fractured narrative arrangement is a plate-spinning exercise.... However, there are two moments in this otherwise workmanlike novel that truly hit home." - The Independent
"A Week in December is a good story, well written, comic in parts, but my how Faulks shakes his fist at the world. Had he only let his anger steep, he would have emerged with something not mellower but rather subtler, deeper, far more powerful." - The Globe and Mail
"This vast novel, well-plotted and gripping throughout, is the first that Sebastian Faulks has set in our time. It is a state of the nation book, and what a state we seem to be in: if Faulks is less kind to the contemporary than he has been to the past, we cannot blame him, for he is only reporting what he sees." - The Spectator
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sebastian Faulks was born on 20 April 1953 and was educated at Wellington
College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was the first literary editor of
The Independent and became deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday
before leaving in 1991 to concentrate on writing. He has been a columnist for
The Guardian (1992-8) and the Evening Standard (1997-9). He continues
to contribute articles and reviews to a number of newspapers and magazines. He
wrote and presented the Channel 4 Television series 'Churchill's Secret Army',
screened in 1999. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
His first novel, A Trick of the Light, was published in 1984. His other
novels include The Girl at the Lion d'Or (1989), set in France between
the First and Second ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Sebastian Faulks's Website
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