Name: A Week in December
ISBN: 9780099551690

Sebastian Faulks

Powerful contemporary novel set in London from a master of literary fiction

A Week in December

Structured like a thriller, A Week in December takes place over the course of a single week at the end of 2008. Set in London, it brings together an intriguing cast of characters whose lives apparently run on parallel lines but - as gradually becomes clear - are intricately related. The central anti-hero, John Veals, is a shadily successful and boundlessly ambitious Dickensian character who is trading billions. The tentacles of Veals's influence encompass newspaper columnists, MPs, businessmen, footballers, a female tube driver, a Scottish convert to Islam, a disaffected teenager, and a care worker, whose different perspectives build up a tale of love, family and money as the story builds to its powerful climax.

Hazel Evans

With A Week in December, Sebastian Faulks captures so perfectly a world - our world - from which all the characters try to escape, into other worlds. Be it cyberspace, drugs or money, Faulks' book is a plea for people to return back to the world we really inhabit, and to value reality, or "true life" - as it is described as in the book. The irony being, that by reading the book, we too are escaping into other worlds. 
Faulks observes our modern day life and portrays it to us in such a rich and entertaining way, that this book will stay in my mind for a long time yet.
Definitely one of the best books I've ever read!

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 skunk and reality TV; and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life. Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this savagely humorous book.