A WEEK IN DECEMBER
It is 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 no work and too much time to speculate;
a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; an embittered
hack book reviewer; a schoolboy addicted to skunk and reality TV;
and Jenni, a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins all these
lives together in a daily loop.
With the ghost of Dickens’s London just visible beneath the surface,
the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of
modern urban life. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten
metres high, but the characters refuse to see it – and party on as
though tomorrow is a dream.
Greed, financial irresponsibility, the dehumanising effects of
the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the
themes dealt with in this savagely humorous book.
All the characters seem to find themselves living at one remove from
reality. Yet Faulks probes not just their self-deceptions, but their
hopes and loves as well. As the novel moves to its gripping climax,
they are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world
they inhabit.
Funny, angry, fast-moving and philosophically daring, A WEEK IN
DECEMBER is a new landmark in Sebastian Faulks’s extraordinary
career.
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