Book 49: "Engleby" by Sebastian Faulks
Friday, July 3rd, 2009 13:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwake'If it's not me,' he said eventually, 'it'll be my successor. The files, the paperwork, the notes will all be left meticulous. Marked up, indexed, cross indexed. And you, Mr Engleby, are going into the file marked "Unhappy".'
'Tu quoque,' I said.
'What?'
'You're going in my unhappy file, too.';
Starting during his second year at Cambridge, this is the life story of Mike Engleby. He is a working class boy who gets a scholarship to a minor public school where his life is made hell but he does well academically, and by the time he reaches university he is curiously uninvolved in real life, sitting on the edge looking in, with his only connections seeming to be with his little sister Julie and his university friend Stelling. When a student he has admired from afar goes missing, he is upset, but he graduates, moves to London and goes on to become a successful Fleet Street journalist.
The whole book is supposed to be Engleby's journal, but it doesn't read like a journal and I was surprised when the psychiatrist mentioned how Engleby's journal had helped him to understand him. I would have been more convinced by the journal if the book said that he had written it while in the special hospital, looking back on his life.
I had a problem believing in Jennifer's diary and letters to her parents. They seems excessively long for a student who had plenty of work, friends and societies to keep her busy. If it wasn't for the lack of mentions of Engleby I would have thought he had made them up himself.
Nottingham Round the World Reading Challenge - UNITED KINGDOM / ENGLAND / CAMBRIDGE
'Tu quoque,' I said.
'What?'
'You're going in my unhappy file, too.';
Starting during his second year at Cambridge, this is the life story of Mike Engleby. He is a working class boy who gets a scholarship to a minor public school where his life is made hell but he does well academically, and by the time he reaches university he is curiously uninvolved in real life, sitting on the edge looking in, with his only connections seeming to be with his little sister Julie and his university friend Stelling. When a student he has admired from afar goes missing, he is upset, but he graduates, moves to London and goes on to become a successful Fleet Street journalist.
The whole book is supposed to be Engleby's journal, but it doesn't read like a journal and I was surprised when the psychiatrist mentioned how Engleby's journal had helped him to understand him. I would have been more convinced by the journal if the book said that he had written it while in the special hospital, looking back on his life.
I had a problem believing in Jennifer's diary and letters to her parents. They seems excessively long for a student who had plenty of work, friends and societies to keep her busy. If it wasn't for the lack of mentions of Engleby I would have thought he had made them up himself.
