Scan barcode
alicereadwrites's review against another edition
4.0
I've never read any of Sebastian Faulks before but this was recommended to me on the creative writing course I'm doing at the moment.
At first I wondered if this book was going to be semi-autobiographical and go into the old boys world of Oxbridge too much, but the more I continued with it the more I found it too intriguing to put down.
Faulks starts off by portraying Engleby as a fairly normal character with a few quirks here and there along with a tough upbringing: you warm to him and feel a bit sorry for him. Then the story starts to twist, everything starts to get much more complex and it really pushes the reader to work a lot of the plot out for themselves.
It's a very clever book as I think every reader will read it quite differently. The ending will leave you with all sorts of questions.
Whatever you think of this book though you can tell Faulks has put a lot of effort into researching this sort of character and it's a character you won't forget for a long time after finishing the book. Definitely worth a read.
At first I wondered if this book was going to be semi-autobiographical and go into the old boys world of Oxbridge too much, but the more I continued with it the more I found it too intriguing to put down.
Faulks starts off by portraying Engleby as a fairly normal character with a few quirks here and there along with a tough upbringing: you warm to him and feel a bit sorry for him. Then the story starts to twist, everything starts to get much more complex and it really pushes the reader to work a lot of the plot out for themselves.
It's a very clever book as I think every reader will read it quite differently. The ending will leave you with all sorts of questions.
Whatever you think of this book though you can tell Faulks has put a lot of effort into researching this sort of character and it's a character you won't forget for a long time after finishing the book. Definitely worth a read.
janebranson's review against another edition
5.0
An absolute masterclass in unreliable narration. Dark, clever, funny, scary and brilliantly written.
bridgetww's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness
Moderate: Murder
lucy456's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
maddieallis's review against another edition
1.0
Brilliant in places and very well written, but way too slow paced for me
janani_sg's review against another edition
4.0
“We're deaf men working as musicians; we play the music but we can't hear it.”
I never knew earlier that such a book existed, to be honest, I did not know that such an author existed. William Faulkner, I know. But Sebastian Faulks, I didn’t. We were at this book sale that sold second-hand books and the proprietor asked us to buy another book, in that way our total would be rounded off. And this book, Engleby was the nearest. Someone left it discarded at the checkout place. “Do you want to get it?” asked dad. I haven’t heard of this guy. And the cover doesn’t look much inviting too. But in the end, I bought it. It sat in one corner of the bookshelf crammed among other books that were of the same shade of colour (yes, my bookshelf is colour-coded.) for about four months. I’d be done by then, reading all the other books bought. There was too much of indolence and a blasé attitude towards that book. I could not just get myself to read it. But at one point while at home, I was like let me take this back to the hostel, try reading it over there.
And yesterday, another month later I started this (aggressively weird) book out of end-semester-exams-stress induced boredom. The first few hundred pages are a drag (like all the other Goodreads reviews said), nothing really happens but the pace picked up furthermore pages later (which the Goodreads reviews don’t talk about). They probably lost patience. This book has a lot of negative responses than positive comments. Probably because Engleby elegantly delineates the human psyche that so much of truth or conformity to reality and our tastes very bitter to our conscience that people would rather not read the book.
There are some books that feel like a paralytic slap across the cheek, there are some that soothe and rock you to sleep, there are some that take you to Utopia with Saint Saens playing in the background. But Engleby to literature is what smorgasbord is to a banquet. A paralytic, mind-numbing slap that returns with a kiss but in a fist aimed at the jaw. So Michael Engleby is from a barely-making-ends-meet family at Reading. He is an introvert, intellect, iconoclast and an anti-feminist to be brief. He hates psychology/psychologists primarily because he thinks human behaviour is more than just a discovered pattern. It is set at Cambridge (he’s on a scholarship). He takes History and Natural Sciences. He likes a girl, Jennifer also the reason why he attended History. She goes missing one night. And the novel sets about her missing case and the ontogenesis of Mike through the years.
The weird, weird part, personally was that I could relate to the character. The Cantabrigian Psycho as some reviews call him. But the parts I could relate to was, when he chose reading and music over socializing, his deaf attribute towards fashion, and the futility of swearing and expletives and that he never cared about anything. But later on, after another few hundred pages he was so pulled into blue pills, smoking and almost every night was led by an evening of bacchanal revelry and pickpocketing too entered the scene by then. So I kind of lost the Mike I could relate to through the pages forward. I have never read quite a book like this, to be true. It has the element of mystery to it, a huge turn of events in the last few chapters takes you to the 70s London, the music, the politics, the protagonist’s claptraps of London and people in general and most importantly there’s alcohol, at least a pint a page.
I never knew earlier that such a book existed, to be honest, I did not know that such an author existed. William Faulkner, I know. But Sebastian Faulks, I didn’t. We were at this book sale that sold second-hand books and the proprietor asked us to buy another book, in that way our total would be rounded off. And this book, Engleby was the nearest. Someone left it discarded at the checkout place. “Do you want to get it?” asked dad. I haven’t heard of this guy. And the cover doesn’t look much inviting too. But in the end, I bought it. It sat in one corner of the bookshelf crammed among other books that were of the same shade of colour (yes, my bookshelf is colour-coded.) for about four months. I’d be done by then, reading all the other books bought. There was too much of indolence and a blasé attitude towards that book. I could not just get myself to read it. But at one point while at home, I was like let me take this back to the hostel, try reading it over there.
And yesterday, another month later I started this (aggressively weird) book out of end-semester-exams-stress induced boredom. The first few hundred pages are a drag (like all the other Goodreads reviews said), nothing really happens but the pace picked up furthermore pages later (which the Goodreads reviews don’t talk about). They probably lost patience. This book has a lot of negative responses than positive comments. Probably because Engleby elegantly delineates the human psyche that so much of truth or conformity to reality and our tastes very bitter to our conscience that people would rather not read the book.
There are some books that feel like a paralytic slap across the cheek, there are some that soothe and rock you to sleep, there are some that take you to Utopia with Saint Saens playing in the background. But Engleby to literature is what smorgasbord is to a banquet. A paralytic, mind-numbing slap that returns with a kiss but in a fist aimed at the jaw. So Michael Engleby is from a barely-making-ends-meet family at Reading. He is an introvert, intellect, iconoclast and an anti-feminist to be brief. He hates psychology/psychologists primarily because he thinks human behaviour is more than just a discovered pattern. It is set at Cambridge (he’s on a scholarship). He takes History and Natural Sciences. He likes a girl, Jennifer also the reason why he attended History. She goes missing one night. And the novel sets about her missing case and the ontogenesis of Mike through the years.
The weird, weird part, personally was that I could relate to the character. The Cantabrigian Psycho as some reviews call him. But the parts I could relate to was, when he chose reading and music over socializing, his deaf attribute towards fashion, and the futility of swearing and expletives and that he never cared about anything. But later on, after another few hundred pages he was so pulled into blue pills, smoking and almost every night was led by an evening of bacchanal revelry and pickpocketing too entered the scene by then. So I kind of lost the Mike I could relate to through the pages forward. I have never read quite a book like this, to be true. It has the element of mystery to it, a huge turn of events in the last few chapters takes you to the 70s London, the music, the politics, the protagonist’s claptraps of London and people in general and most importantly there’s alcohol, at least a pint a page.
hayesstw's review against another edition
Four years ago...
I was a bit reluctant to start reading this book, because the last book I read by [a:Sebastian Faulks|4229|Sebastian Faulks|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1349875568p2/4229.jpg], [b:Human traces|7133904|Human Traces|Sebastian Faulks|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1267268731s/7133904.jpg|1741675] I hadn't enjoyed very much. So though my wife had bought this one three years ago (in 2008), and it has sat on the shelf since then, I had not read it. But then looking for something I hadn't read for bed-time reading I picked it up and started it, and it seemed quite different from [b:Human traces|7133904|Human Traces|Sebastian Faulks|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1267268731s/7133904.jpg|1741675] and I was rather enjoying it and finding it interesting, and beginning to think it was the best thing I had read by [a:Sebastian Faulks|4229|Sebastian Faulks|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1349875568p2/4229.jpg].
So I had reached page 280 and hoped to finish it tonight. But unfortunately page 280 was followed by page 25, and it seems that the book has been misbound. After three years it is probably far too late to take it back to the bookshop and ask for another copy that has been properly bound -- they probably won't even have one in stock anyway. And though one might be able to order another copy from the publishers, it seems a bit of a waste to pay the full price of a book for the last 60 pages or so, and anyway by the time it arrived I'd probably have forgotten most of the story anyway and would have to start again from the beginning. I just wish printers would be more careful in checking their stuff. I see it was printed and bound in Greeat Britain by Clay Ltd, St Ives plc. If by any remote chance anyone from there happens to read this, perhaps they'll take pity on me and send an intact copy.
Four years later
I found a copy in the library, and so at last was able to finish it, and, as I thought, I had forgotten most of the plot, and so had to start again from the beginning.
And that in itself was remarkable. There were no spoilers, Even after having read three=-quarters of the book only four years ago, the unexpected twitsts and turns of the plot were still unexpected. And re-reading one of them did not call to mind the memory of the next one or any of the others. I simply could not foresee what was going to happen.
That in itself is interesting, because a lot of the plot turns on time and memory, and the inability to remember certain things. If I can't remember what happened in the story, it makes the story itself more plausible.
But if I could not remember the plot itself, and the events in the story, there was still a feeling of having been here before, and perhaps appreciating, even more than the first time around, some of the observations of the protagonist on life in the 1970s and 1980s, and even on life in general.
I give one quote of many, take it how youo will:
I was a bit reluctant to start reading this book, because the last book I read by [a:Sebastian Faulks|4229|Sebastian Faulks|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1349875568p2/4229.jpg], [b:Human traces|7133904|Human Traces|Sebastian Faulks|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1267268731s/7133904.jpg|1741675] I hadn't enjoyed very much. So though my wife had bought this one three years ago (in 2008), and it has sat on the shelf since then, I had not read it. But then looking for something I hadn't read for bed-time reading I picked it up and started it, and it seemed quite different from [b:Human traces|7133904|Human Traces|Sebastian Faulks|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1267268731s/7133904.jpg|1741675] and I was rather enjoying it and finding it interesting, and beginning to think it was the best thing I had read by [a:Sebastian Faulks|4229|Sebastian Faulks|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1349875568p2/4229.jpg].
So I had reached page 280 and hoped to finish it tonight. But unfortunately page 280 was followed by page 25, and it seems that the book has been misbound. After three years it is probably far too late to take it back to the bookshop and ask for another copy that has been properly bound -- they probably won't even have one in stock anyway. And though one might be able to order another copy from the publishers, it seems a bit of a waste to pay the full price of a book for the last 60 pages or so, and anyway by the time it arrived I'd probably have forgotten most of the story anyway and would have to start again from the beginning. I just wish printers would be more careful in checking their stuff. I see it was printed and bound in Greeat Britain by Clay Ltd, St Ives plc. If by any remote chance anyone from there happens to read this, perhaps they'll take pity on me and send an intact copy.
Four years later
I found a copy in the library, and so at last was able to finish it, and, as I thought, I had forgotten most of the plot, and so had to start again from the beginning.
And that in itself was remarkable. There were no spoilers, Even after having read three=-quarters of the book only four years ago, the unexpected twitsts and turns of the plot were still unexpected. And re-reading one of them did not call to mind the memory of the next one or any of the others. I simply could not foresee what was going to happen.
That in itself is interesting, because a lot of the plot turns on time and memory, and the inability to remember certain things. If I can't remember what happened in the story, it makes the story itself more plausible.
But if I could not remember the plot itself, and the events in the story, there was still a feeling of having been here before, and perhaps appreciating, even more than the first time around, some of the observations of the protagonist on life in the 1970s and 1980s, and even on life in general.
I give one quote of many, take it how youo will:
And it's true that you can't bend with each fashionable wind -- you can't be like the Church of England, constantly updating its eternal verities. Either Christ was God, in which case He knew what He was doing when He chose male apostles only; or, he was a hapless Galilean sexist now ripe for a rethink. Not both.
claudialopesilva's review against another edition
2.0
It had some really good parts, but mainly bored me to death.
ashmash's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
Most boring book I’ve ever read. Every page is just the ramblings of an unlikable man with zero personality. There is a short amount at the end where the story picks up but by then you’ve trudged through pages upon pages of nothing, so you’ll just be wanting it to finish already. I would have dropped this book early on if it wasn’t part of my coursework.