Sebastian Faulks - Novels

Novels

The Literary Review has said that "Faulks has the rare gift of being popular and literary at the same time"; the Sunday Telegraph called him "One of the most impressive novelists of his generation ... who is growing in authority with every book". Faulks' 2005 novel, Human Traces, was described by Trevor Nunn as "A masterpiece, one of the great novels of this or any other century."

Faulks is best known for his three novels set in early twentieth-century France.The first, The Girl at the Lion d'Or, was published in 1989. This was followed by Birdsong (1993), and Charlotte Gray (1998). The latter two were bestsellers, and Charlotte Gray was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In April 2003 Birdsong came 13th in the BBC's Big Read initiative which aimed to identify Britain's best loved novels.

In 2007, Faulks published Engleby. Set in Cambridge in the 1970s, it is narrated by Cambridge University fresher Mike Engleby. Engleby is a loner, and the reader is led to suspect that he may be unreliable, particularly when a fellow student disappears. Faulks says of the novel's genesis, "I woke up one morning with this guy's voice in my head. And he was just talking, dictating, almost. And when I got to work, I wrote it down. I didn't know what the hell was going on; this wasn't an idea for a book". It was remarked upon as a change of direction for Faulks, both in terms of the near-contemporary setting and in the decision to use a first-person narrator. The book received a number of unfavourable reviews for its slow pacing and the dislikeable and "wearying" protagonist. However, it received praise from other quarters: the Daily Telegraph said the book was "distinguished by a remarkable intellectual energy: a narrative verve, technical mastery of the possibilities of the novel form and vivid sense of the tragic contingency of human life."

To mark the 2008 centenary of Ian Fleming's birth, the late author's estate in 2006 commissioned Faulks to write a new James Bond novel. Faulks has said of the commission, "I'd just finished Human Traces and it seemed ridiculous. You've just spent five years in a Victorian lunatic asylum and then you go on to James Bond. But I think their hope is they'll get two markets. The more I think about it, the more I think it was clever of them, because the mismatch is intriguing". The result, Devil May Care, became an immediate bestseller in the UK, selling 44,093 hardback copies within 4 days of release. The Observer review of the novel said that "Faulks has done in some ways an absolutely sterling job. He has resisted pastiche", and blamed the book's weaknesses on the character of Bond as created by Fleming. The Scotsman review of the novel said, "To his credit, Faulks has imitated the haphazard plotting, sloppy characterisation, Colonel Blimp politics, sexist guff and basic incredulity of Ian Fleming to a tee. It's a Nuremberg Defence of a novel: Faulks was only following orders". Mark Lawson, writing in The Guardian, praised it as "a smart and enjoyable act of literary resurrection. Among the now 33 post-Fleming Bonds, this must surely compete with Kingsley Amis's for the title of the best".

Faulks' 2009 novel, A Week in December, takes place, in the seven days leading up to Christmas in December 2007. It focuses on the lives of a varied cast of characters living in London; Faulks himself has described the novel as "Dickensian" and cites Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend as influences, as well as New York novelists such as Tom Wolfe and Jay McInerny. The book was partly a response to the banking crisis. He chose to set it specifically in 2007 because "the whole world had changed: the banks were collapsing, we were facing Armageddon, and I understood then that I couldn't make this book right up to the moment I chose that time because then the writing's on the wall, and it should be clear to anyone half-sensible that the game is up, but they're still going on." Other plot threads in the novel concern reality television, and Islamic militancy. While publicising the book, Faulks received some criticism for negative remarks he made about the Koran; he was quick to offer "a simple but unqualified apology to my Muslim friends and readers for anything that has come out sounding crude or intolerant. Happily, there is more to the book than that". Reviews for the novel were mixed. Tibor Fischer, in The Daily Telegraph, praised the novel's "comic élan", but felt it was "uneven" and criticised the character of John Veals as "lifeless". The London Review of Books was scathing about Faulks' criticisms of aspects of modern life: "This isn’t satire. It’s the background noise of breakfast radio, the endlessly repeated catalogue of modern ills, reassuring the nation’s listeners and confirming them in their view that what gets their goat is – yes – deserving of urgent public notice". Mark Lawson wrote in The Guardian, "an honest critic must surely conclude that Faulks has correctly identified the novel that needs to be written about these times, but may also have proved that British society is now so various that no single writer can capture all its aspects. However, in honourably failing to depict the entire state of the nation, Faulks has memorably skewered the British literary world."