A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks

I’m not sure what to make of Sebastian Faulks as an author. He’s a good writer but there’s something about his books that are just slightly off. It may be that he seems to try too hard to be clever. While there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s also nothing wrong with making a story easily accessible to get sucked in to. I also suspect that he knows he is a good writer and this may have gone to his head a bit.

A Week in December is set over a week before Christmas. It follows, in varying degrees of detail, seven characters and the lives. Most of the characters are introduced as a list of guests attending a party hosted by a newly elected MP’s wife.

                John Veals is a hedge fund manager driven only by money. He is in the process of manipulating the stock market for his own financial gain. He is extremely clever with numbers and has no other interests whatsoever.

                Finbar Veals is John’s 16 year old son. He is left to his own devices by his parents and has unlimited access to his father’s wealth. He uses his money to buy drugs and pizza and spends all his time in his room watching reality TV.

                Hassan al-Rashid is a young Muslim radical with wealthy parents from his father’s food business. He is a member of a terrorist group who are planning an attack on London. Due to this he has distanced himself from his parents but remains friends with an atheist.

                 Ralph Tranter is a literary critic but that may be a bit generous. He spends his time being rude to people for a living and is as vile as possible. He refuses to accept that anything written after the nineteenth century has any worth whatsoever.

                Gabriel Northwood is a young solicitor who is struggling to find work and make ends meet. He has recently acquired a new case when someone jumped in front of a Tube train. He has recently stopped seeing the woman he was having an affair with.

                Jenni Fortune is a Tube train driver. She lives with her half-brother and enjoys playing an online role-playing game. She was driving when her Tube hit a jumper. Consequently she spends a lot of time with Gabriel, who is dealing with the case.

 

I did manage to get into this book although some things went over my head and I didn’t like some of the characters. The book seemed to go into John Veals world of banking a bit too much for my liking. There was too much banking language that I just didn’t understand. And while it may be the point that you can’t relate to him because he is banking and banking is him, spending a lot of time with him could sort of put you off as other characters are a lot more interesting. The majority of the characters are wealthy or from wealthy families which I also can’t really relate to. It definitely shows you that having money causes just as many problems as not having money. They’re just different problems.

 

The main problem I had with this book was the lack of female characters, or at least strong, believable women. Jenni is the only one who sort of fits this bill. However, she is into online gaming and drives a train so isn’t terribly feminine. Some female readers may have trouble relating to any of the characters and so struggle to read this book. The wives and mothers of the other characters Faulks focuses on have lead and do lead interesting lives and it might have been nice to have a bit more focus on them. I suspect Faulks has a bit of trouble writing convincing women for a long enough period for them to be a main character.

 

The concept of the story is a good one but the problem with only following people for seven days is that you need a bit of back story on them. Faulks has done this by having the characters thinking of how they got to where they are now. This is a little bit frustrating as there is no warning of these flashbacks so you do sometimes have to pause and think ‘is this a happening now or in the past?’. You do get the hang of it eventually, and there aren’t really any in the last few days. You definitely need them though, obviously. It is relevant to see how they got where they are and how their families and friends are affected by them.

 

This book is worth a read. Faulks tells a good story and does a good character study. He manages to flit between poor female train driver and posh stoner schoolboy with ease and they are obviously different. My only worry is how unlikeable these people are and the lack of relatable female characters for your average female reader. Even so I think it is worth persevering as it is an interesting study of the ‘great and good’ of London. It’s certainly not for everyone but it’s not a bad book.

 

Overall rating 4 out of 5.