Absolutely loved it. Going to feel bereft for a while having just finished it (read in two days). ( )

This is a dark novel that I needed to finish and yet wanted to keep on reading. Mike Engleby is the ultimate unreliable narrator by the end it was impossible to know truth from imagination. There is lots of detail about life at Cambridge in the 1970s, music and social history. Mike Engleby has an obsession with a female student and tells the reader about his brutal treatment by bullies at boarding school. The novel unfolds in disturbing ways, with occasional flashes of humour as Mike Engleby often struggles in social situations. We skip some time and he has a job as a journalist and 1980s politics and changes in London society interweave the story. A fascinating read that is masterfully written so that it managed to make me both loathe and feel sympathy for the main character at the same time. ( )

This was a real character based study of a novel. Faulks drew me in to the peculiarities and mystery surrounding Mike Engleby's life, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the novels I'd previously read of his - Birdsong and Charlottle Grey. Nevertheless, a fascinating insight into a life of a man who has no illusions about himself, but has conveniently forgotten elements of his past so that the narrative drips out the details of his 'misdemeanours' in a slow feed. ( )

Review of: Engleby, by Sebastian Faulks
by Stan Prager (11-30-19)

Some years ago, I had the pleasure of reading the Booker-prize winning masterpiece Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks, which motivated me to pick up a couple of his other novels for later consumption, including Engleby. One day, I randomly plucked it off the shelf and turned to the first page. Honestly, it was not easy to put down. Also, to be even more honest, there were times that I really wanted to.
As a reviewer, it sounds somewhat awkward or even unseemly to resort to a term like “creepy” to describe a novel, but that would most accurately describe the subtle if sustained punch in the gut I experienced while reading this one, propelled by a growing revulsion for the central character. As the narrative unfolds, that character—the eponymous Mike Engleby—is a working-class Brit on scholarship to “an ancient” university in the early 1970s. He comes across as a bit of an oddball, but for those of us who lived through this era that was hardly unusual nor especially undesirable, given that to be an iconoclast in those days was often seen as a virtue. But the reader cannot help but experience an emerging disquiet as Engleby develops an infatuation that veers to obsession that then turns more ominously to the outright stalking of his bright and beautiful classmate Jennifer Arkland. Along the way, there are flashbacks to the bitter poverty of Engleby’s youth, the regular beatings by his father, the quotidian brutality of his life at public school where he is condemned to the unfortunate nickname “Toilet” and subjected to an ongoing torment that stretches the limits of endurance to cruelty—the cumulative effect of which, it becomes clear, shapes him into a bully, a thief, a drug dealer, an opportunist. Flash forward again and Jennifer has disappeared, never found, presumed murdered.
Did Engleby murder her? Could he be a serial killer? Is he mere weirdo or sociopath? That’s for you to find out: I don’t believe in folding spoilers into reviews. But the narrative is laced with plenty of clues, scattered within an interior monologue that invites an uncertain sympathy for a protagonist whom at best provokes the uneasy, at worst the repellent. Yet, it is the genius of the author to tempt the reader to veer from repugnance to empathy, against all odds, even if this shift may prove temporary. And the reader, like it or not, is ensnared in an uncomfortable fascination with this very same well-crafted interior monologue, a kind of labyrinth pregnant with Engleby’s barely suppressed anxiety, which he overcompensates for with visions of grandeur and a disdainful arrogance for all others in his orbit—except perhaps, that is, for Jennifer Arkland. And then that anxiety grows contagious as the reader begins to question the reliability of the narrator! Are the things revealed by Engleby’s inner thoughts real or imagined? Is Faulks himself, acting as both wizard and jester, simply mocking us from behind the curtain?
The last time I found myself as deeply unsettled by a work of fiction, it was Perfume, by Patrick Süskind, the unlikely tale of an eighteenth-century serial killer, but that novel was tempered with a pronounced sense of the ironic if not especially comedic. Not so with this one: there’s nothing even a little bit funny about Engleby. For his part, Faulks proves himself a true artist of the written word, his pen taking full command of his character and his audience alike. I recommend it, even if it may keep you up at night.

Review of: Engleby, by Sebastian Faulks https://regarp.com/2019/11/30/review-of-engleby-by-sebastian-faulks/

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Couldn't get into this at all and quickly abandonned it. Found it rather pretentious, the author was clearly writing about Cambridge University in the early pages but avoided name-checking it. ( )