A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks

Release date: 2010 / 390 pages

Synopsis (from back cover): “London: the week before Christmas 2007. Over seven days we follow the lives of seven major characters… With daring skill and savage humor, A Week in December explores the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life. As the novel moves to its gripping climax, its characters are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they — and we all — inhabit.”

First line: Five o’clock and freezing.

Review: When Faulks’ publisher contacted me to read A Week in December, I was intrigued since I had meant to read Birdsong for years.  So I enthusiastically agreed and read it while on vacation last month.  However, my overall impression of this novel was that it was just too much…  Too much description, too many characters, too many opinions and so on. 

Unfortunately, I was not drawn to any of the characters, so learning voluminous details about each one’s childhood, hopes, dreams, future goals, etc. was tedious most of the time.  The characters seemed to be vehicles for Faulks’ opinions about society, and therefore did not “come alive.”  His tone was primarily snarky and much of the narrative felt self-reflective — I wondered why the author did not choose to write editorials instead. 

However, I do think many, many readers would enjoy his view of modern society and would wholeheartedly agree with his opinions.  The general gist of his paradigm is that we have become so unplugged from TL (true life or reality) in our world filled with internet chat rooms, texting, virtual reality, fantasy football, etc. that the moral backbone of our interactions has eroded into a breeding ground of corrupt hedge fund managers, drug-addled youth, jihadist terrorists, and general misery.  He does “gift” the reader with a bit of a happy ending, but after 350+ pages of doom-and-gloom, I couldn’t help but disregard the ending a bit.

So, who would enjoy this novel?  Let me share a passage regarding modern-day book clubs that will provide a quick sampling of Faulks’ tone and humor (and resonate with anyone who’s ever been in a book club, I imagine):

As someone educated at a grammar school before the towel was thrown in, Tranter had an asset: literacy. He could sell it. Then, a year after he began work with the school, he received an invitation to ‘moderate’ the book-club discussions of a group of posh housewives in North Park. He could hardly believe his luck. Most of the women had university degrees in arts subjects, but they had no basic understanding of how a book worked. Even the vocabulary that Tranter had been taught at the age of sixteen was mysterious to them; they didn’t know the difference between ‘style’ and ‘tone,’ for instance…  After he had made a few observations about the book in question, they generally cut him out of the loop. What they wanted to talk about was whether the incidents in the book were ‘based on’ events in the author’s own life and to what extent his version of them tallied with their own experience of such things. Tranter tried to suggest that there were more fruitful ways of approaching a novel, a work of invention that aspired, albeit pathetically, to be a work of ‘art’; but although they listened patiently, they seemed not to believe him.

And one more passage about the state of modern education:

Well…I suppose I was lucky enough to be educated at a time when teachers still thought children could handle knowledge. They trusted us. Then there came a time when they decided that because not every kid in the class could understand or remember those things, they wouldn’t teach them anymore because it wasn’t fair on the less good ones. So they withheld knowledge. Then I suppose the next lot of teachers didn’t have the knowledge to withhold.

I found these passages entertaining, and while the second passage obviously overly simplifies education, it was quite funny….  So, if this type of satirical wit appeals to you, drop me a comment and I’ll choose a lucky winner.  I do still intend to read Birdsong, by the way…

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