Sebastian Faulks - A Week in December

Sebastian Faulks, A Week in December (Vintage)

Fulham FC contribute to Eng Lit in a useful way here as we immediately note Roy Hodgson among the acknowledgements as one of the several that Sebastian Faulks consulted as part of his background research. Being well-read, especially for a football man, I'm sure Roy was delighted to help and Sebastian's interviewing was obviously assiduous and widespread as he spoke to a variety of people in the lives he writes about here.

It still reads like research, though. It's football, finance, tube driver, young druggie, internet addict and barrister as seen through the gauze of a Faulks novel. The parts we probably find most convincing are those of the vindictive rivalry in the literary world, of which we assume Sebastian has seen plenty at first hand.

The novel uses the device of a dinner party to bring together a topical cast of characters who one wouldn't necessarily expect to be all at the same party and hangs on this structure a sweeping survey of contemporary culture, fairly specific to London, but recognizable to many of us, I'm sure, as a 'state of the nation'.

He's had a fine, old time making up suitable names for stock market traders, radicalized Islamic converts, Premiership footballers, and well-to-do Londoners and one is sure that if he needed a Northern club comic then he'd have called him Alf Barraclough or a trendy hairdresser would have been Justin Wellbeloved. He's also re-named everything in the zeitgeist to give it a transparent fictionality, like the reality TV show, the imaginary life internet site, the banks, the networks, the forums, and the media. It must have been great fun and if it doesn't ever achieve the laugh out loud level of recognition, then it is all very well observed and accurate in its critique. What worried me most, though, was the thought that we can all enjoy the satire, say to each other what a fine book it is, what an awful condition we have allowed ourselves to drift into, congratulate Sebastian on describing it so well and then we will all carry on with it, apparently unwilling or unable to do anything about it. It would have made us angry once and there would have been riots but now we just nod in compliant acknowledgement and let the powers that be continue to run us ragged.

One of the many fine insights is provided when the tube driver shows her avatar existence in the ether to the barrister sent to interview her as part of the legal case taken up on behalf of the suicide attempt that jumped in front of her train. There is an internet in this virtual world and she is asked if her alter ego can create a further imaginary character in that world. When he is told, 'don't be silly', I think we have a well-made point.

This is what life is like now. What happens is that many of the cast are led to confront the demeaning ways that they have been led into by the way the world controls us now, not least the potential terrorist who nearly gets knocked over on his way to go and blow himself up. But, in a well-made ending that you might have thought was leading to one pointless tragedy, it leaves us with possibly an even more sinister one. John Veals has been exploiting markets for the mere acquisition of millions he has no interest in spending, no use for whatsoever beyond its mere accumulation. And the point is spelt out that the vast majority of us little people are being made to pay for it as he coldly enjoys his joyless success. Faulks has done well to show why the promises of the Koran have led the would-be suicide bomber to regard the fallen nature of our culture as so imperfect and I, for one, was made more sympathetic to its agenda as far as it went. It's perhaps no more than an updating of what George Orwell said made socialism so attractive to any intelligent sixteen year old.

Sebastian Faulks' trilogy of war novels seemed to bridge the gap between literary excellence and best-sellerism, easily enough to make him both very well-off and widely admired even for those who have only read Birdsong. I had trouble with a couple of his titles before Engleby somehow scared the hell out of me and now after the James Bond pastiche, he's doing what he should be doing again.

Having provided his survey of the life that many of us seem to be living now, he leaves us with an ominous truth and a difficult prospect. It's entertaining, a fine analysis and a polemical novel. But just reading it and saying how true it all is isn't really going to improve the situation much.