"What is Truth?" asked jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.
Indeed, what is true in this "memoir" by one Mike Engleby? Near the end he says, "I was pushing, with all my might, at the thin door into the past. ...To do what we know is possible: to be in time as it truly is-non-linear." Is Engleby telling us the truth? Does he know the truth? Indeed, is Engleby what he seems to be?
The current situation in Engleby's life causes him to reflect upon and relive events. These memories do not occur in sequential order, but they reflect how one remembers through interior monologues. Imagine a computer adaptive test. Get Question 1 right and move to Q6. Another right answer moves you on to Q14, then a wrong answer drops you back to Q7. Here, there, and everywhere. Engleby moves in much the same way. As the mind flows, an idea appears, suggesting another, which suggests another. Memory seldom proceeds in a straight line.
The novel opens with Mike Engleby as a 2nd year student at an "ancient university" in England. He's a loner even in the middle of a crowd. Engleby begins to follow (stalk, obsess about?) a fellow student, Jennifer Arkland. He monitors her classes, joins her society, eats at the same pub, and helps with a film project in which she is "raped." She disappears one night, and he later breaks into her room and steals her diary. He does all the wrong things and the police suspect him. They search his rooms - even taking the ceiling apart - but they find nothing incriminating, not even the diary, which is to resurface years later.
Indeed, what is true in this "memoir" by one Mike Engleby? Near the end he says, "I was pushing, with all my might, at the thin door into the past. ...To do what we know is possible: to be in time as it truly is-non-linear." Is Engleby telling us the truth? Does he know the truth? Indeed, is Engleby what he seems to be?
The current situation in Engleby's life causes him to reflect upon and relive events. These memories do not occur in sequential order, but they reflect how one remembers through interior monologues. Imagine a computer adaptive test. Get Question 1 right and move to Q6. Another right answer moves you on to Q14, then a wrong answer drops you back to Q7. Here, there, and everywhere. Engleby moves in much the same way. As the mind flows, an idea appears, suggesting another, which suggests another. Memory seldom proceeds in a straight line.
The novel opens with Mike Engleby as a 2nd year student at an "ancient university" in England. He's a loner even in the middle of a crowd. Engleby begins to follow (stalk, obsess about?) a fellow student, Jennifer Arkland. He monitors her classes, joins her society, eats at the same pub, and helps with a film project in which she is "raped." She disappears one night, and he later breaks into her room and steals her diary. He does all the wrong things and the police suspect him. They search his rooms - even taking the ceiling apart - but they find nothing incriminating, not even the diary, which is to resurface years later.
He graduates, is turned down for the Foreign Service, and then becomes a journalist under a false name. It's a woman's name because the paper was written primarily by women. He has made himself an "expert" on science matters by reading and re-writing press releases and passing them off as his own. He even wins awards. Later, he takes a new job and changes his name again, this time to a man's name, but based on the woman's name. He's successful here also. Significantly, one of his conditions for each job was to come into the office as little as possible so as to avoid interpersonal entanglements. This life continues for some 8 years after graduation until a woman's decomposed body is found but hardly noted by Engleby.
Engleby is possessed of a prodigious memory. He has memorized Jen's entire diary, but he cannot remember what happened on the day she died. His memory, as it relates to the night of her disappearance, comes back in bits and pieces in the course of the novel.
Engleby is possessed of a prodigious memory. He has memorized Jen's entire diary, but he cannot remember what happened on the day she died. His memory, as it relates to the night of her disappearance, comes back in bits and pieces in the course of the novel.
There is a lovely send up of an author's discussion of how he invented the main character of his books. He relates an "interview" with Jeffrey Archer and a chance meeting with Sir Ralph Richardson. He later notes, "A bit odd that the last two people I had proper conversations with were (these two); but that's life." A college friend later says of him, "(Mike) was an interesting man, but he just wasn't much fun to be with."
Faulks creates remarkable images through his prose. He describes a girl dancing at a party: "...she shook herself, like a dog emerging from water." "I feel swamped again by the inexplicable pettiness of being alone." "We're deafmen working as musicians; we play the music but we can't hear it." Generally, these pithy statements indicate a growing disconnection with what the reader perceives as the reality of the novel. Again, what is truth?
Faulks creates remarkable images through his prose. He describes a girl dancing at a party: "...she shook herself, like a dog emerging from water." "I feel swamped again by the inexplicable pettiness of being alone." "We're deafmen working as musicians; we play the music but we can't hear it." Generally, these pithy statements indicate a growing disconnection with what the reader perceives as the reality of the novel. Again, what is truth?
In Human Traces Faulks explored the issues related to mental illness from the perspective of psychiatrists. Here, we see issues from the perspective of one who apparently has no idea he has issues. Engleby describes an apparent mental deterioration early on as particles coming apart. "I felt that I was beginning to unravel. It was as though all the molecules that make the entity 'Mike Engleby' had been kept in place by some weird centripetal force-which had unaccountably failed. Now these particles were flying apart." This motif continues and intensifies throughout the novel and provides the impetus for the final act. When his memories of the fateful night are fully recovered, which memory is right?
Awarded the CBE in 2002, Sebastian Faulks lives with his wife and three children in London. He has been commissioned by the Ian Fleming estate to write a new James Bond novel to commemorate Fleming's centenary in 2008. Engleby is his seventh novel.
Awarded the CBE in 2002, Sebastian Faulks lives with his wife and three children in London. He has been commissioned by the Ian Fleming estate to write a new James Bond novel to commemorate Fleming's centenary in 2008. Engleby is his seventh novel.
