 |
 First edition cover | |
| Author | Sebastian Faulks |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Set in | London |
| Published | 2009 |
| Publisher | Hutchinson (UK) Doubleday (US) |
| Media type | Print Digital (Audiobook) |
| Pages | 392 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0-0917-9445-3 |
| OCLC | 373478261 |
| 823.914 | |
| LC Class | PR6056.A89 |
A Week in December is a novel by British writer Sebastian Faulks, published in 2009. The story is set in London, England over a week in December 2007.
This episodic novel follows the lives of some Londoners in the last full week before Christmas, 2007. Most of them are guests at a dinner on Day Seven, Saturday; the others are closely connected.
R. Tranter is a critic and book reviewer who disparages and scorns all present-day literature, but champions a little-known Victorian writer. He is jealous of his contemporaries’ success. He does not earn much, but out of the blue receives two new, well-paid appointments.
Gabriel Northwood is a young barrister, lacking self-confidence, and with little work, though the new year looks promising. One case involves London Transport, and a witness is a tube driver, Jenni Fortune, the daughter of an Irish woman and an absent Trinidadian. Both Gabriel and Jenni have been hurt recently by the end of love affairs, and find comfort in books, though she also loses herself in a virtual-reality game. Using the pretext of preparing for the case, they meet a few times, and fall in love.
Tadeusz ‘Spike’ Borowski is a Polish footballer, getting used to playing for a Premier League London club. His Ukrainian girlfriend, Olya, used to (he does not know) pose nude for sex photographs, which are on the internet.
John Veals is a very successful, very rich hedge-fund manager. (He can be seen as the principal character of the novel.) Born to a Jewish family, he has put all that behind him, together with all feelings for family and all interests, except financial dealing. He has started a rumour which will enable him to manipulate the share price of a bank; the repercussions will cause havoc in financial and commodity markets, but bring him enormous profit. Finbar is Veals’s sixteen-year-old son, who lives a semi-independent life in the family home. His father is usually absent; his mother does not know how to speak to him; he has unlimited access to money. He spends £700 on skunk, genetically modified marijuana which, we learn, is thirty times more powerful than the original plant. When Finbar smokes it, he suffers a severe psychotic attack; he cries for his mother, who finds him, to her great distress.
Farooq al-Rashid, an immigrant from Pakistan, has built up a successful business making chutney and other condiments; he has been awarded an OBE; the investiture will be on Saturday morning. His twenty-one-year-old son, Hassan, who has felt uncomfortable in the various social groups to which he has belonged, has found comfort with a group of committed Islamists – though he is uncomfortable about his friendship, perfectly chaste, with Shahla, a secular Muslim, the daughter of an Iranian businessman. Gradually, Hassan has been radicalized. With three other young men, he is going to carry suicide bombs into a hospital (where Gabriel’s brother and Finbar are patients). On Saturday morning, he attends the investiture at Buckingham Palace; in the evening, he walks with his rucksack to the meeting-place at the hospital, south of the river. Almost at the last moment, he has an emotional crisis and desists, throwing his rucksack into the Thames. The detonations cannot occur without him. He goes to Shahla, though he does not confess to her. They declare their love for each other.
The book's peripheral characters play an important part in the general theme of the book. Life for John's wife, in particular, is lonely and boring. John can't engage with her at any level, her children are mysterious teenagers and she feels isolated. She and her circle of friends measure each other on how rich or how thin they are. Radley Graves, a secondary school teacher, becomes dangerously entangled in the fantasy world of "Parallax" the virtual reality game where his character is a sexually aggressive bully. Amanda can't let go of the past, when she used to rule the roost in London now stuck in the country with her alcoholic husband Roger, she can't wait to get back at the least opportunity.
The novel touches on themes that are issues that we face every day: mental illness, terrorism, the recession, and a sense of trying to survive in a world of madness, consumerism and greed. Although the novel explores grim reality, there is hope, and love, a thin seam, but nonetheless, still there.
Justin Cartwright for The Guardian wrote "A Week in December is a little too long, a little too prolix. And yet it survives all this to be a compelling tale of contemporary London". [1]
Gregory Cowles for The New York Times wrote that "this engaging novel is, like John Veals, finally too obsessed with money to serve as a dependable key to anything". [2]
Ann Veronica is a novel by H. G. Wells published in 1909. It describes the rebellion of Ann Veronica Stanley, "a young lady of nearly two-and-twenty", against her middle-class father's stern patriarchal rule. The novel dramatizes the contemporary problem of the New Woman. It is set in Edwardian era London and environs, except for an Alpine excursion. Ann Veronica offers vignettes of the women's suffrage movement in Great Britain and features a chapter inspired by the 1908 attempt of suffragettes to storm Parliament.
Mrs Craddock is a novel by William Somerset Maugham first published in 1902.
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth published novel and his first major literary success. It was published on 23 November 1874. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a 1967 novel by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the fictitious town of Macondo. The novel is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in world literature.
Love in the Time of Cholera is a novel written in Spanish by Colombian Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez and published in 1985. Edith Grossman's English translation was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1988.
Sebastian Charles Faulks is a British novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He is best known for his historical novels set in France – The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray. He has also published novels with a contemporary setting, most recently A Week in December (2009) and Paris Echo, (2018) and a James Bond continuation novel, Devil May Care (2008), as well as a continuation of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves series, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (2013). He was a team captain on BBC Radio 4 literary quiz The Write Stuff.
Birdsong is a 1993 war novel and family saga by the English author Sebastian Faulks. It is Faulks's fourth novel. The plot follows two main characters living at different times: the first is Stephen Wraysford, a British soldier on the front line in Amiens during the First World War, and the second is his granddaughter, Elizabeth Benson, whose 1970s plotline follows her attempts to recover an understanding of Stephen's experience of the war.
Vanity Fair is a 2004 historical drama film directed by Mira Nair and adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray's 1848 novel of the same name. The novel has been the subject of numerous television and film adaptations. Nair's version made notable changes in the development of main character Becky Sharp, played by Reese Witherspoon.
Rubbadubbers is a British stop-motion children's television series produced by HIT Entertainment and HOT Animation. The series was broadcast in the UK on BBC2 and CBeebies from 2002 to 2005. Created by Peter Curtis, it focuses on seven friendly, sentient bath toys as they tell stories in imaginary worlds outside of their bathroom - the ringleader in the series being a pink frog named Tubb. In the US, the series was broadcast on Nickelodeon, Noggin and PBS Kids Sprout.
Three Act Tragedy is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1934 under the title Murder in Three Acts and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in January 1935 under Christie's original title. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6).
Hickory Dickory Dock is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 31 October 1955 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in November of the same year under the title of Hickory Dickory Death. The UK edition retailed at ten shillings and sixpence (10/6) and the US edition at $3.00. It features her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The novel is notable for featuring Poirot's efficient secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, who had previously appeared only in the Poirot short stories.
A Damsel in Distress is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 4 October 1919 by George H. Doran, New York, and in the United Kingdom by Herbert Jenkins, London, on 15 October 1919. It had previously been serialised in The Saturday Evening Post, between May and June of that year.
The Old Reliable is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 18 April 1951 by Herbert Jenkins, London and in the United States on 11 October 1951 by Doubleday & Co, New York. The novel was serialised in Collier's magazine from 24 June to 22 July 1950, under the title Phipps to the Rescue.
The Sevenwaters Trilogy is a historical fantasy series by Juliet Marillier which was first published as a series of three novels between 1999 and 2001, and then later extended.
Devil May Care is a James Bond continuation novel written by Sebastian Faulks. It was published in the UK by Penguin Books on 28 May 2008, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ian Fleming, the creator of Bond. The story centers on Bond's investigation into Dr. Julius Gorner, a megalomaniac chemist with a deep-seated hatred of England.
Daughter of the Forest is an historical fantasy novel by Juliet Marillier first published in 1999. It is loosely based on the legend of the Children of Lir and "The Six Swans". A girl (Sorcha) must sew six shirts from a painful nettle plant in order to save her brothers from a witch's enchantment, remaining completely mute until the task is finished. Falling in love complicates her mission.
The Infernal Devices is a trilogy by author Cassandra Clare, centring on a race called the Shadowhunters introduced in her The Mortal Instruments series. The trilogy is a prequel series to TheMortal Instruments series. Cassandra Clare has stated that the two series are able to be read in any order, but it is best to read them in publication order.
Doraha is a Pakistani drama television series which premiered on Geo Entertainment on 17 October 2008. It is an adaptation of an Urdu novel Mein Ne Khawabon Ka Shajar Dekha Hai, written by Umera Ahmad. The serial is produced by Humayun Saeed and Abdullah Kadwani's production house 7th Sky Entertainment and directed by Mehreen Jabbar.
Clockwork Princess is a 2013 fantasy novel written by young adult author, Cassandra Clare. It is the third and final installment of The Infernal Devices trilogy, following the first book, Clockwork Angel, and the second book, Clockwork Prince. It is written in the third person through the perspective of the main protagonist, Tessa Gray, who resides in the Shadowhunter's London Institute. This final installment follows Tessa and her friends as they face off against the series main antagonist, The Magister, who plans to completely obliterate the Shadowhunter race.
Cécile is an historical novel by the British writer F. L. Lucas. His second novel, first published in 1930, it is a story of love, society and politics in the France of 1775–1776, set largely in Picardy and Paris, which locations form its two parts.
 | This article about a 2000s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |