Unlike his previous novels, which were written in the third person, “Engleby” is a verbal performance, and Faulks jacks up the degree of difficulty by choosing to impersonate a brilliant, manic young sociopath. What’s unusual about this book isn’t that its historical setting is so much more recent or even that its love story is (to say the least) on the creepy side, but that Faulks is attempting to tell it in the first person - to devote the bulk of his considerable energy to the creation of a strong, distinctive narrative voice. (This is England, remember.) There’s enough history - and enough poignant, doomed love - to keep him in royalties, praise and chat shows for the rest of his days, but with “Engleby” he has decided, kind of bravely, to change horses. Faulks does this skillfully, and has been rewarded for his labors: respectful reviews, the occasional literary prize, many books sold, frequent appearances on television.
That catchphrase might spring to mind (and take up lodging there, like a ubiquitous pop tune) as early as a few paragraphs into Sebastian Faulks’s aggressively weird new novel, both because much of the story is set in the place and era of the Pythons’ glory - England in the early 1970s - and because this book really is completely, and premeditatedly, different from anything its well-established author has done before.įaulks is known for gravely romantic historical novels like “Birdsong,” about World War I, and “Charlotte Gray,” about World War II, in which meticulous reimaginings of momentous events are heightened with love stories of the poignant, doomed, “Brief Encounter” variety so beloved by his countrymen. And now, as they used to say on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” for something completely different.
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