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    A Week in December
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    A Week in December
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    A Week in December
    Audiobook14 hours

    A Week in December

    Written by Sebastian Faulks

    Narrated by Colin Mace

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    A Week in December takes place over the course of a single week. It brings together an intriguing cast of characters, each apparently in his or her own world but - as gradually becomes clear - intricately related. As the story builds to its climax, Faulks pulls together powerful ideas about family, money, religion and the way we live today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateJan 1, 2010
    ISBN9781407453637
    Unavailable
    A Week in December
    Author

    Sebastian Faulks

    Sebastian Faulks is the author of ten novels. They include the UK number one bestseller A Week in December; Charlotte Gray, which was made into a film starring Cate Blanchett; and the classic Birdsong, which was recently adapted for television. In 2008, he was invited to write a James Bond novel, Devil May Care, to mark the centenary of Ian Fleming. He lives in London with his wife and their three children.

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    Reviews for A Week in December

    3.5/5

    379 ratings52 reviews

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    • 5/5
      At first I thought we were going to get a week in the life of one, then of two … but it was done much better than that. Good characters with a lot to think about. A very good listen.
    • 3/5
      I think I've come to the conclusion that I don't know what all the fuss is about re Sebastian Faulks. I've only read two of his books so far and both of them have left me feeling 'meh'.

      This book is set in 2007 and follows the lives of a wide cast of intersecting characters over seven days. Mostly set in London & mostly revolving round the imminent banking crisis.

      The characters are very sketchily drawn, one or two are more rounded, but there are just too many to give any sense of depth to any of them. I found one or two that I could warm too: Hassan and his family and friend Shahla, Jenni and her brother, Gabriel and his brother - I would have liked much more about them.

      The Veals family, whilst distinctly unpleasant people, were reasonably detailed, as was all the wheeling and dealing behind hedge funds (I know a friend referred to it as 'Janet and John do hedge fund management' but as I had a very sketchy understanding of it, that didn't bother me too much). What I didn't like was his treatment of Islam or his veiled linking of religion to Schizophrenia. On the whole I didn't care if most of them lived or died or what was going to happen to them over the week - Hassan was the only reason I bothered reading to the end. He also hardly bothered to disguise the various financial institutions - all very obvious, even to me. Surprised he hasn't been taken to task about it. Oh and what was the point of the recurring bicycle with no lights? Can anyone explain that to me? Lastly, his TV program: It's Madness. He should leave that to Ben Elton, he does it far better.

      The only sentence that stays with me and I feel is resonant with the point of the book and where we are today.
      The hostess of 'the dinner party' is considering all her multi-million rich guests and realises:
      "But apart from Farooq al-Rashid,.........none of them had engaged with anything that actually existed".
      Sad inditement (me included) is that most folk aren't employed in actually producing anything anymore.

      I still intend to read Birdsong as I believe it's supposed to be very good. Am going to check Mount TBR and see if I have any others of his awaiting my attention & then off load them - I think there's very little chance of me wanting to read them after this. (Just checked - I have a copy of On Green Dolphin Street too - anyone going to step up & tell me it's worth reading???)
    • 3/5
      English state-of-the-nation novels never quite pull it off in comparison to American ones. There is a certain level of overall gravitas, which Sebastian Faulks style can never quite reach, that is required to ground a novel of disparate contemporary characters pursuing modish concerns and issues. All introduced at an unlikely dinner party we whirl and mingle towards a predictable anti-climax. There is some fun in getting there, however. I loved the strand concerning Farooq and his preparations and visit to Buckingham Palace to receive his OBE. I was amused to pick up on some embedded Joni Mitchell lyrics from "Edith and the Kingpin" - "his left hand holds his right, what does that hand desire that he grips it so tight?" from the description of his disaffected son. Perhaps I would have liked the whole thing better presented as a collection of linked short stories? OK but not Faulk's best novel - for that try Human Traces.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed meeting the different characters in this book and learning about their lives. The finale was a bit disappointing, it could have ended in many different ways and I get the impression that the author backed out at the last minute from certain endings.
    • 4/5
      Wasn't going to read this, but London's Cityread followed by an article in The Evening Standard by Faulks made me pick up a copy. Very engaging read with an array of interesting characters. I liked the way there's a certain terrible feeling building all the way through as you read until you reach the climax of the book. A very relevant and intelligent commentary on contemporary London.
    • 4/5
      "A Week in December" offers a view of life in London over the course of one week in December 2007. There are numerous characters and the reader gets to know them all, some more than others. And chapter after chapter, the links between them come to light, some superficial and obscure, others much deeper than you first thought.There is a financial tycoon who only lives for the next big deal, a teenage boy addicted to drugs and reality TV, a Polish footballer just starting his career in a London team, a young female tube driver who plays an online game in her free time, a poor lawyer trying to find his way, a young muslim ensnared by a radical group, a literary critic who hates contemporary literature, and so on...In the beginning it was hard for me to keep the characters straight and to get used to the story which was much more about these characters than about a specific plot. But after some time, I just went along with the ride and the characters grew on me. Each of them, in their own way, is looking for a life worth living, dealing with feelings of loneliness and isolation, trying to find something to hold on to. It is so true to life on the small scale. On the big scale, however, Faulks hits on basically every contemporary topic that was big in the late 2000s: The world of finance, terrorism, TV & online media, the publishing world, the health system, integration. His satire is sharp, yet the strength of the book for me is in the characters and the ties between them. I would happily have read a whole novel about each of these characters, with the exception of the hedge fund manager, because well, there was already more about the finance world than I ever wanted to know in this novel.
    • 4/5
      Seven days and seven people; a fund manager, a tube driver, a football star, a poor lawyer, a skunk addicted school boy, a hack book reviewer and a student who is committed to the ultimate cause of Islam.

      As these characters lives orbit around London and each other, you start to understand what is driving them, the hack who wants to rubbish a fellow reviewers new novel, the fund manager is trying to pull of the biggest deal of his life by pushing a bank into collapse. His teenage son has just obtained the strongest skunk that he can, and the footballer is finding his feet in this new city. The lawyer and the tube driver are beginning a relationship, and the student is sourcing the materials for a bomb.

      As the tension builds and the lives of these seven Londoners become more closely intertwined, the student sets off to make his ultimate sacrifice.

      Cleverly plotted, Faulks has written these characters with many flaws. Some of them you end up liking, other detesting, but not the one you may think. Has a nice twist at the end. Overall 3.5 stars as it does feel a little overwritten and careful editing would have made a tighter story. Otherwise good.
    • 5/5
      One of the seven key characters in this book is a book reviewer who loathes the modern "media darling" authors. Odd, because I would have included Sebastian Faulks in that coterie, until this book. It is beautifully plotted and crafted, with finely drawn characters, some of whom you will love, one of whom you will definitely hate (unless you are involved in high finance). But the overwhelming tone of the book is one of anger at what has happened in the UK, and especially London over the last two decades. Another reviewer identified London as the eighth key character, I agree and expect real Londoners, like me, to appreciate this really gripping read. Over the last few years I have quite a few "state of the nation" novels. In my view this is the best of them.
    • 4/5
      "Gabriel rested his teacup on a ziggurat of his head of chambers' upcoming briefs and looked out of the window, down towards the river. Swollen with December rain, it was gliding on beneath the lights of the Embankment..."From the blurb: London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Seven wintry days to track the lives of seven characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astry by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life, and the group is forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.The characters in this are a real mix (as I imagine they are supposed to be). The younger characters (Gabriel and Jenny) are the much more sympathetic ones, just getting on with their lives as best they can while still being just generally nice people. John Veals is a piece of work - clever to make someone so inhuman and remorseless. The examination of Hassan's life, obsession with Islamic theory, and conflict between his modern London life and what he has been taught was interesting and sensitive. The other characters I had forgotten until I read the blurb, but I don't remember deliberately skipping through any sections of this book until it hit another character. Faulks does well to keep them all appropriately separated.So this is the first of Sebastian Faulks' books that I've read - even though I have both Birdsong and Charlotte Grey on the shelves. Sometimes it got a bit fanciful and obtuse, but on the whole, eminently readable while obviously skilful. Plotwise this is so-so; it's really a character study, I think. There is a certain tension added by John and Hassan's deeds, and various glimmers of romance here and there, but it's only really there to give the characters something to do.And as for the setting: this is so very London. And not just very London, but not tourist London, real, people-who-live-here-and-commute-to-work-here London. The far-flung suburbs with their spectrum of class, the postcode giveaway of household earnings. And it's London December too - no particularly exciting weather, but grey and cold and a bit dreary but nearly Christmas so people are quite cheery and pubs are overflowing.Good, but I'm not sure I'll re-read it.
    • 3/5
      This is a character study, set in London. Multiple characters, all very different. The story culminates at a millionaires dinner party. I found this a bit hard going in places but laugh out loud funny in others. My favourite characters were the female tube train driver, the reluctant teenage Islamic terrorist and the billionaire hedge fund manager who never laughs.
    • 2/5
      I wanted to like this book more than I did, but I found the satire to be strained and to betray an awkwardness with some of the concepts (e.g. online gaming, reality tv) that were being portrayed. I was pleasantly surprised by the ending, but overall found it pretty dull going.
    • 4/5
      Faulks weaves a taut story involving a group of disparate characters whose lives intersect and then disperse over a week in London. This book packs a punch when it comes to the super rich, their vacuous and amoral lives obsessed with money, status and power. There are also some heart warming moments in amongst the very unlikeable characters.
    • 3/5
      This book took me quite a while to read because it's one of those books I thoroughly enjoyed when I was sitting down reading it, but I didn't have an urge to keep going back to it the way I do with most books.
      The characters are very well written and, for the most part, likable even it they aren't good people. R. Tranter was my favorite character. He's a bitter remora of the the literary world and I had to laugh while sympathizing a bit with him.

      I won a copy of this book on First Reads.
    • 5/5
      This is a very clever book, It is about 7 characters in London and loosely links their lifes together. Interesting book. Faulks brings these characters to life very well. You could also class London as a character in this book. The only bit I didnt really care about was the financial information that was written about John Veals the hedge fund manager but apart from that this is a very enjoyable book. Dont want to spoil the story some of the characters are more likeable than others.
    • 2/5
      High expectations, unmet. Don't rush to read if you are looking to relive the beauty of Birdsong. This is not it. Faulks attempts to paint a mosaic of important contemporary trends, but is ultimately unconvincing and unsuccessful.
    • 4/5
      It was a very interesting reading. There are a lot of different lives wrapped into a fictional story which could also be a true one. All life stories are linked to each other. There are different generations which are connected privately or professionel. All those stories are showing the every day life of our time with its ups and downs or its hopes und failures. It comprehends the power of money, religion fundamentalism, drugs and mental disorder, the competition who is the best writer or the best host as well as finding love and true friendship.
    • 3/5
      'Six stages of separation' is an old hypothesis in this book Faulks's attempts 'Seven' as this book tells of seven characters in seven days in London and how they are supposedly brought together by the London underground.Faulks's "Birdsong" is one of my top 10 all time reads so I really looked forward to reading this book but I guess that it was a bit much to expect an author to write two brilliant books and this one is certainly not that for me. The characters are basically a hedge-fund manager, a bored underworked lawyer, a chutney magnate, a Polish football player, a hack book reviewer who have all been invited to a newly elected MPs house for dinner, and two students, one hooked on skunk and reality TV whilst the other is struggling with Islamist theory . The book's concept is a good one with the themes of love, hate and greed while taking a satirical swipe at modern London. all told just before the financial bubble in London and other share trading centres bursts, but in the end rather overstrethes itself.The book becomes over-reliant on stereotypes. The hedge-fund is oblivious to everything other than making money, the football star has a porn-star girlfriend and the hack reviwer is anti all books written in the last 50 years or so. In particular it is the satire which falls flat for me. The skunk student is hooked on a TV reality show called 'Its Madness' which is a take on Big Brother, and would rather see his 'Fantasy Football Team' do better than his real team, whilst the hack moans about modern authors using contrived coincidencs to move their stories along yet it is exactly this that Faulks uses himself, almost poking fun at the reader.Saying all that it is not a bad read, the fisrt third of the book is pretty good as Faulks sets out his characters and the final third picks up pace nicely even if for me the ending itself was a bit of a let down but it is the middle part where I felt that the story got bogged down. Faulks insists of going into great and minute detail portraying his characters and while this was admirable and much appreciated in Birdsong in this book it felt overblown, a bit nit-picking. In the end I became more interested in the peripheral figures than I did in the main ones.Don't let me put you off but for me this was not a book that will live long in the memory and would not enter my all-time top 100 let alone top 10
    • 4/5
      Seven days, seven people, slice of life at the end of the world we all hope perished with the coming of our most recent financial crisis. Do that right, and you could be the modern Dickens or Trollope. Do it wrong, and you’ll remain plain old Sebastian Faulks of many TV appearances and no lasting fame.It’s interesting, in light of the fact that surely this is Faulks’s bid for repute down the ages, that this book so clearly attributes the distortions and grotesqueries of the early 20th century to the death of the middlebrow, which Faulks, touchingly overreaching perhaps but with an undeniable core of truth, sees as signifying the death of the human. All the major characters here except one are more or less sympathetic, and all of them are struggling to hold onto either a rounded, magnificent Western humanism (I’m on the Tube into London for the first time in a year as I write this; hoping to spend some time dreaming among spires this trip, or at least blue plaques—and it’s worth noting in passing that if Faulks, or some other writer, had tried to set this book in New York, it would have been a retread of The Bonfire of the Vanities at best and a laughable pseud’s mess at worst; London has basically no competition as the symbol of our present decline and fall. Though that does lead to the further interesting question of when the great novel of real estate in Dubai, or the Chinese opera of hedge funds in Shanghai, is gonna happen). Northwood, with his deep thoughts; Tranter, the representative of old class dynamics and all their attendant resentment and self-loathing and righteous “there’s just one thing we’ve got more of / that’s our minds” warmaking, weirdly alien these days, when there’s no consciousness of who’s winning—as they like it—because we’re allllll supposed to be “ballers” or whatever, within our own limited horizons. And then the second group are the more wounded ones, the ones just trying to hang onto their humanity—Hassan, just trying to get clean, gravitating inevitably toward the form of resistance he’s given, the one that—how? why?—offers just as little of the full life, or of love, or fuck, hermeneutics—just didacticism, violence, and wealth and slaves in the hereafter. Is the human really so outmoded? Is all we can respond to the one-word answer? Or Jenni Fortune, who learns with trepidation to leave that answer behind, to come to life with Gabriel—and with simple kindness gives him an answer to his complex of needs as well. You’re rolling your eyes, but can anyone really say we don’t need to value kindness more? And exhort each other to do it until we do?And then there is Veals. Terrifying not because he’s a memorable villain—just a regular, sociopathic, blinkered piece of shit. Terrifying perhaps because he’s not memorable—just a person reduced to a money machine, just the way capitalism reduces us all down our lines of least resistance—but Veals doesn’t try in even the most feeble or misguided way to fight it. I’m too close to this, historically speaking, to judge it, but in the The Way We Live Now awards for 2000–2010, it’s in with a fighting chance.
    • 4/5
      An excellent book that I really enjoyed reading even though I didn't understand the financial stuff. I think the characters got their just desserts in the end. Why there was a man on a bike that kept cropping up I have no idea! Generated a lot of discussion at book group too.
    • 3/5
      The premise of A Week in December is sound. The characterisation is strong. Yet somehow it doesn't live up to the standard I expect of Sebastian Faulks. There are two core themes to the book - one features a hedge fund manager seeking to make a killing by bringing down a bank and the other a British Muslim boy who finds himself mixed up with extremists. It might be that Faulks is seeking to draw a comparison between the harm caused by terrorists and those responsible for the global financial meltdown, but if he is, it is obscure. Incidentally, perhaps the most effective aspect of this book is the way Faulks builds the personality of the would-be terrorist, stressing how alienation leads to his manipulation by others. Along the way Faulks mixes in other sub plots, of little obvious relevance - including a spat between a pretentious pair of book reviewers, so perhaps Librarything contributors should be careful - and only a very loose connection, a dinner party, ties all the elements of this novel together. Further, with all the disparate elements to this novel it takes a very long time to get going; for the first two thirds of it, I felt as if I was wading through, waiting for it to grab me. The pace and my interest increased towards the end, but ultimately, I found this disappointing.
    • 4/5
      A week in December is a novel which functions at different levels. Superficially, it describes the daily lives of seven characters in contemporary London in a great amount of detail. The amount of detail is so overwhelming, that it takes all of the reader's attention. At the same time, the reader is all too familiar with all these details, as they are the fabric of the everyday media reports we consume. The novel hold up a mirror of our time: high finance, terrorism, pornography, football, drugs, etc.At a different level the enormous amount of detail in the novel works like a kind of source code. The seven characters in the novel become like characters in a virtual reality quest, in which the reader becomes an auctor, an actor and author at the same time. In an attempt to make sense of it all, the reader is persuaded to create a plot which brings the seven characters together. The most likely event would be a cataclysmic horror scenario, which might involve the terrorist, the tube train driver, and any combination of the other characters, perhaps even the Queen. Everything seems possible, except when Olya appears "in the flesh," almost at the end of the novel (p. 501). It is a little teaser. All connections are possible.However, most characters live very disconnected lives. There are some connections, but they are work relations, such as between Jenni and Gabriel (legal), and Tranter and 'Rocker' (consultation). The most meaningful connections, family, friends are hollowed out. Only love can bring redemption, as in the end it does.
    • 5/5
      Acquired via BookCrossing 28 May 2011 - Hare and Hounds meetup Plenty of copies of this book have passed through my hands but this one "took" and I'm glad that, after some previous resistance, I read it. In a somewhat Iris Murdochian way, we follow seven interlinked lives around London. Few errors in the things I knew about, so I assume the quite complex financial stuff (which, as is usual with these things, I followed as I read but then forgot) was right. Count have easily shaded into creative writing class rubbish (c.f. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things) but really didn't. The only slight issue I had was that maybe Faulks was a little too fond of some of his characters to present them objectively, but that's not a major fault. Absorbing and of course, cleverly read in November!
    • 1/5
      seven days where seven lives almost intersect with one massive slow motion character train wreck. The story development was like have a tooth extracted in slow motion or like watched a youtube video of a baby drooling - IN SLOW MOTION.
    • 4/5
      I've got a copy of Birdsong on my bookshelf that has gone unread since I bought it some years ago. I'm ashamed to say I never quite got around to reading it because, well, it looks a bit "worthy" and the cover is a bit dull. I picked this one up at our hotel's book swap and (again based on the cover) thought it might be a bit dull... But I was wrong! This is one of the most thought provoking books I've read and offers (I think) a fairly accurate picture of modern society. The narrative follows a number of characters loosely connected around a dinner party that's being held at the end of the week. Around this seemingly banal focus the plot dips into the lives of a diverse range of characters (e.g. barrister, tube driver, book reviewer, suicide bomber) and at the center of it all is John Veals - a hedge fund manager who fully understands the impact his actions have on society yet displays a psychopathic lack of compassion or conscience. The characters draw you along through the book but towards the end there is an explanation of what (I think) the book is about - essentially all of the characters are detached or alienated in some way from their own reality. Whether they escape through virtual reality, drugs or alcohol, obsession with their own past, or the acquisition of wealth, all of the characters have become detached from themselves and others in some way. I thought it was subtle, and beautifully told. I also liked that it challenged stereotypes and looked at the socioeconomic reasons why people act in the way they do... Really interesting to read this just after the London riots.I'll definitely be dusting off Birdsong soon.
    • 2/5
      I was surprisingly sad to finish A Week in December in that for most of the book I didn’t actually enjoy it that much. It was a real disappointment as I usually really enjoy Sebastian Fawkes work. I have found that some of his novels have been slow to start before but this one was really slow to start, I didn’t start to get properly into it until there were less than 100 pages left. I possibly would have even given up by my 100 page cut off mark if it wasn’t for the fact that it being a Fawkes novel gave me hop that it would get good.It took me a long time to get all the characters sorted out in my head, and even at the end I was getting Veals and errr what’s his name the lawyer politician mixed up, err Lance that’s it. And I’m still not sure who Roger is. It doesn’t help that within the first few pages there was a great big long list of characters who would be invited to a dinner party, most of whom barely featured in the rest of the book.In fact there were only two characters who were distinct right from the onset, the tube driver Jenni, and the Islamic student, Hassan. As far as Jenni went it still took me some time to get into her story but she felt like the most genuine of the characters, and once she met Gabriel I started enjoying her story more. Hassan’s storyline was the most interesting, and I expected much more of it [highlight for spoiler]because of that it was somewhat of an anti-climax. I expected the climax of the story to be him blowing up the hospital, where a number of the characters would be. I kind of liked him so in a way I am glad he didn’t but it did make the end less exciting.Most of the other storylines held little interest for me. I found Veals to be a horrible little man but his story only held interest for me in relation to his wife and son. I really could have done without his who financial storyline, I found it generally went over my head and was pretty boring. Plus it took up far too much of the book. I didn’t like RT either, he was such a grumpy, self-satisfied, snob, I didn’t really care what happened to him and cared even less what he thought. I almost thought RT was included just so Fawkes could have a dig at his critics. I did like Gabriel as a character but his story was not very distinct, he didn’t really mean anything except in relation to Jenni.In some ways A Week in December felt more like a social commentary than a novel. Fawkes talked about finance, and bankers. ‘Reality’ television. Books. The internet. The culture of blame. The rich/poor divide. Teenagers. Parents. Religion. Race. And immigration. Maybe he could have written a good non-fiction book on Britain or London today but I really don’t think it made a good novel.
    • 3/5
      I like Sebastian Faulks. I liked this book while I was reading it but now, on reflection, I don't like it so much anymore! The lengthy descriptions of how the financial markets work left me cold and I felt that most of the characters were very poorly drawn - except perhaps for the character of the impoverished lawyer. I did like the subtle humour of the book and thought it had a lot to say about how people choose to live their lives in the modern world.
    • 5/5
      I almost didn't expect to like this. I had struggled at first to 'get into' other books that Sebastian Faulks had written and most of the reviews on this book were decidedly neutral. Having said that, I chose to read it anyway, and I'm very glad I did. I found the satirical element very effective and the way in which aspects of normal modern life, such as Facebook, Second Life and Big Brother, were distorted and thinly disguised gave the book an almost dystopian atmosphere. It also served, I felt, to distance the readers themselves from reality, just as the characters mostly were. Only we, the readers, didn't have a shadowy unlit cyclist to jolt us to our senses, but the often uncomfortable realisation of how close to reality this fiction really was.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book mainly due to its description of the financial industry. What has happened there has been difficult to understand, to have an explanation within the novel both helped to understand it and make the novel more enjoyable. And it didn't all end in tears as might have been expected.The bicycle rider(s) got a little annoying. You wanted it to be more than it was or could be.Would recommend this novel as a good read.
    • 2/5
      I found this a very readable book with the characters of the hedge-fund manager and the would be Islamic terrorist the best drawn but there were too many main characters in the book which meant that some were not as well-defined as they should have been to occupy the place that they did. I found them stereo-typical without anything different or interesting about them which ultimately made the book just not very interesting.Some of Faulks' books have been hard going but this wasn't. If it had more depth and a less linear plot it could have been good.
    • 5/5
      This is a witty commentary upon the delusions that threaten the unwary in modern city life. A prime target is a nerdy hedge fund manager who has become obsessed with profiting from the financial catastrophes of 2008, irrespective of the consequences for others in real life. He is so self-indulgent with his time, he is unaware that his son is also becoming deluded: with the self-abuse of drug taking. Other characters include a young man from a nominally muslim family who becomes deluded into believing that it is his duty to explode a bomb in a hospital, and a tube driver whose social life has become lost in the computer world of virtual reality. Despite the obvious inuendo, I only found the word 'masturbation' used once. I suggest that the book deserves careful and reflective reading for the full humour of Faulks to be properly appreciated. I thoroughly enjoyed it.