A week in December

Summary: "In Sebastian Faulks' panoramic and masterful new novel, we follow, over seven eventful days, the lives of seven major 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 astray by Islamist theory, a hack book reviewer with more blades out than a Swiss Army knife, a schoolboy hooked on genetically enhanced pot and reality TV, and a Tube train driver with a secret online life whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. Here is a powerfully compelling novel that holds a mirror up to the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life, with all its ironies, conflicts, and discontinuities. Melding the moral heft of Dickens with the satirical spirit of Tom Wolfe, A Week in December fearlessly tackles greed, the dehumanizing effects of the electronic age, and the fragmentation of society with savage humor. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it--and party on as though tomorrow is a dream"--Cover, p. 2.

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