Enjoyed this a lot (must have read it before). Quite similar, structurally, to John Lanchester’s ‘Capital’, but Faulkes is a better writer.
Began, brilliantly, with a guest list for a dinner party (which happens in the final chapter), a clever way of introducing most of the characters, without the need for an old fashioned dramatis personae. The similarities with Lanchester are, if I remember correctly:
Both books set in London.
Both feature (I think) a cynical financier
A politician
A footballer
Islamic terrorism
The blurb says ‘Dickensian in scope’ and there is some truth in that – a big array of characters, with the plot bouncing around from one to another.
So we have for instance an Indian pickle manufacturer, about to get an OBE, who enlists tuition from a bitter author/reviewer to prepare for the literary questions he anticipates from the Queen, and whose son is meanwhile caught up (nearly) in an islamist plot to blow up a hospital, which is being used by other characters or their relatives for conventional purposes.
Very good, very clever – perhaps I should try Birdsong, which I have never got on with, again.
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