Engleby (2007)

One of those rare books I couldn't finish. It just didn't engage me at all. Will try again at some stage when I've run out of reading fodder. ( )

Very original book this.
It took me about 60-70 pages to get into. It does jump a bit from past to present but overall I am so glad I read this.
Engleby is such a different character from anyone I have read about before. You are torn between feeling sorry for him, liking him and hating him at times. I dont want to giveaway the story as I want others to read this. ( )

I don't think there's any doubt that this book is decently written: it flows even if you dislike the protagonist from the word go, full of himself and his own importance, patronising to the reader, living at least partly in his own fantasy world, stalkerish.

I read this with a book group I'm thinking of trying out in mind, based on the blurb I probably wouldn't have picked this up otherwise. I can't say I enjoyed it even if I found it an effortless read; I didn't violently hate it—that would be giving too much credit for the protagonist. On the whole it felt like wasting energy and paper on a type of character that doesn't need or deserve that much energy or space. ( )

Really enjoyable audiobook. I liked the strong voice of the narrator and the totally dead pan way it was written. I knew nothing about the story and had no idea where it was going, which was a good thing. I wonder what I would have thought of it as a paper-book really. I expect I would have enjoyed it too, though I know I've found Faulks tough going to read before. It was nice to have something good to listen too whilst sewing though! ( )

This is the story of Mike Engleby, who, when we first encounter him, is a student at "an ancient university" (obviously Cambridge, although it's never named), where his main activities seem to be drinking, popping pills, keeping to himself, thinking detached thoughts about the lives around him, and behaving in a rather stalker-ish fashion toward a girl he's interested in... and about whose later disappearance he may or may not know more than he's telling anyone.

I have such mixed feelings about this one. For most of the first hundred pages or so, I felt highly disappointed. It was well-written, but everything about it, including the description on the front cover, had led me to expect a fascinatingly twisty main character, and I just wasn't finding him interesting at all. Some of his observations were somewhat insightful, some of his backstory depressing, and some of his behavior vaguely creepy, but none of it was particularly affecting or engaging. Mostly, he struck me as pretentious and prematurely world-weary in that way that's so common among students, and which can be so annoying to those of us who have been there and grown out of it. As I read on, though, both the character and the novel itself grew on me. I won't say too much about its central premise, in the interest of keeping things spoiler-free, but my feelings about that are very mixed, too. I think ultimately it works better than it seems like it ought to, but I do have several issues with it all. And then in the end, the book suddenly starts gazing into its own navel in a rather irritating way. Still, it left me with the feeling that I'd at least just read something interesting, which is a lot more than I expected fifty pages in. ( )