Sebastian Faulks 'Engleby' - fao Scheherazade

[Cailin]

Finally finished this last night and as promised Scheherazade I'm going to let you know what I thought of it - but I'd also love to know how other people reacted.

(SPOILER ALERT!)
Obviously the most-talked about aspect of the novel (I would imagine) is whether or not Mike Engleby is the perpetrator of the crime he is convicted of..... especially given the last diary entry from Jennifer that closes the book. There are a couple of things about that last entry that don't make it plausible for me, but the main one is that the narrative voice for me isn't consistent with the entries that we have from Jennifer earlier in the novel. It reads as a much more sentimental entry than anything that came before.


I found myself reacting against Engleby as a narrator rather than feeling any sympathy for him. What was interesting was that the psychologists reports that he reads put into words much of what I was feeling towards him. I was always aware of his lack of emotional attachment to those around him, I never found the tales of his journalistic encounters (with Jeffrey Archer etc) plausible for some reason (was it because he seemed to see rather too conveniently the details about individuals that others wouldn't realise until later?).

Did he kill his old school mate?
I don't believe he killed the German woman (why is that?!)


I'd love to know what other people think...

[Scheherazade]

Hi Cailin,

Thanks for starting this thread. :)

I agree with you that Engelby is far from a reliable narrator (which first person narrator is? :)) and I think Faulks gets out of his way to make sure that we do not have any sympathy for him. To me, it was pretty obvious from the beginning that he was the person who committed the crimes and that he had serious psychological problems; the psychologist report is just an "official" confirmation.

I found it interesting that we do not get a visual image of Engleby till very last pages of the book, which is a clever trick of the author, I think. Engleby's physical description is important (to me) because it affects his character through the way others see and react to him.

I remember thinking how interesting it would be to make a movie in this manner; the main character (represented by the camera) is hidden from the viewer till the final scene.

Why don't you think he killed the German woman? Do you think he is simply trying to take credit for those things as well?

[Cailin]

To me, it was pretty obvious from the beginning that he was the person who committed the crimes and that he had serious psychological problems; the psychologist report is just an "official" confirmation.

The fact that it was so obvious that Engleby was the perpetrator actually made me a little impatient with the novel for the first while. I wonder whether that was because the edition I borrowed from the library had numerous quotes from critics billing it as a superb "thriller". I didn't find that it had any of the suspense intially that I would associate with the genre.

Maybe the fact that it is so obvious that Engleby is guilty allows us to feel a moral superiority that we all like to believe we have when it comes to such individuals. Faulks flatters our egos by letting us think we know it all and perhaps that's the joy of the ending when he pulls the rug from under us so to speak. A gentle reminder that while we as reader might feel we know it all, ultimately our perception may not be superior at all.

I did however find it very interesting that Faulks chose to present the crimes from the perspective of the perpetrator - one who seems at such an emotional distance from the crimes themselves. I think that this absence of emotion makes it all the more difficult for us to sympathise with the narrator and is a clever technique by Faulks.


Why don't you think he killed the German woman? Do you think he is simply trying to take credit for those things as well?

I think my difficulty here stems from the fact that while he had all the details from the other murders, during the course of all his time in prison, he never addresses this crime. I know the murder coincides with his disappearance from the show he goes to see with Margaret but I just can't help feeling that this is the one piece of the narrative that seems too convenient. I am open to suggestions though! Is it perhaps because, unlike the other two victims, there doesn't seem to be any personal attachment to the victim? That she was just a victim of his anger?