Engleby

[janeite]

Somebody on here recommended it and I read it this week. I enjoyed it, on the whole.

Does anybody want to talk about it? Never read anything by him before.

I liked it and probably could talk about it although I am terrible at remembering books, films etc and might need others to jog memory.

Bloke in cambridge who kills a bird and is darkly bonkers? Is that it?

not read- will add to ever increasing list...

That just about sums it up, Pointy!

I found it very funny in places.

its a great book, beautifully summarised by pointy his others are good too, different though, there's a WW1 one about psychiatrists I enjoyed human traces I think and of course birdsong is amazing

See, Dp said Birdsong was dreadful. In that case, I would probably like it, as he likes Ian McEwan so knows nowt!

Ooh good it was me that recommended it. I thought it was very drily witty.

I am quite interested in the idea of people who live in their own reality (having had dealings with a narcissist associated with my family, long story) - the fact that many people really do believe their own non-truthful version of events, and that is why normal people cannot get through to them. How do they get like this? Obviously Engleby is an extreme example of that, to a very dangerous degree, but now my eyes have been opened to this phenomenon I see it all over the place.

Birdsong is one of my top 3 books, once you get past the opening chapters and get to the trenches, and I am not someone who generally likes books about war. I found the characters haunted me for ages afterwards. Had a go at "A week in december" recently but found that the huge amount of research he had evidently done got in the way, particularly in the story thread about the banker. Other than those I haven't read any other Faulks books.

Thank you Katisha.

Reading it, I became absolutely convinced (having often wondered) that an ex-colleague almost certainly had narcissistic personality disorder (amongst other things).

I agree that it was sort of oddly compelling and haunting - even as he increasingly revealed himself to be bonkers and it was fairly obvious where things were going, I was still drawn to him.

Well that's the thing - these people are often very charismatic and people get drawn in.
And they are utterly convinced of their own rightness and so normal sane people start to doubt themselves...
But I loved his pedantry! And rather agree with his summing up of what happened in education in the 70s but maybe that's a controversial view. (Faulkes does the same speech about it somewhere in A Week in December as well, about the decision to withhold knowledge.)