A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks is an interesting novel. Set in present-day London, it is about the loosely and not-so-loosely connected lives of a number of the city's residents -- among them a financier who can't make enough money, his wife, their teenage son, an impoverished solicitor, a Tube driver, a young Muslim man and his parents, and an extremely cynical book reviewer. The novel is a bit of a send-up of modern life: greed, social interactions, reality television and even terrorism.
I enjoyed reading this book, not so much for the characters - none of whom I found particulary likeable - but for the way Faulks altered my perceptions of who and what is good or evil. What looks one way at the beginning of the novel doesn't always seem so clearly defined at the end.
The only other novel I've read by Faulks is Birdsong, the story of which is very different from this recent book. I'm impressed with his ability to write so well of such different periods.
