Englby

Sebastian Faulks’ “Engleby” — an acute psychological detective novel by the author of the world bestseller “And the Birds Sang...” about an extraordinary Cambridge student.

Mike Engleby is a remarkable person. Indeed, how else could someone from the “lower depths” in the 1970s get into Cambridge and then make a career as a journalist? His confessional account of his own life, interwoven with painful memories, is firsthand proof that we are dealing with a man tormented by complexes yet endowed with a paradoxical analytical mind and phenomenal memory—someone who can deeply understand literature and feel music. The sudden gaps in Engleby’s memory seem even more strange when the conversation turns to a student named Jennifer Arkleand, whom he had secretly loved and who disappeared mysteriously on a breezy autumn night. Indirect evidence gathered by the police seems to point to Engleby, but the main character has no intention of giving clues to anyone—neither the investigation nor the reader.