Engleby by Sebastian Faulks
This novel is being offered for £2.99 this week when you buy The Times Newspaper from WHSmiths. It is the story of a nerdy, working-class chap named Mike Engleby who is very intelligent but socially ill-adapted, who wins a place at grammar school, where he suffers terrible bullying and torment.
He eventually gets a place at Cambridge University, where he studies Literature, but he seems like a lonely figure on the margins of student life, given to musings about King Crimson and Soft Machine, he is practically friendless.
One day Things go from bad to worse for Mike when he is in a record shop and he overhears an inaccurate comment about Emerson, Lake and Palmer which throws him into such fury that he wakes up to find himself on a psychiatric ward, His heightened susceptibility to minor provocation suggests that he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. unfortunately this is not Mike’s final experience of a secure institution either.
Eventually he manages to put this unfortunate episode behind him & becomes a journalist, and starts by covering the Brixton riots, he then becomes a feature writer and interviewer, where He meets Jeffrey Archer and Ken Livingstone. He also has lunch with Alan Clark, who oozes lechery and snobbery, and goes motorbike shopping with Sir Ralph Richardson .
Things eventually come to a head though when the past eventually catches up with him and his life unravels completely….
