Sebastian Faulks’ newest addition to his growing collection of novels follows Mike Engleby, an unusual first year student at Cambridge University. He forms an obsession with a fellow student, Jennifer Arkland, steals her diary and develops what he thinks is a relationship with her, although from the insights we get from her diary it is clear that it is far from being a loving relationship, this connection is more akin to that of stalker and stalked. Jennifer then goes missing and the book goes on to follow Mike’s life after her disappearance. What transpires is a haunting and heart-breaking novel with a smattering of twisted humour.

The novel is written from Engleby’s perspective and mostly explores his world view. Engleby might be described as a bit of a loner. Highly intelligent, socially awkward and withdrawn, his descriptions of the world are at once meticulously accurate and completely devoid of emotion or warmth. At times this is frustrating since Engleby’s way of looking at the world is fascinating, but his complete lack of feeling can pose problems. Sometimes you get the sense Faulks has limited himself to the narrow sphere his main character inhibits and there are large passages of Engleby’s rambling philosophy, which can drag. At these points you long to be a part of the ‘real’ world, to have a grasp on some sort of normality, and to escape the claustrophobia of Engleby’s mind. Engleby’s only real friend, Stellings, who he met while at Cambridge, goes some way to providing this release in a heartfelt and poignantly truthful account he writes of him. But it’s quickly dismissed by Engleby, who thinks it a highly inarticulate piece of writing, and concludes, ’...perhaps you never really know people. Oh well’. And yet again, we are dragged back down into his mind.

Despite these moments of frustration, the book is beautifully written, and Faulks is careful to ground the book in a context the reader can relate to. As well as covering a lot of history – the book spans over three decades - there are quite a number of interesting issues that crop up. Using the protagonist as a uniquely-minded spy into the world of mundane middle-class existence, Faulks is able to give the reader a fresh insight into the issues that we all know so well. Engleby reacts to dinner parties and school-talk with Stellings’ friends and perfectly manicured wives, dates with women and other such routine tasks with varying degrees of emotion - from nonchalance right though to complete rage. Even Engleby’s perspective of working life sheds some new light onto how others may view an incredibly successful career. The unfamiliarity of Engleby’s way of looking at the world around him makes for exhilarating and absorbing reading, and the book cleverly teeters on a fine line between drawing out empathy and provoking disgust or disbelief in the reader with Engleby’s viewpoint.

Another very interesting, and incredibly important, concept that is beautifully executed by Faulks is the idea of time, and particularly identity and personality over time. A quotation at the beginning of the book from On the Shortness of Life by Seneca, AD49, states, ‘It is a small part of life we really live. Indeed, all the rest is not life but merely time’. Engleby never seems to be able to find a real identity for himself at all. As an unpopular and bullied teenager at school, he is lumbered with the name Toilet after using the word in class, much to the amusement of his teachers and peers. As Toilet, he struggles to fit in with the traditional student; ‘...a mask of erupting spots and damp-looking hair’. At university he is Groucho to Stellings, and he is angered to be referred to by Jennifer in her diary as simply Mike (!). During his working life, and writings as a successful journalist, he takes on various other personas, but never uses his real name. Although Engleby comments that he’s ‘always had what Jen would call a “prodigious” memory’, he suffers from bouts of compete memory loss, which allow Faulks to further skew the reader’s perception of time. You are never quite sure what has or hasn’t happened, what is real and what isn’t, and who the real Engleby is.

Engleby himself mentions at one point that he thinks he might be coming very close to achieving happiness – no mean feat for a man who can’t connect fully with his emotions at all – but at this point in the book it feels he may be beginning to finally find an identity for himself. The idea that connecting with a concrete identity – and even a name - is vitally important is fascinating. Are we only happy when we have a completely formed picture of who we really are?  And is the image others form of us accurate?  There is little consistency in how Engleby’s friends and peers view or address him – he is an outsider, and as such has no claim to a universally recognised identity: there are only other people’s disparate and fragmented perceptions of who he could be. It is only by putting together snippets from Jenifer’s diary, Stellings’ descriptions, and other authority figures’ comments that the reader is able to start to put together a picture of who the ‘real’ Mike Engleby is. But as Engleby points out towards the end of the book when he’s well into middle age; he is barely the same person that he was all those years ago at Cambridge with Jennifer. He isn’t even made up of the same matter that he was then – he is, in essence, a completely different person. At the book’s close, his perception of what has happened is taken to a completely different place.

Engleby is certainly a compelling read. The pages fly by, and the novel is easy and interesting to engage with. Faulks covers a lot of ground in the book, but the consistent first-person perspective means it isn’t confused or cluttered and it is the attention to detail and subtlety that really shine. From the beautiful description of the misty fenlands around Cambridge, to the fascinating inner workings of a mind so out of joint with reality, the novel is less a thriller than a beautiful and haunting journey through the life of a man who never really did manage to find himself in world he could never fully understand.