Engleby by Sebastian Faulks was excruciatingly painful to read (ie. boring) but I finished it to the end. Don’t ask me why. I guess I wanted to know if my hunches about the main character was true. And I was!

Ok so basically, without giving much of the story away, as the title suggest this book is about a man name Mike Engleby. He is from a working class family but he is quite clever and wins a scholarship at a prestigious school/University/institution. From here on, he tells us his story of his University life where he joins different social clubs so that he could be closer to a female student called Jennifer Arkland.

Arkland doesn’t even give him a second look. Although she does write about him (his name with an exclamation mark ! ) in her diary. In fact, not much happens. Engleby just once in a while, goes back in time and tells us his days at a boarding school where he was bullied by other students.

Then! Yes that’s right, something happens finally! Jennifer Arkland disappears and we don’t find out what happened to her until Engleby, now a journalist in his mid 30’s in the 1980’s. The book ends with Engleby spending his old age in a mental hospital being rehabilitated.

Soooo boring. I wouldn’t recommend it. But if you do happen (for some strange reason) to read it – just take one lesson from it. Any kind of institution won’t do you any good in the long run!