A Week in December

The book was recommended by a friend so I went ahead and bought a copy at Heathrow to read on the way to New York.  I didn't get further than the first few pages, ironically about the building of Westfield Shopping Centre, that Jacqui had not even heard of let alone visited which seemed at the time to make the book more significant.  That was in mid November 2010 and I didn't pick it up again for 2 months.   I didn't look at the reveiws on Amazon until today as I have read Faulks in the past and enjoyed his writing.   Amazon readers seem to have more negative than positive comments to make (by volume of 151 responses posted to date) and I tend to agree.  To begin there are a few too many characters who are not readily absorbed from the few lines of introduction to each within the first few pages.  This certainly is a diverse cross section of west London's inhabitants and should have been a much more compelling and interesting read than it was.  When I think of how dense Birdsong was and how each word seemed to be charged with life (or death) its hard to imagine this is written by the same man.  Each individual or couple seems to be a thinly drawn caricature and nowhere is this better illustrated than the thoroughly reprensible hedge fund manager who appears to have not a single redeeming element to his personality. 

I'm not sure whether to be encouraged to write or to give up now considering this novel and my own disappointment with the OU.  I'm reminded of a documentary about Stephen King I saw years ago where he King his early writing career and his wife's wise decision to retrieve the only manuscript copy of Carrie from the wastebasket.  King's advice to would be writers was simply to 'write'. 

Perhaps I should just get on with it.  If Sebastian Faulks can keep writing after Birdsong, produce A Week in December and keep going then why cant I?  Nobody said it was going to be easy.