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Sat 05 May 2007Sinister campus daysFictionIn his recent novel, Human Traces, Sebastian Faulks presented a story of two 19th-century psychiatrists seeking to interpret the human element of madness, an idea that serves as an apt precursor to this, his eighth novel, where he delves even deeper into a study of the mind in an ambitious story that fools the reader time and again with its clever plotting, unexpected twists and captivating narrative voice.The novel opens rather joyfully, with the youthful narrator Mike Engleby at university in 1970s Cambridge. His early activities - throwing up in watering cans, for example, taking drugs - offer echoes of Paul Pennyfeather and Charles Ryder, suggesting to the reader that that most archaic of creatures, the campus novel, has returned to raise its grizzly head. Engleby quickly falls under the spell of a fellow student, Jennifer, who, despite moving in his immediate circle, seems scarcely aware of his existence. For Engleby, however, sitting two places away from her on an evening out constitutes something of a romantic triumph, lending the comedy a certain air of trepidation; the inclusion of a student art film, featuring a scene in which Jennifer is raped, adds to a growing sense of unease.