At the beginning of this novel, Mike Engleby, the narrator, is in his first year at an ‘ancient university’ (very much like Cambridge) in the early 1970s. He is gifted, but his raw academic strength is not matched by any form of social intelligence, and he has few friends. He takes ‘blue pills’ to calm his nerves, and the vast quantity (even by 1970s standards) of alcohol he drinks hints further at self-medication.

Although distant from most people, he is fond of a popular girl named Jennifer, and she is civil enough to tolerate his being always on the periphery of her group. However, when Mike reads one of her letters home and, later, her diary (both of which he has stolen), he discovers that she refers to him in passing as ‘Mike (!)’, which upsets him but gives us an idea of just how unusual others judge him to be; until then we had read only Mike’s words.

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