SEBASTIAN FAULKS A week in December ***

Another disappointment from a favourite author.

This is meant to be Sebastian Faulks' portrait-of-the-nation novel, looking at Britain in the week before Christmas, 2007, when the scale of the financial crisis is becoming obvious.

It tells the stories of seven major characters whose paths just about cross. There's a female tube train driver, a barely-employed young barrister, a ruthless hedge-fund manager, a radicalised young Muslim, a Polish football star, a hack book-reviewer who hates all other writers, a schoolboy hooked on skunk, and a few other minor characters.

The trouble is, while some of these characters are really interesting and could be the subjects of complete novels others are just caricatures and some are introduced only to drop out of sight later.

There's some gripping writing, but the problem is with the format of the book. Perhaps he could have got away with something of Dickensian length, but in the event it's all too sketchy.