Faulks is most notable for his three novels set in early twentieth-century France. The first, ''
The Girl at the Lion d'Or, was published in 1989. This was followed by Birdsong (1993), and Charlotte Gray (1998). The latter two were best-sellers, and Charlotte Gray'' was shortlisted for the
James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2007, Faulks published
Engleby. Set in Cambridge in the 1970s, it is narrated by Cambridge University fresher Mike Engleby. Engleby is a loner, and the reader is led to suspect that he may be unreliable, particularly when a fellow student disappears. Faulks says of the novel's genesis, "I woke up one morning with this guy's voice in my head. And he was just talking, dictating, almost. And when I got to work, I wrote it down. I didn't know what the hell was going on; this wasn't an idea for a book." The
Daily Telegraph said the book was "distinguished by a remarkable intellectual energy: a narrative verve, technical mastery of the possibilities of the novel form and vivid sense of the tragic contingency of human life." To mark the 2008 centenary of
Ian Fleming's birth, the author's estate in 2006 commissioned Faulks to write a new
James Bond novel. Faulks has said of the commission: "I'd just finished
Human Traces and it seemed ridiculous. You've just spent five years in a Victorian
lunatic asylum and then you go on to James Bond. But I think their hope is they'll get two markets. The more I think about it, the more I think it was clever of them, because the mismatch is intriguing."
The Observers review of the novel stated: "Faulks has done in some ways an absolutely sterling job. He has resisted pastiche", and blamed the book's weaknesses on the character of Bond as created by Fleming.
Mark Lawson, writing in
The Guardian, praised it as "a smart and enjoyable act of literary resurrection. Among the now 33 post-Fleming Bonds, this must surely compete with
Kingsley Amis's for the title of the best". Faulks's 2009 novel,
A Week in December, takes place in the seven days leading up to Christmas in December 2007. It concerns the lives of a varied cast of characters living in London; Faulks himself has described the novel as "Dickensian" and cites
Bleak House and
Our Mutual Friend as influences, as well as New York novelists such as
Tom Wolfe and
Jay McInerney. The book was partly a response to the banking crisis. He chose to set it specifically in 2007 because "the whole world had changed: the banks were collapsing, we were facing Armageddon, and I understood then that I couldn't make this book right up to the moment[...] I chose that time because then the writing's on the wall, and it should be clear to anyone half-sensible that the game is up, but they're still going on." Reviews for the novel were mixed.
Tibor Fischer, in the
Daily Telegraph, praised the novel's "comic élan", but felt it was "uneven" and criticised the character of John Veals as "lifeless".
Mark Lawson wrote in
The Guardian, "an honest critic must surely conclude that Faulks has correctly identified the novel that needs to be written about these times, but may also have proved that British society is now so various that no single writer can capture all its aspects. However, in honourably failing to depict the entire state of the nation, Faulks has memorably skewered the British literary world."
The Seventh Son was published in September 2023. Despite some reservations, Melissa Katsoulis praised the book in
The Times and stated that there are "some high ideas at work here and, as with the best dystopian fictions, all the crazy future science stuff feels scary precisely because it’s close to happening already."
Reception The
Literary Review has said that "Faulks has the rare gift of being popular and literary at the same time";
The Sunday Telegraph called him "One of the most impressive novelists of his generation ... who is growing in authority with every book". Faulks's 2005 novel,
Human Traces, was described by
Trevor Nunn as "A masterpiece, one of the great novels of this or any other century." ==Adaptations of novels==