Book Review
~ Novels by Leicester Author Julian Barnes ~
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~ Julian Barnes ~
Best-selling author, Gallic Literary and Somerset Maugham prize winner, the first Englishman to win the French Prix Medici yet still a "City" fan. The author of The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters and England, England was born in Leicester in 1946, the elder son of two French teachers from nearby mining town Coalville. He was educated at the City of London School from 1957 to 1964 and at Magdalen College, Oxford, from which he graduated in modern languages (with honors) in 1968. After graduation, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years. In 1977, Barnes began working as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesmen and the New Review. From 1979 to 1986 he worked as a television critic, first for the New Statesmen and then for the Observer (London). Visit this website [link] --> [link] for an interview with Julian Barnes, or click on the photo above to go to his own website: Julian Barnes Web.
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Synopsis
A novel based around the experiences of a child growing up in "Metroland"
- the suburban area of North London served by the Metropolitan line.
Traces the life of Julian Barnes from a school child to his life in Paris
where he met his first love. Funny, I thought he grew up in Leicester.
Synopsis
Stuart and Oliver have been friends since school. Stuart is painfully aware that "We're rather different, Oliver and me, Oliver impresses people", especially women, so when shy, awkward Stuart meets and marries the beautiful Gillian, an uneasy threesome develops between the two old friends and the new woman in their lives.
Synopsis
Visionary tycoon Sir Jack Pitman builds replicas of all the major tourist
attractions on the Isle of Wight, from Stonehenge to Manchester United.
The project is monstrous, risky and vastly successful - indeed it
gradually begins to rival "Old" England, and threatens to
supersede it.
Synopsis
Julian Barnes is a wonderfully flattering writer and this book is no exception. I had never read any Flaubert and in this book he was able to create a real desire to explore everything he had written. The story centres around a retired doctor and obsessive Flaubert fan who trawls through the life of the writer as though through an antique shop.
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Synopsis
A fictional history of the world in which stories echo each other as
themes deepen and images recur. It offers an idiosyncratic, revisionist
history of life on planet Earth, from a playful account of Noah by a
stowaway on the Ark, to the spiritual odyssey of an American astronaut.
Synopsis
At the start of this
fiendishly comic and suspenseful novel, a mild-mannered English academic
chuckles as he watches his wife commit adultery. The action takes place
before she met him. But lines between film and reality, past and present
become terrifyingly blurred in this sad and funny tour de force from
Julian Barnes.
Synopsis
This novel begins by
chronicling the coming of age of a young girl growing up in rural England
during World War I. Jean marries conventionally but 20 years later leaves
her husband just before the birth of their son, not in a fit of pique but
simply because she realizes she should...
Synopsis
A collection of ten short stories with a linking theme: the British in
France through several centuries. It begins with a group of mercenaries
raiding a Protestant village in southern France in the late 17th century,
and closes with a journey on the antiquated Eurostar express in 2015.
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Synopsis
In this sequel to Talking It Over, Julian Barnes revisits Stuart,
Gillian and Oliver, using the same technique of allowing the characters to
speak directly to the reader, to whisper their secrets and to argue for
their version of the truth.
Synopsis
A novel about the most dramatic political downfall of our time - that of
Eastern Europe, told through the trial of a deposed communist party
leader, Stoyo Petkanov. The author won the Prix Medicis with "Flaubert's
Parrot".
Synopsis
A humorous look at dogs by a dog-lover and owner who, in this canine
expose, has caught dogs in the act of committing their most doggy misdemeanors. Julian Barnes, better known for his interest in parrots,
introduces the book.
Reviews:
I read my first Julian Barnes novel as well this Summer: England, England. This is a humorous tale of an attempt to turn the Isle of Wight into one giant theme park and therein capturing all that is best about England. Everything that can be associated with England is either moved or reproduced (from Buckingham Palace to Manchester United); everything in fact that is most likely to attract the top tourist dollar and yen. They succeed to such a degree that England itself becomes redundant and finds itself sliding towards a feudal society. But things start to go wrong in this idyllic, money-making venture: Faux smugglers start actually smuggling; not only that, but as in olden times, they start luring ships on to the rocks as well. Faux Robin Hood and his Merry Band start shooting the wild life and actually robbing people. And in the background, boardroom politics add to this novel�s intriguing mix of money, lust an betrayal.
����� Five Star Choice �����
England, England - Imagine an England where all the pubs are quaint, where the Windsors behave themselves (mostly), where the White Cliffs of Dover are actually white, and where Robin Hood and his merry men really are merry. This is precisely what visionary tycoon, Sir Jack Pitman, seeks to accomplish on the Isle of Wight, a destination where tourists can find replicas of Big Ben (half size), Princess Di�s grave, and even Harrod�s (conveniently located inside the tower of London). Martha Cochrane, hired as one of Sir Jack�s resident "no-people," ably assists him in realizing his dream. But when this land of make-believe gradually gets horribly and hilariously out of hand, Martha develops her own vision of the perfect England. Julian Barnes delights us with a novel that is at once a philosophical inquiry, a burst of mischief, and a moving elegy about authenticity and nationality.
A mischievous satire on the marketing of illusion and a trenchant analysis of a rootless woman's interrupted pursuit of authenticity are joined in a highly original way in this consummately entertaining novel, the eighth by the dependably clever British author. The major actions occur in an economically depleted near-future England, which almost gratefully succumbs to the utopian blandishments of Sir Jack Pitman, a visionary entrepreneur (and Falstaffian compound of Rupert Murdoch and billionaire Guy Grand of Terry Southern's The Magic Christian). Sir Jack's ``Project'' is a reconstruction of places and scenes familiar from English history, populated by actors portraying equally familiar figures (historical and fictional), situated on the Isle of Wight for the pleasure of sightseers who'd otherwise have to visit multiple real places. Barnes (Cross Channel, 1996, etc.) has a fine time devising the unforeseen consequences of Sir Jack's scheme (the current King, on retainer as an incarnation of himself, is an oversexed moron given to harassing the likes of ``Nell Gwynn'' and ``Connie Chatterley''; ``Dr. Johnson'' is a clinical depressive; ``Robin Hood and His Merrie Men'' inconsiderately rebel; and so forth). Tables are briefly turned when Sir Jack's ``Appointed Cynic'' Martha Cochrane uncovers evidence that her employer's monthly visits to his ``Auntie May'' are in fact sexual adventures during which his infancy is ``replicated''-but Barnes's deft plot has several further twists lurking nearby. And, to turn the screw even tighter, the Huxleyan portrayal of ``England, England'' (Sir Jack's name for his ``Project'') is framed by extended scenes depicting Martha's troubled childhood (a history she scorns to remember) and her old age after ``The Island'' has literally replaced England and the question of what is and is not real in her experience remains unanswered. A provocative dystopian fable that's also a superb vehicle for Barnes's unfailingly fiendish riffs on contemporary political, economic, and sexual underhandedness and overkill.
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Flaubert's Parrot - At first it seems as if Geoffrey Braithwaite's interest in the life of French novelist Gustave Flaubert is just a pastime for his retirement. After all, it's not unusual to be casually interested in someone who changed the face of literature. It's the subtle indications that will quickly lead you to believe that this is really an obsession rather than a passing curiosity. The retired doctor's dissection and cold-hearted analysis of Flaubert's life is unsettling but necessary to his peace of mind. Not only is Flaubert's Parrot an incisive look into the nature of compulsion, it's also a witty recounting of the Frenchman's impression on our culture by BritLit master Julian Barnes.
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Cross Channel - Barnes' long-standing interest in France and its people has seeped into many of his earlier books, including Flaubert's Parrot and Talking it Over. In this, his first collection of shorter fiction, he turns his acute eye and intelligence on Anglo-Franco cross-channel animosity, often with hilarious results. The stories cover a great breadth of territory - from the late 19th century to the near future of 2015 - and Barnes' narrative skips between acute observations and sly comic portraiture. Cross Channel is a vital part of the Barnes cannon, and a book that you will think about and chuckle over long after you've read its last page.
Cross Channel In his first book of short stories, Julian Barnes explores the striking theme of the British experience in France spanning a 300 year timeframe. These ten stories delve into the insistent attraction between these two countries spanning from the late 17th century to the year 2015. To label this book a short-story collection is to considerably shortchange it. True, Cross Channel does consist of ten discrete narratives, each of which could stand on its own. In the end, though, this superb book functions as a single, unified work about the relationship of England with its nearest neighbor, France. As Barnes makes clear, the citizens of both countries have tended to regard each other with scornful fascination, and the author has ransacked three centuries of history to document this cross-channel rapport. In "Dragons," for example, British mercenaries descend upon a 17th-century village in southern France to forcibly convert the population to Catholicism. A hundred years later, when "Melons" takes place, the two nations still haven't kissed and made up: an international cricket tournament is hastily scuttled when the French Revolution begins. This tradition of mutual incomprehension continues clear through to 2015. At that point, the aging protagonist of "Tunnel" travels to France by train, recalling dozens of earlier trips across the channel. His ruminations contain the germs of all the preceding stories - a typical bit of Barnesian trickery - and they reveal, too, what the English finally have to gain from their French counterparts: "It was unhealthy to be idealistic about your own country, since the least clarity of vision led swiftly to disenchantment. Other countries therefore existed to supply the idealism: they were a version of pastoral." The existence of some Other Country, then, is not merely a headache, an escape, an enticement, but also an imaginative necessity. - Salon James Marcus.
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History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters - A revisionist view of Noah's Ark, told by the stowaway woodworm....[An] account of terrorists hijacking a cruise ship. A court case in 16th-century France in which the woodworm stand accused. A desperate woman's attempt to escape radioactive fallout on a raft. An...analysis of Gericault's 'Scene of Shipwreck.' The search of a 19th-century Englishwoman and of a contemporary American astronaut for Noah's Ark. An actor's increasingly desperate letters to his silent lover. A ...meditation on the novelist's responsibility regarding love. These and other stories make up Barnes' retelling of the history of the world. -- Library Journal
Mr. Barnes's concerns throughout are abstract and philosophical, though his tone is unpretentious. Given the principle of repetition, of permutations and combinations, it is inevitable that some of Mr. Barnes's prose pieces are more successful than others. ''A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters'' demystifies its subjects and renders them almost ordinary: ''Myth will become reality, however sceptical we might be.'' In so doing it deconstructs, perhaps even mocks, its own ambition. If the reader does not come to the book with certain of the expectations of prose fiction - that ideas will be dramatized with such narrative momentum that forgets they are ''ideas,'' and that complete worlds will be evoked by way of prose, not merely discussed - this is a playful, witty and entertaining gathering of conjectures by a man to whom ideas are quite clearly crucial: a quintessential humanist, it would seem, of the pre-post-modernist species. - New York Times.
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The Porcupine - Once the Party leader, Stoyo Petkanov has been deposed. And now he's on trial for his crimes, charged with everything from corruption to outright murder. This should be an open-and-shut case. But as the shadowy myths of the Communist past collide with an uncertain capitalist future, nothing is as it seems.
The upheavals that have recenty rocked Eastern Europe provide the inspiration for Barnes's novel, an intelligent, if strangely passionless, examination into the nature of political reality. It focuses primarily on the interaction between two men, former Communist party head Stoyo Petkanov, for 33 years the leader of his nation, and Peter Solinsky, newly appointed chief prosecutor for ``justice.'' Rather than adopt a meek, defensive posture, the recalcitrant party chief thrusts out some barbs of his own, suggesting that the new leadership is no less susceptible to lies and hypocrisy than his own government was. In any given circumstance, Barnes implies, it is simply fate that determines who becomes the accuser and who the accused. Unfortunately, Barnes's success in exploring the mind-set of a Marxist-Leninist hard-liner must be set against the story's overall pallidness. A short, interesting work for those not driven by a need for lots of action or high drama. From Library Journal.
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Talking it Over - Two old friends in their early thirties, Stuart, a chubby, unimaginative banker, and Oliver, a witty, feckless Bohemian are amazed when the former finds someone attractive--Gillian--to love and marry him. At the wedding, however, the best man falls for the bride, and as soon as the honeymoon is over he presses his suit. Gillian fairly quickly succumbs. When the action resumes, she has divorced Stuart and married Oliver, and the couple have settled in a Languedoc village. . . . The events are described by each of the three in turn.
Stuart Hughes and Oliver Russell have been friends since childhood. When the fiscally astute but socially inept Stuart meets the beautiful and artistic Gillian Wyatt at a London wine bar, Oliver can hardly believe it. Gillian clearly deserves someone more cultured, more sophisticated--someone more like Oliver himself. Oliver tags along on the couple's first dates, stands as best man at their wedding, and only when it is too late declares his love for his best friend's wife. It's rather like a British version of the film Jules and Jim , he jokes. In fact, the narrative strategy has more in common with TV documentary than prose fiction. The characters are ``talking heads'' who address the reader directly, in three autonomous though interrelated harangues. There is no omniscient narrator to interpret the story; each character is defined entirely by speech. A witty and provocative novel... From Library Journal.
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Love, etc - is, in the pure sense of the word, a sequel. It continues the events first developed in Talking It Over, picking up the activity after ten years of silence. The structure of the novel is continued, as well, but take Stuart's statement above to heart, because further comparisons may prove tenuous at best. Everyone and everything in Love, etc shows the age of the past ten years. Stuart's hair is grey when he returns to London after a successful stint as an American businessman. He is older and, at times, he seems wiser, but he is also still bitter about his past and his lost love, Gillian. Oliver is still struggling with his stormy career and is having a nice attempt at being a failed screenwriter. He retains his command of language, but his use of "crepuscular" and "steatopygous" within the first twelve pages serves only to echo his younger self -- and echoes are never quite as strong as the original voice they answer. One senses his wit and jovality will only carry him so far at his age. Gillian's emotions are confused by Stuart's triumphant return and offers of financial assistance. She is also worn, as all the characters are, by the ten years that followed the brutal scene which ended Talking It Over.
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Staring at the Sun - This novel begins by chronicling the coming of age of a young girl growing up in rural England during World War I. . . . Jean marries conventionally but 20 years later leaves her husband just before the birth of their son, not in a fit of pique but simply because she realizes she should. In middle age, she is befriended by her son's girlfriend, whose attempts to seduce her are in vain. . . . Finally, at the age of 100, she remembers a young fighter pilot's description of flying up into the sun. Jean has managed to find answers tomost of the questions she has considered during her long life, but why the pilot is fascinated by staring at the sun has eluded her until now.
From guileless child to implausibly innocent adolescent and young woman, Jean Serjeantthe central figure in this wonderfully imagined novel by this gifted author, accountably (and perhaps a mite too easily) becomes a mature woman who, without losing her endearing, wide-eyed qualities, acquires a wisdom that lies beyond reason. The narrative of her unremarkable life would otherwise seem drab: she marries the village policeman and stays unhappily married for 20 years, when seemingly beyond child bearing she brings forth a son and thereupon leaves her marriage to enter the wider world. A grounded RAF pilot (who cracked under the strain of combat) tells her that he "stared at the sun" flying a combat mission in 1941, on the day it had risen twice in what he calls an "ordinary miracle." What is astonishing and moving about Jean's life is its very conventionality and ordinariness; it is as though the author had challenged himself to make poetry out of dust. At the venerable age of 100 in the year 2021, Jean is able to give her son definitive answers to the ultimate questions about death (it is "absolute"), religion ("nonsense"), suicide ("not permissible") while retaining an undiminished sense of awe in the face of a mysterious universe, as she herself, with the fitting grandeur of her unspoiled simplicity, flies up and up into the sky, staring at the sun - from Publisher's Weekly.
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