Arthur & George | Julian Barnes

Arthur & George | Julian Barnes | Gets Better and Better!

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Arthur & George

	Arthur & George Julian Barnes Vintage, 2007 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 88 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Sheer Delight

Nothing prepared me for the sheer delight within these covers. Although the story can be retold and synopsized, as countless reviewers have done, you can't do the events the justice rendered by Barnes's technique. The alternating narratives keep you off balance in the beginning: I warmed more slowly to the cold George than to the bluff and familiar Arthur. There's no particular difference in the narrative stance toward the two characters, but Barnes moves freely enough into each mind to create a different sensibility in each section. By the time we're into the second of the four parts of the novel ("Beginning with an Ending"), we look forward to the adjustments and modifications that come with each new narration. At that point, the "George" and "Arthur" sections get much longer and a conventional narrative begins to unfold, not unlike something from Sherlock Holmes. It's not so much like Conan Doyle's work that it feels imitative - there's just enough suspense, outrage, and concealment to make us turn the pages more quickly and to read for another 15 or maybe 30 minutes. ("I'll just stop at the end of this section," I tell myself.)

Arthur and George don't meet until the middle of the book, which doesn't matter in terms of our interest or involvement. But we are delighted when they finally do come together. The book's design is so prominent and clear that it allows us to laugh or nod classically at the way it has been organized. Like a parishioner smiling as the minister heads into his third point after 12 minutes, the reader registers the form with pleasure, knowing that Barnes, like Conan Doyle, started the novel with the ending in mind. He not only knows where the story will end, he has an eye toward life after the end as well, using Sir Arthur's "spiritism" as a motif that informs the lives of both his main characters as well as the act of reading and interpretation that readers perform. None of this is ever too heavy - there's always enough drama and show business to leaven the proceedings - but it keeps readers skeptical, bemused, and ready to be convinced. It also reminds us, as the mysterious plot does, that we can't know everything about people or the events of this world, let alone the next. The novel continually toys with truth, belief, instinct, and the kind of occluded perception that afflicts everyone, authors included. When we discover, in the last sentence of the author's concluding note, that all of the printed quotations are true, we pull back another step. Having placed ourselves so comfortably in Barnes's hands, it's disconcerting to think that he wasn't just a yarnsmith, weaving and forging (I'm trying to combine "yarn" and "smith") a tale about Doyle playing Holmes in real life, but he's a reporter filling in the interstices of official reports and documents with the novelistic stuff of real life. We're reminded that this is what novelists do, after all - they provide a form for the real, a context from which the truth about our lives can emerge. But we usually assume that things have been distorted or imagined, that the writer has played fast and loose with the details. The author allows his characters to distort at will, so we have the experience of observing and judging from the perspective of the unbiased lawyer, enthusiastic novelist, racist policeman, etc. In the end, Barnes's multi-voiced narrative feels fair, kaleidoscopic, and unbiased, but we're always aware that he knows just what he's doing. It's easy to imagine him divinely paring his fingernails as he molds his story, chuckling in delight from his privileged position above and beyond his handiwork. The reader likewise feels elevated and amused.

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Gets Better and Better!

I wasn't too excited about reading this book but soon changed my mind. This is a great novel, based on the true, intersecting lives of a famous author and a sort of common man. The writing is excellent. I especially enjoyed the parallel telling of each man's life until they finally intersect. I purposely did not read the dust jacket, so I actually did not know at first who the famous author was. I think that, along with the initially unknown background of George, added to my enjoyment.

Well written

This is my first Julian Barnes novel as well.

As a Sherlock Holmes fan the premise was interesting but somehow I found only the plight of George and his family to be the most interesting. With Doyle I think I was given almost too much information-just enough to wonder if I really liked the author as a man.

I read the book in under two days on a trip and despite the misgivings I had when I started it, it did turn out to be a worthwhile read-an interesting look at the times and the foibles of the English legal system at that time.

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A remarkable case study

Those drawn to the subject of the book -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- should not be misled into thinking this is a Sherlock Holmes crime study. Doyle and crime are central to this intriguing book, but more to the point is a sharply detailed study of Edwardian English life. Two men of very disparate backgrounds and temperments are thrown together by a miscarriage of justice and the attempt to put the matter right. Barnes is outstanding in his look at two middle-class English families and the effect that the series of bewildering crimes has on each. The pleasures are more in the characters and day-to-day life than in any brilliant case investigations.

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Only George comes to life

"Arthur and George" is a novelist's reconstruction of the lives of two Victorian era individuals whose lives interesected: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a man he helped prove innocent of the crime for which he was in prison: GeorgeEdalji. Had Julian Barnes been assigned this subject as an exercise, I would have given his effort more credit than I do. Barnes does a wonderful job with George, but I found his Arthur interesting, but lifeless: perhaps Barnes was too constrained by what is known about the real world figure. As a detective story - the investigation of the crime George was alleged to have committed - the novel definitely has its moments, and the social history is a plus. Still, the novel too often plods along. For a much richer novel, which also provides a slice of Victorian era social history, I recommend "English Passengers" by Matthew Kneale

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