Customer Reviews:
 True, True, However, And True November 25, 2002
10 out of 20 found this review helpful
True, the coming of age story has been written ad nauseum. It is also true that the coming of age angle in the 1960's will also cause a reader to contemplate the moment just prior to the aspiration of food particles. However, it is also true that this version of this oft-told tale is the first offered to readers by Mr. Julian Barnes. And finally, it is, or should be true, that whether or not an Author is the first, or one thousand and first to pen his or her version of a familiar tale, it should be judged on its merits, not graded upon its location in time relative to other familiar themes.
That's as far as I can go in defense of this particular work. I have read 5 novels by the Author, and this I enjoyed the least. However, Julian Barnes writes with such a qualitative consistency superior to most novelists, that his weaker work can be still be valid when placed in relation to other novels he has written.
The two young men we follow were just a bit too clever in their own estimation to be enjoyable. Their faith in change, which we expect to fail, rings true in the narrowest of confines, between only themselves. Their antics when younger quickly dissolve as time and their proximity to each other changes.
One of the young men has an encounter on a train with a more elderly gentleman, one who by definition of their teenage beliefs is deserving of only scorn. And while there is no epiphany at the moment of exchange, his faith and all he believes it to be predicated upon are proved to be false, and further, are proven to be in terminal health, he just isn't prepared to accept defeat.
The stars and my comments may be contradictory. The only defense I offer is that when this man writes, he is very good, and even this work has moments that are exceptional.
Not his best, but better than most that has gone before.
passage of time July 15, 2002
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Metroland is a very intimate and enchanting novel written in the first person. The reader is drawn into Chris, the narrator's, world at the very outset and from that point on, we are taken on a journey through life, time and age.
We start out in the mind of a 16 year old boy, feeling all his hopes and ideals alongside him, sharing his philosophies and questions with his closest friends in a haven of teenage, mutual, intellectual exchange.
Then comes Paris, May '68. Chris has matured. We sense that he has begun to live, and has become increasingly uncertain of how the realities of life fit in with his childhood ideals.
As the work draw slowly to a close the narrator is experiencing "real" life to the full; the marriage, the mortgage and the child, and yet the need to question seems to have been appeased. We now sense his readiness to live life day by day, without too much forward-thinking. With age, he no longer really asks why things happen, he merely accepts.
The ageing process we feel in the novel is fascinating, in particular when we consider the relationship between the two childhood "best friends", Chris and Toni. As children they seem to parralel so closely, with similar beliefs and concerns, yet as time passes their priorities and goals move in conflicting directions. Chris adapted his ideals to reality. Toni, on the other hand, tried to live by his childhood ideals as an adult, torturing himself in the process in the hopes of being true to his past self and his broken dreams.
Some of us mature and develop and some are children forever ....who is happier?
Life and love in the suburbs December 4, 2000
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
For the adolescent Christopher, born of a middle class family in the middle class rural suburbs of the estate agents' and adman's conceptualised Metroland - defined after the First World War as the path travelled by the old Metropolitan railway line out from Baker Street to Watford, Chesham and Amersham - life is about big issues. He and his friend Toni are obsessed with the "purity of language, perfectibility of self, function of art" and Love, Truth and Authenticity. Always capitalised, and often according to the wisdom of such literary luminaries as Rimbaud and Flaubert. Christopher's transition into adulthood is undertaken in a different Metroland - Paris in 1968. Whilst the student riots rage not far away, Christopher is too busy finding out about the realities of love, truth and authenticity to become involved. Such realities ultimately lead him back to his own childhood metroland again. But now he sees it and life through different eyes. Barnes paints a rich picture in the reader's imagination, and his use of language is poetic, descriptive and colloquial in turn. To enjoy this, you first have to overcome a sneaking suspicion that you are not quite clever enough to read it. This was compounded (on my part anyway) by having only a smattering knowledge of French and a complete ignorance of most of the authors, playwrights, philosophers and artists dropped into the narrative like so many starlets at a Hello! party. However, once you've determined not to let this deter you, the novel blossoms into a funny and realistic recollection of the ideals, presumptions and pretensions of one's teenage years, and the recognition that in the end life is often rather more straightforward and mundane than you thought it would be. Having become engrossed in the novel, I personally found the ending a bit of an anticlimax, but arguably this could be one of the messages of the novel itself. It is not as sophisticated as 'England, England', the only other Barnes novel that I've read, but confirms his importance to modern British writing. Not bad for a first novel either!
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