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| ENGLAND ENGLAND. | 
 enlarge | Author: Julian. Barnes
Publisher: Jonathan Cape London
Category: Book
Buy Used: £4.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 1779989
Media: Hardcover
ISBN: 0679309764
EAN: 9780679309765
ASIN: 0679309764
Publication Date: 1998
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: immediate despatch from UK
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| Customer Reviews:
 Barnes at his best: moral, thoughtful, and light-hearted March 12, 2000
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The first chapter alone is worth the whole book for the quality of the writing. Barnes' themes are treated lightly throughout his well-constructed narrative.
 Utter drivel March 15, 1999
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Ferociously funny said the blurb. Well, if you've never read anything else in your life except for the first page of Genesis it might just about make you smile. I found this claptrap so boring that at one stage I was flicking through the pages to see if there were any illustrations. Okay, I must admit to having read this just after finishing Bill Bryson's, Lost Continent so I was obviously expecting too much. All I can say is thank goodness I borrowed this book from the library and thank goodness for Bill Bryson.
 Well I thought it was wonderful December 29, 1998
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As well as discussing England and 'Englishness', the book also asks of us to think of our own, individual, character or nature. And it's this that I found most interesting. Sure, the logistics involved in recreating a simulacra of England on the Isle of Wight are fascinating, but there's so much more to the novel as well. It would be crass of me to reduce the essence of this book to cliched questions like - 'Who am I? Where am I going? How will I know when I get there? Am I who I'm destined to be yet?' But I'm not a professional book reviewer, so you'll have to forgive such crassness.'England, England' is a fine book, and there's more in there than you might think.
'So English!' - Julian Barnes and 'England, England' October 19, 1998
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Recent reviews have all concentrated upon the patchey nature of Julian Barnes's recent Booker nominated novel 'England, England'. For once the reviewers are right!. The opening chapter is a delight to read, setting up the central theme of the myth of nationality and inparticular 'Englishness' through a nuanced and subtle exploration of a young girls memory. However, this opening quality soon gives way to often crass and tasteless passages that are further let down by a distinct absence of writing quality. The passage containing the sexual exploits of the MD character as he dresses in baby outfit and is massaged until he literally s**ts on the prositute is one such episode. At times Barnes does come back with episodes of quality such as when he theorises the myth making that he examines; and occasionally he is funny (the vist of the king to the island in particular) but overall this is a poor performance.
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