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| Arthur and George | 
 enlarge | Author: Julian Barnes
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £7.98 (100%)
New (35) from £0.05
Avg. Customer Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 14828
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.4
ISBN: 0099492733
EAN: 9780099492733
ASIN: 0099492733
Publication Date: September 7, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Read once-white cover slightly grubby
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| Customer Reviews:
 Read this book! March 9, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I bought this at the airport on the way to a weekend in Sweden. It was an impulse buy - early the morning, my plane about to leave - but with all the time in the world I couldn't have made a better choice. In Arthur and George, Julian Barnes undertakes the risky manouvere of splitting the narrative between two completely different characters, who inhabit entirely different worlds and only meet two or three times. Even more riskily, the eponymous pair are based on real people, and while you may not have heard of George you will certainly have heard of Arthur (Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series).
I found the book un-put-downable from the beginning. Arthur and George grow up before our eyes, as much products of circumstance and their age as anything else. They are brought together after George is tried for a crime he did not commit, and the scenes at his trial are almost unreadable - it is as if you are watching an out of control car speed towards a brick wall, powerless to do anything but horribly aware that it will not end well. But some of the best scenes come during the depiction of George as a quiet, unusual boy who finds it hard to fit in, his every action saved up and later, heartbreakingly, used against him.
Buy this book. Borrow it. Steal it if you have to. But read it.
Fantastic read! February 28, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I have just finished this and NEEDED to write a review to let you all know that this is one of the top five books of the year! Go out and buy it! It is a beautiful read, it just keeps you enthralled page by page. Rather than just feeling an empathy for one of the characters, I think you see their stories as an outsider, but you definitely can understand how they act, and why they do what they do. Julian Barnes has a wonderful knack of depicting characters - I mean, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is famous, I'm sure a lot of us would have some knowledge of him, but this portrays him as a real, live human being. I will go and buy other Julian Barnes books, and will aspire to writing something someday almost as good! I utterly recommend the book - it's simply enthralling!
Extraordinary writing January 26, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Large modern cities are large enough and diverse enough for almost anyone to become anonymous. For George Edalji, the son of a Parsee vicar and Scottish mother growing up in a small village in the 19th century Midlands it must have been difficult not to stand out. He would probably be described by today's press as a "bit of a loner who kept himself to himself". He was an odd looking young man with odd habits. The family suffered a wave of persecution from a nameless letter writer, which the local police were reluctant to take seriously. When local cattle begin to be mutilated, circumstantial evidence points to George.
Arthur Conan Doyle was never able to shake off the shadow of Sherlock Holmes. Arthur tried to kill the detective off at the Reichenbach Falls but the British public's outrage brought him back to life. It saddened Conan Doyle that people were more upset by the death of a fictional character than the death of his wife. When George writes to Arthur with details of his case, the writer becomes fascinated and offers his help.
The book grabs hold of your attention from the start. Julian Barnes has taken these 2 characters from history and written a novel which gives them back their humanity. A description of such a case could have ended up as a dry descriptive piece but there is a real sense of the complex motivations behind these people and indignation at the way Edalji was treated.
Arthur and George is one of the most absorbing books of the last couple of years.
 A fascinating story based on true events January 12, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
A Fairly long read, but a page turning one and a really fascinating one. I found out things I had never realised about Arthur Conan Doyle. It's amazing to think that all this happened - I'm assuming that Julian Barnes may have allowed himself some artistic licence but that the main events are pretty close to the actual events of just over a hundred years ago. I found myself wincing over the indignities suffered by George and his family, and yet also becoming irritated with him at times, as I think Arthur himself was.
Beautifully and elegantly written January 12, 2007
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book should really have won the Booker prize, it is far superior to The Sea by John Banville (the winner).
When reading this novel, you feel that it has been lovingly crafted and hewn from the raw materials. Julian Barnes is clearly a master craftsman, and the pure elegance of the writing is a joy. It is totally unpretentious, restrained, subtle but also gripping and very interesting.
Heartily recommended!
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