It almost reads like a thriller. You are so keen to find out what happens next and yet the events in the book are also treated with a comfortable safeness that is the very essence of what it feels like to live in England: big issues are there but they are normalised to hold them at bay. You feel comforted by the normality but irritated at the same time.

Barnes tackles the notion of 'how things look' and 'how things are' really well. Given that we live in such a celebrity obsessed age that only cares about how things look and believes there is truth in how things appear, then the ideas the book tackles are very relevant and real. Yet somehow the whole thing is done by telling you a really good story with complex intellectual ideas carefully woven into the narrative.

I had to ration myself the last hundred pages because I was enjoying reading it so much and particularly the chapter where Arthur goes to see Anson(?) - the best chapter in the book!It's also very atmospheric, you really do experience the smell and feel of Edwardian England.


Fact or Fiction?   October 24, 2005
 22 out of 25 found this review helpful

This is the book that was widely tipped to win the Booker once the shortlist was announced and it's not difficult to see why. It effortlessly recreates a bygone era of olde England and old values that are saddly lacking in our modern society. The two very different lives of the central characters are followed almost from birth until a sequence of events brings them together. By this point we are fully engrossed in the two distinct personalities, readily identifiable from their private thoughts and from their modes of speech. When animals are cut and slashed in the English countryside in the village of Wyerly George is suspected. After having suffered from abusive letters and a campaign of hatred from an unknown assailant George's efforts to interest the police in his predicament fall on deaf ears. Institutionalised racism pervades the novel but never becomes it's central theme, it isn't To Kill A Mockingbird, but what follows is rather a distateful mis-trust of foriegners rather than an out right racial hatred. As the mutilating of animals begins to alarm the locals and the police, the authorities begin to suspect that George is behind it all, as a way of highlighting their ineptitude at finding out who has been harrasing him and his family. Arthur reads about George's case and attempts to clear his name. Arthur's character is often portrayed as too much as a knight in shinning armour as his high moral values often categorise those around him but the author brilliantly counters this by involving us in Arthur's private life and thoughts. There are some alarming contradictions in his character. He is a man of logic and reason who believes in spiritulism; he expects the highest moral standards and yet he is having a relationship behind his wife's back. He is flawed in a very human way and dismisses these faults by empahsising his comercial success and popularity. He builds a barrier around his faults and just ignores them. However, the author never underplays them as much as George does and brilliantly exposes them in telling lines like these...'Jean recieves a single white snowdrop once a year; and white lies all year round for his wife'.
I kept asking myself how much of this book is actually fiction and this constantly nagged at me but the way the novel reels you in to a long forgotten England and mixes the facts with the fiction is totally engrossing and engaging. In true Hitchcock style we have a man wrongfully accused and a another man to champion his cause. The novel losses it's way once the central issue has been resolved and the final pages are a little autobiographical and rather unnecessary. Despite this Arthur & George is a fascinating character study and a window on a world that once was and saddly is no more.


Arthur & George, Julian Barnes   September 12, 2005
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

I bought this on a whim. Longlisted (now shortlisted, and favourite) for the Booker, a very nice cover, an interesting sounding plot...Boy, am I glad I did. I enjoyed this book tremendously. I've never read Barnes before, and Im glad I've put that right. This is a gripping story of two men: Arthur Conan Doyle, and George Edalji. The first half of the book centres on the two men's passage through life, from childhood to the relative firmament of adulthood. Actually, this is the most gripping half of the book. Doyle...well, we know who Doyle is. Edalji is the son of a local clergyman, and grows up into a relatively sucessful solicitor. Eventually the two men's paths cross as they're both swept up - in entirely different ways - by a series of events known as The Great Wyrely Outrages.

Arthur & George is a super book for two reasons: Barnes' accomplished, brilliant writing, the tone of which is matched faultlessly to the time-period concerned, and the portrait of the two main characters. Indeed, this is the novels central triumph, the presentation and investigation of the psyche's of both men, Arthur and George. George is, actually, by far the more interesting of the two figures. Son of an immigrant who is now a respected vicar, he's largely isolated at school, a solemn lad who largely misunderstands (or just plain doesn't get) the mysterious behaviour of his fellow children (and, later, men), and turns into a largely isolated adult as well. This makes him an easy target when a series of poison-pen letters, graffiti and other strange incidents start happening in the village of Great Wyrely, culminating in a series of cattle "rippings". He refuses, though, to accept that what happens to him has anything to do with his race.

As I say, Barnes' picture of the two men is brilliant. George is a restrained, wonderfully frustrating character (in the way of all humans), and he bears his fate with a great sense of dignity, even though he, or so it seems to the world, has none left. Arthur is fascinating too, but less so, and Barnes does get a little distracted half-way through when he concerns himself with Doyle's courting activities. This isn't an uninteresting strand, and does give nice insight into the character, but given that the book is a tad long, in the end, this could have been excised nicely and made for an even more powerful book.

Arthur and George is VERY highly recommended. It's easy to read, intelligent, and Barnes shows a clear and remarkable insight into the minds of his two characters. I have to wonder, though, if it quite deserves the Booker...somehow, excellent though the whole thing is, I don't think so.


Arthur & George, Julian Barnes   September 12, 2005
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

I bought this on a whim. Longlisted (now shortlisted, and favourite) for the Booker, a very nice cover, an interesting sounding plot...Boy, am I glad I did. I enjoyed this book tremendously. I've never read Barnes before, and Im glad I've put that right. This is a gripping story of two men: Arthur Conan Doyle, and George Edalji. The first half of the book centres on the two men's passage through life, from childhood to the relative firmament of adulthood. Actually, this is the most gripping half of the book. Doyle...well, we know who Doyle is. Edalji is the son of a local clergyman, and grows up into a relatively sucessful solicitor. Eventually the two men's paths cross as they're both swept up - in entirely different ways - by a series of events known as The Great Wyrely Outrages.

Arthur & George is a super book for two reasons: Barnes' accomplished, brilliant writing, the tone of which is matched faultlessly to the time-period concerned, and the portrait of the two main characters. Indeed, this is the novels central triumph, the presentation and investigation of the psyche's of both men, Arthur and George. George is, actually, by far the more interesting of the two figures. Son of an immigrant who is now a respected vicar, he's largely isolated at school, a solemn lad who largely misunderstands (or just plain doesn't get) the mysterious behaviour of his fellow children (and, later, men), and turns into a largely isolated adult as well. This makes him an easy target when a series of poison-pen letters, graffiti and other strange incidents start happening in the village of Great Wyrely, culminating in a series of cattle "rippings". He refuses, though, to accept that what happens to him has anything to do with his race.

As I say, Barnes' picture of the two men is brilliant. George is a restrained, wonderfully frustrating character (in the way of all humans), and he bears his fate with a great sense of dignity, even though he, or so it seems to the world, has none left. Arthur is fascinating too, but less so, and Barnes does get a little distracted half-way through when he concerns himself with Doyle's courting activities. This isn't an uninteresting strand, and does give nice insight into the character, but given that the book is a tad long, in the end, this could have been excised nicely and made for an even more powerful book.

Arthur and George is VERY highly recommended. It's easy to read, intelligent, and Barnes shows a clear and remarkable insight into the minds of his two characters. I have to wonder, though, if it quite deserves the Booker...somehow, excellent though the whole thing is, I don't think so.


Arthur & George, Julian Barnes   September 9, 2005
 52 out of 54 found this review helpful

I bought this on a whim. Longlisted (now shortlisted) for the Booker, a very nice cover, an interesting sounding plot...Boy, am I glad I did. I enjoyed this book tremendously. I've never read Barnes before, and Im glad I've put that right. This is a gripping story of two men: Arthur Conan Doyle, and George Edalji. The first half of the book centres on the two men's passage through life, from childhood to the relative firmament of adulthood. Actually, this is the most gripping half of the book. Doyle...well, we know who Doyle is. Edalji is the son of a local clergyman, and grows up into a relatively sucessful solicitor. Eventually the two men's paths cross as they're both swept up - in entirely different ways - by a series of events known as The Great Wyrely Outrages.

Arthur & George is a super book for two reasons: Barnes' accomplished, brilliant writing, the tone of which is matched faultlessly to the time-period concerned, and the portrait of the two main characters. Indeed, this is the novels central triumph, the presentation and investigation of the psyche's of both men, Arthur and George. George is, actually, by far the more interesting of the two figures. Son of an immigrant who is now a respected vicar, he's largely isolated at school, a solemn lad who largely misunderstands (or just plain doesn't get) the mysterious behaviour of his fellow children (and, later, men), and turns into a largely isolated adult as well. This makes him an easy target when a series of poison-pen letters, graffiti and other strange incidents start happening in the village of Great Wyreley, culminating in a series of cattle "rippings". He refuses, though, to accept that what happens to him has anything to do with his race.

As I say, Barnes' picture of the two men is brilliant. George is a restrained, wonderfully frustrating character (in the way of all humans), and he bears his fate with a great sense of dignity, even though he, or so it seems to the world, has none left. Arthur is fascinating too, but less so, and Barnes does get a little distracted half-way through when he concerns himself with Doyle's courting activities. This isn't an uninteresting strand, and does give nice insight into the character, but given that the book is a tad long, in the end, this could have been excised nicely and made for an even more powerful book.

Arthur and George is VERY highly recommended. It's easy to read, intelligent, and Barnes shows a clear and remarkable insight into the minds of his two characters. I have to wonder, though, if it quite deserves the Booker...somehow, excellent though the whole thing is, I don't think so.