Julian Barnes is a master storyteller, as was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who keeps you interested right to the very end of the book. I could not put it down!


Sweet, slow and absorbing   March 28, 2006
 13 out of 19 found this review helpful

I'm not normally a fan of Julian Barnes - finding him a 'clever' writer, but without much heart, so that I get a bit tired by his erudition, and don't engage with his characters.

This was a very different experience (I'm sure partly helped by the fact that Conan Doyle is an interesting, and complex character)

Like another reviewer, I felt a depressing sense that things have not changed as much as they should, as far as intrinsic racism is concerned, and the wilful assumptions made purely because of George Edalji's colour have continuing parallels.

Barnes' structures Doyle's unravelling of the case rather like a Sherlock Holmes story, and this is delicious.

There is also a lovely illustration of the idiocy of racial stereotypes in that the dour Scot (Doyle) is actually a very volatile character - and, moreover, drawn to the mystical and metaphysical whilst the supposedly excitable Parsee is phlegmatic, controlled and rational, and rejects the esoteric practices of spiritualism - though unfortunately his lack of expressed volatility is then further used against him by a society determined to damn him however he expresses himself.

I might now go back to earlier Barnes' books and see if the heart in this can carry me through them!


Arthur and George, Julian Barnes   March 26, 2006
 14 out of 18 found this review helpful

Between them, the two subjects of this fine novel by Julian Barnes embody most of the abiding characteristics of the Victorian English gentleman; Arthur is a bold, chivalrous sportsman, George a reticent, well mannered introvert.

That neither man is actually English by ancestry is one of the surprising number of similarities between men ostensibly so different. Barnes produces a beautiful study of both men, and of turn-of-the-century England.

Many if not most readers will come to the book as a result of Arthur, or more specifically Sherlock; however Holmes is reduced to a minimal role here, almost as a millstone round Arthur's neck. Instead, we find Arthur a man both driven and held back by his bullish personality; he is a man given to great projects, and to bashing down doors.

George, conversely, finds most doors locked to him, although whether this is more due to his race or to the crippling shyness engendered by his upbringing is for the reader to decide. When George is the victim of an appalling miscarriage of justice, Arthur takes him on as one of the many projects of his life. The two men spend almost the entire novel apart, indeed the book is at its strongest when each man is entirely alone with his thoughts.

There is something here for all; Holmes fans will delight in both the obvious and oblique references to the canon (surely Arthur's trip to Great Wyrley confirms the well-known Copper Beeches quote that "It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside." ) Others will simply enjoy the characterisation of two men whos lives unexpectedly intersect, with splendidly understated results.