Barnes

Novella a Day in May: Days 13 and 14

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I’m watching Eurovision; I’m typing up thoughts about novellas. What a day.

Day 13: Elizabeth Finch (2022) by Julian Barnes

Ooof. I’ve read a couple of Barnes novels before this one, and never really seen what the fuss was about. But I wasn’t prepared for quite how bad Elizabeth Finch would be.

The narrator is remembering a teacher – Elizabeth Finch, referred to often as EF – who has had a lasting effect on his life. Think someone with the unusual pith and dignity of Jean Brodie, dispensing philosophical insights that have her pupils thinking for decades. Except that everything she says is only a couple of notches above a ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ sign in terms of profundity.

One of the things she introduces the class to is Julian the Apostate, who hated Christians sometime many centuries ago. Don’t know much about him? Don’t worry, Barnes then includes an ‘essay’ by the narrator where he dumps all the knowledge he has about Julian. It reads like a Wikipedia article, only it’s 50 pages long. We get the facts and theories about Julian the Apostate, It’s astonishingly inelegant, in terms of novel writing.

Elsewhere, in the first and final sections, his writing is serviceable and only occasionally embarrassing (some of the dialogue he gives Elizabeth Finch is really awkward, and clearly she is a mouthpiece for a middle-aged man). But the best this novella gets to is mediocre, and at worst it is bafflingly poorly done.

 

Day 14: Sing Me Who You Are (1967) by Elizabeth Berridge

I bought this back in 2009 because I knew her name from the Persephone collection of her short stories, but I might equally have bought it for this glorious cover. The illustrator – Reg Cartwright – did three or four Berridge reprints in the 1980s and they are so characterful and wonderful.

What’s more, it is accurate to the premise of the novel. Harriet Cooper and her two Siamese cats arrive at the farm which belonged to her recently dead aunt, and where her cousin Magda and her husband Gregg live. Her aunt hasn’t left her the farm, or the land, or anything – except, pictured there on the cover, the bus.

Wading through the still-dewy grass – for the bus lived in shadow half the year, and this was autumn – Harriet went through the wooden gate set in a gap in the hedge and up on to the step. She unlocked the padlock and pushed open the door, which folded inwards down the middle. Stepping inside she became aware of the musty smell of disuse. How long, a month, six weeks? Enough for damp to invade this thin shell. She would open windows, light a fire, banish it.

She has stayed there on and off over the years, and now she has brought her few possessions to live there indefinitely.

The story then looks at how her life alongside Magda and Gregg brings up past and present tensions, as well as affinities. Central to them is the memory of a man known as Scrubbs – who deeply affected each of the three. He has been dead for a long time, but he is still impacting all of their lives, and the way they interact with each other. Along the way, secrets come out…

I’ve read three other Berridge books, and have yet to find one that I really love. This is a good novel, and Harriet is an interesting, layered character – but I think I’m really hoping for a book that will live up to those wonderful covers. If Berridge were a little weirder, or a little more stylised in her prose – a dash of Beryl Bainbridge, say – then I think I’d love her. As it is, her realism lacks a little something. And yet I’ll keep reading them, because I feel like there might be something even better in her oeuvre – and something that lives up to those covers.

The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes

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I try to remember sometimes, when I’m waving my arms left and right, dividing books into sheep and goats and making my pronouncements about them, that quality is largely subjective.  We all know this, of course.  When I say a book is good, it’s shorthand for “I thought it was good.”  When I say a book is bad… well, sometimes it’s just bad.  But more often than not, I mean: “I didn’t like this book, and here are the reasons why.  If these don’t bother you, then you might still enjoy it.  Thanks, love Simon.”

I’ll be keeping all this mind when I’m writing about Julian Barnes’ Booker-winning novel The Sense of an Ending (2011), kindly sent to me by Jonathan Cape.  Because Dame Stella Rimmington and her posse must have thought it the best book published in 2011.  Although I can’t imagine why.

Which is not to say that I thought The Sense of an Ending was bad.  It isn’t.  It is very, very average.  There were probably a thousand other books published in 2011 that were equally good, and many that followed a very similar pattern: lengthy biography of main character(s); twist; twist; end.

Normally I’d give you a brief outline of the plot, but to be honest the first half of the (admittedly short) novel seem to do just that.  It’s Bildungsroman by numbers.  We start with Tony Webster at school, with his friends Colin and Alex.  They’re something of a clique, but do open up to allow the entry of new boy Adrian.  He is very serious and deep etc.; they pretend to be deep, but are mostly Adrian Molesque.  Everything meanders along, we get the sort of coming-of-age stuff which bores me rigid, and Tony meets his first girlfriend – Veronica Ford.  Webster and Ford, geddit?  Ahahahah. *Sigh*

Big event happens, which I shan’t spoil.. fast-forward forty years, and Tony gets an unexpected letter from a solicitor which reopens a can of worms.  Cue all manner of reflection on the past, including trying to get back in touch with Veronica.  Towards the end there comes a few twists, which were executed rather better than the rest of the novel (thought I) and, indeed, the ending is, in general, the best part.  Perhaps that’s why Barnes chose his title; to draw attention to this…  I think The Sense of an Ending would actually have worked much better as a short story; it does all seem to lead to a single climactic moment, and could be condensed much shorter than its 150 pages.

He (Barnes? Webster?) if fond of breaking off into observations which teeter between the profound and the platitudinous.  Here’s one:

It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.

Quick flick, and here’s another:

We live with such easy assumptions, don’t we?  For instance, that memory equals events plus time.  But it’s all much odder than this.  Who was it said that memory is what we thought we’d forgotten?  And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn’t act as a fixative, rather as a solvent.  But it’s not convenient – it’s not useful – to believe this; it doesn’t help to get on with our lives; so we ignore it.

Hmm.  It does sound a bit like he’s deliberately inserting passages which can be whipped out for the blurb, doesn’t it?  The narrative is from Tony Webster’s perspective, and if these musings come from him, then that’s a legitimate narrative device – perhaps Tony is the sort to make these vague sort of summaries about the world.  But if they’re Barnes’ own pseudo-philosophical moments, then I am a little concerned.  Similarly, I’ve always disliked the “If this were a novel…” line of writing, ever since I read it in Enid Blyton’s stories, and it’s a trick Barnes uses over and over again.  His writing is, in fact, unceasingly self-conscious.  In general I found his writing passable – ‘readable‘ – but nothing more.  I might dip a toe into the readability/excellence debate at some point, but it is a debate already overpopulated with toes.

Perhaps my problem is that I’ve recently read Virgina by Jens Christian Grondahl, and William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow, both of which are novellas concerned with the inadequacy of memory, and both of which are rather better than Barnes’ contribution to the field.  I asked people on Twitter yesterday (yes, I know, how frighteningly modern is that?) and consensus seemed to be that Barnes’ win was more of a Lifetime Achievement than anything else.  Since this is my first Barnes novel, I can’t comment – I can only say that I would be astonished if it were the best book written in 2011, under any criteria.  Since I’ve only read two other novels published last year (one of which was by a member of 2011’s Booker panel) I don’t feel qualified to say.  So I’ll hand over to those who might know better… (I picked three from many, many reviews.)

Others who got Stuck in this Book:

“I was immediately captivated by the gorgeous writing” – JoAnn, Lakeside Musing

“Although it is very well-written, I thought it was ultimately an unsatisfactory and frustrating read.” – Mrs. B, The Literary Stew

“The writing is simply gorgeous, and it tackles one of my favourite themes and plot techniques, the human condition and the reliability of our distant memory.” – Bibliophile by the Sea