Julian Barnes has certainly improved a bit in the last 25 years. I recently read his wonderful latest book, The Sense of an Ending (review here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), and for my second Barnes, turned to this, one of his earliest, from 1986. Both books document a long life, but the style is very different. There is a promising novel struggling to reveal itself here, but this isn't it.It is the story of Jean, told in three parts: as a late teen on the cusp of marriage at the end of WW2, in middle age, and then approaching her 100th birthday in 2020. The first two are conventional enough, but the third is too concerned with theology (15 different arguments for and against the existence of God/gods), radical feminism, euthanasia and elderly care, philosophy, "big brother" and futurology. The points of debate echo issues in earlier sections, but it just doesn't work as a coherent narrative and the character development didn't ring true. Jean is naive and not especially intelligent or well-educated, and as the story is told from her point of view, the first section in particular is told in a rather abrupt and simple style that I didn't find very enticing. Somehow, by the middle section, she is taking expensive long-haul holidays on her own - and with her teenage son's blessing.The coverage of sex is both poignant (reminiscent of McEwan's On Chesil Beach (review here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...)) and comical - especially the excerpts of a coy sex manual and appointments with a family planning doctor who merely baffles Jean.The descriptions of loneliness are well-done, too: "He had girlfriends, but he found, when he was with them, that he never felt quite what he was expected to feel: the inaccessibility of group pleasure, he discovered, could even extend to gatherings of two. Sex didn't make him feel lonely; but it didn't... make him feel particularly accompanied. As for male camaraderie, there often seemed something false about it. Groups of men got together because they feared complications.... they wanted certainty; they wanted definite rules. Look at monasteries. Look at pubs."The final section was written almost before the internet, but spends a lot of time describing a cross between Wikipedia and Google, and people's relationship with it ("Sessions might turn you from a serious enquirer into a mere gape-mouthed browser."). It's cleverly prescient, though not totally accurate, which exacerbates the contrast between the this section and the more realistic earlier sections. The recurring themes are fear and bravery: fear of flying, death, sex (McEwan), state snooping, and God, but they are light in the first part and overindulged in the final section. Related to that, there's a fair amount of running away, both literal and metaphorical. Despite my criticisms, there are flashes of the wordsmith to come:* "The word 'prostitute' sidled into her mind like a vamp through a door."* "Phrases dropped from the page and stuck like burrs to her winceyette nightdress."* "What puzzled her was how closely you could live beside someone without any sense of intimacy."* "Market towns - the sort of places with a bus garage but no cathedral."* "The hurricane, excreting the black smoke of its own obituary."* "The presence of this forceful girl rendering him almost translucent."* "The night's clouds oozed drizzle onto the car."* "Anyway I don't think you're a... lesbian... her pause disinfecting the word, making it sound distant and theoretical."* "a very old Electrolux shaver... so old-fashioned in design that it looked like something else, perhaps a sexual appliance of unpopular function."!
The author attempts an intellectually complex work that tries to incorporate several weighty political, humanist and existential issues into the simple narrative of Jean Serjeant through her childhood in 1920s to her final moments in 2020s. I found the book a little ambitious and sprinkled with too many metaphorical allusions. However, it is a fairly interesting philosophical comment on modern life, sectioned very well into three parts as the past (around WW2), the present (the book was written in 1986) and the future (2020s). Of course, the first two sections feel totally different from the almost sci-fi feel of the third. But that is to be expected as the first two deal with known wisdom/events/context while the third is speculative in some sense (and seems weaker now that 2020 is not that far into the future).WUltimately the book leaves you with all the essential questions that have plagued humankind forever, "What makes a life worth living?" "What is the nature of God?", "What is so frightening about death?" While Jean herself can answer the questions on death, religion and suicide very definitely, the reader is left pondering the enigmatic universe rather uncertainly. A good, thought-provoking read.
What do You think about Staring At The Sun (2005)?
Ho trovato interessante il progetto di base di questo romanzo, ma il modo in cui lo scrittore ha scelto di svilupparlo mi è sembrato fiacco e disorganico. L'ho letto sulla scia del bellissimo "Il senso di una fine", sperando di trovarvi la stessa densità di contenuti, ma le mie aspettative sono risultate in gran parte deluse.Le pagine più originali e suggestive sono quelle relative alla vicenda della protagonista, Jean, che, ormai quasi centenaria, ripercorre gli episodi salienti della propria vita cercando di trovare una risposta alle domande che la assillano fin dall'infanzia. Interrogativi esistenziali - sul coraggio e la paura, sul matrimonio e il sesso, sul Bello nella natura e nell'opera dell'uomo - formulati con sottile ironia e una ingenuità soltanto apparente; interrogativi che non trovano risposte adeguate se non nel miracolo della vita, che si può ammirare come si ammira il sole: attraverso le dita della mano tenuta a riparo davanti agli occhi.Peccato però che la seconda parte del libro sposti la prospettiva narrante da Jean al figlio Gregory, aprendo una parentesi confusa, proiettata in un immaginario improbabile futuro, con estenuanti avvitamenti riflessivi su Dio e sul suicidio che distolgono dal tema principale e poco o nulla hanno a che vedere con quanto precede. In conclusione: una prova piuttosto "acerba" (o non del tutto riuscita) di Barnes.
—Ginny_1807
The blurb of this edition is plastered with enthusiastic reviews which I struggle to endorse. The book begins promisingly in the cockpit of a WW2 aircraft, with images from the English channel. We move on to explore the youth of our heroine, Jean, an undereducated and sheltered woman, her relationship with her uncle Leslie and her repressed courtship and marriage. We leap to her middle age, her life with her son, and her sudden discovery of travel. The last section deals ostensibly with her old age. Set in the(then) near future, it's unconvincing, and is in any case a vehicle for theological discussion. The story didn't work for me. The leaps from one period in Jean's life to another failed to convince, and the third section was simply odd. There are wonderful flashes of Barnes' command of words however: 'Market towns - the sort of places with a bus garage but no cathedral.''The night's clouds oozed drizzle onto the car.'...... Nope, despite the flashes of great imagery and language, it was a book I was glad to finish.
—Margaret
The first e-book I have read, usually on the train to work in the morning.I chose the title having just read Irvin Yalom's Staring at the Sun which is subtitled overcoming the terror of death; I don't know if Julian Barnes had the same subtitle in mind when he wrote this tale but there is plenty of terror and death. The writing and the story telling are excellent, and though it is a 4-star read for me, I can't say what could be changed to make it a 5-star read. Whereas Yalom's book is in a sense a technical book based on clinical scenarios and lacks the punch of a great writer which limits the audience that might read it, Barnes is the reverse and is a book available for a much wider reading audience with a single story line that sheets home the cradle to grave continuum.Read both, you wont be disappointed.CJHD01-Jun-13
—Crawford
