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2008 Reading Challenge: 2000
Jan. 20th, 2008 05:38 pmArthur & George by Julian Barnes. First published 2005
The creator of the world's most famous literary detective takes up a case of his own. George Edalji, a Birmingham solicitor, son of a Scottish mother and an Indian father who was vicar of an inward-looking farming-and-mining parish in Staffordshire, has been the victim of a grotesque miscarriage of justice, convicted and imprisoned for the mutilation of horses in his home village.
This is a fictionalised account of real events, but it carries the distinctive narrative imprint of Julian Barnes. It's meticulously researched, playful, swinging from funny to deep outrage. There's much more than a piece of detective work, anyway. That only takes up about a third of the book. It's a work of biography - a brief biography of George Edalji and a more detailed one of Arthur Conan Doyle. Biography is not normally one of my favourite literary forms, but this was engrossing. It's also an outing for some of Barnes's pet themes; the complexity of love and its effect on the people tangled in its web (like Doyle, his invalid wife and his lover), and Doyle's interest in spiritualism is a shoo-in for his fascination with death and what follows.
And then, whenever any writer, let along one as clever and methodical as Julian Barnes, writes a period piece, you have to ask why? And, more pertinently maybe, why now? Perhaps it comes as a shock to find an Indian as an Anglican vicar, not in a big city but in a quiet semi-rural village. An Indian, too, who is, despite his dog-collar, perceived as a 'Hindoo', which he never was in any case, and judged accordingly. He and his dark-skinned children are "not a right sort", the don't fit in. They are persecuted to the point of gross injustice by the establishment. And then there are the establishment figures, covering up their failings, "burying" an unfavourable report by publishing it quietly on the eve of a public holiday. That could never happen these days. Could it?
We're only three weeks into January so it's way too early to start thinking about the best read of 2008. The nature of the project means that the competition is likely to be fierce, but I'd be surprised if this wasn't a contender come December.
The creator of the world's most famous literary detective takes up a case of his own. George Edalji, a Birmingham solicitor, son of a Scottish mother and an Indian father who was vicar of an inward-looking farming-and-mining parish in Staffordshire, has been the victim of a grotesque miscarriage of justice, convicted and imprisoned for the mutilation of horses in his home village.
This is a fictionalised account of real events, but it carries the distinctive narrative imprint of Julian Barnes. It's meticulously researched, playful, swinging from funny to deep outrage. There's much more than a piece of detective work, anyway. That only takes up about a third of the book. It's a work of biography - a brief biography of George Edalji and a more detailed one of Arthur Conan Doyle. Biography is not normally one of my favourite literary forms, but this was engrossing. It's also an outing for some of Barnes's pet themes; the complexity of love and its effect on the people tangled in its web (like Doyle, his invalid wife and his lover), and Doyle's interest in spiritualism is a shoo-in for his fascination with death and what follows.
And then, whenever any writer, let along one as clever and methodical as Julian Barnes, writes a period piece, you have to ask why? And, more pertinently maybe, why now? Perhaps it comes as a shock to find an Indian as an Anglican vicar, not in a big city but in a quiet semi-rural village. An Indian, too, who is, despite his dog-collar, perceived as a 'Hindoo', which he never was in any case, and judged accordingly. He and his dark-skinned children are "not a right sort", the don't fit in. They are persecuted to the point of gross injustice by the establishment. And then there are the establishment figures, covering up their failings, "burying" an unfavourable report by publishing it quietly on the eve of a public holiday. That could never happen these days. Could it?
We're only three weeks into January so it's way too early to start thinking about the best read of 2008. The nature of the project means that the competition is likely to be fierce, but I'd be surprised if this wasn't a contender come December.
