Arthur & George
by Julian Barnes
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Book Summary Information
Author: Julian BarnesEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2006-01-10
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of Arthur & George
Book Review: Starts out strong then just......dies off
Summary: 3 Stars
Arthur is a child of Scottish decent growning up in England with his mother and siblings. His father, deemed a worthless alcoholic, is carted off to an insane asylum never to be seen by his family again. Arthur, with his intelligence and determination, educates himself, becomes a doctor, and then becomes the world famous author and creator of Sherlock Holmes.
Meanwhile, George is being raised in a small town by a Vicar and his wife - the Vicar of Indian decent and his mother, Scottish. George grows up a sheltered naive boy without many friends. But somehow he seems to have enemies because when he is in his 20s he is framed for the slaughter of numerous farm animals, is convicted, and sentenced to a 7 year prison sentence of which he is forced to serve 3.
George and Arthur become the most unlikely of aquaintances when George seeks Arthur out to attempt to clear his name. Arthur takes on the cause and begins his own investigation - the type to make Holmes proud. Through this strange friendship a supportive relationship emerges. All the while we learn more details of each's family and relationships with others. The two could not be more different but forge a friendship based on odd similarities.
This novel starts out wonderfully. Each section is told from the viewpoint of either George or Author, switching back and forth. I am a particular fan of this style of storytelling, and for about the first third to half of the book it worked well. As you were reading about one, you were eager to get back to the story of the next - the story intrigued you enough to keep going to find out what would happen next. Then the author told a few chapters from the perspective of other characters - only a few times - that seemed out of place and random. These points of view appeared and then disappeared as quickly. It interrupted the rhythm of the story.
About halfway through the novel the story itself fell apart. The chapters got longer and longer and more self indulgent. They became the self righteous rantings of each character lamenting and whining about his own individual predicament. The characters ceased being sympathetic and instead were annoying. By the end it didn't matter what happened, only that it came to an end.
What started out as very well written resulted in a huge disappointment. It averages out to...average.
Summary of Arthur & George
From one of England?s most esteemed novelists, an utter astonishment that captures an era through one life celebrated internationally and another entirely forgotten.In the vast expanse of late-Victorian Britain, two boys come to life: George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur, in shabby genteel Edinburgh, both of them feeling at once near to and impossibly distant from the beating heart of Empire. One falls prey to a series of pranks en route to a legal vocation, while the other studies medicine before discovering a different calling entirely, and it is years before their destinies are entwined in a mesmerizing alliance. We follow each through outrageous accusation and unrivaled success, through faith and perseverance and dogged self-recrimination, whether in the dock awaiting complete disgrace or at the height of fame while desperately in love with a woman not his wife, and gradually realize that George is half-Indian and that Arthur becomes the creator of the world?s most famous detective. Ranging from London clubs to teeming prisons, from a lost century to the modern age, this novel is a panoramic revelation of things we thought we knew or else had no clue of, as well as a gripping exploration of what goals drive us toward whatever lies in wait?an experience resounding with issues, no less relevant today, of crime and spirituality; of identity and nationality; of what we think, what we believe and what we can prove.
Intriguing, relentless and, most of all, moving, Arthur & George richly extends the reach and achievement of a novelist described by the Philadelphia Inquirer as ?a dazzling mind in mercurial flight.?
A real tour de force from masterful author Julian Barnes is Arthur & George, which was short-listed for the 2005 Man Booker Prize. Late-Victorian Britain is brought to vivid life in the true story of the intersection of two lives: one an internationally famous author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the other, an obscure country lawyer, George Edalji, son of a Parsi Midlands vicar and a Scottish mother. They start out very differently. Arthur pursues a career in medicine before he discovers that he is really a writer; George, on his way to becoming a lawyer--near-sighted, timid and friendless--is victimized by locals because he is easy to scapegoat--a half-Indian in lily-white Great Wyrley.
The victimization of George takes the form of nasty letters, the theft of a school key, and finally, the accusation that he has mutilated animals. Meanwhile, Arthur is becoming more and more famous for creating Sherlock Holmes, whom he tries to kill off once and is forced to resurrect because of his fans' outcry. He marries, fathers two children and then, when his wife is invalided by consumption, falls madly in love for the first time with Jean Leckie.
The novel's style is smoothly revelatory. We slowly come to realize that George is half-Indian, that Arthur is the famous Doyle, that the woman he loves, chastely, is not his wife and, sadly, that George will not prevail over the forces ranged against him.
When George, desperate to resume his law career after imprisonment, sends Arthur the sad chronicle of his history, Arthur sees immediately that he could not be guilty and sets out to clear his name. This case of George's lifts Arthur from the slough of despond into which he has sunk after his wife, Touie, dies. He is guilt-ridden, constantly wondering if he was attentive enough, if she could possibly have known about Jean. Realizing the immense injustice George has suffered, he is shaken out of lethargy and, in Holmesian fashion, sets out to solve the case.
Julian Barnes is a gifted writer of enormous accomplishment. This novel is thoroughly engrossing, filled with Barnes's trademark themes of identity and love, longing and loss, and ultimately, an examination of man's inhumanity to man. --Valerie Ryan
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