'Who said there were no surprises left in life?'

The Sense Of An Ending
by Julian Barnes

Each year there is often a fervour amongst book bloggers to try and get ahead of the Booker game and guess what books might make the longlist, then to read read the entire longlist (or shortlist if you're a wuss) so that you can pick your winner before the panel of judges. I've never fancied a Bookerthon myself, mainly because it seems, in spite of the seemingly wide variety of books that can appear on the list, an unnecessary narrowing of one's reading for a good portion of the year. I happened to read a few by chance and yet weirdly the one I probably should have read, based on having enjoyed his writing before and its eminently digestible size, was one that I didn't get around to until after it had already won the prize. It was seen by some as the only winner capable of mollifying the critics who had picked up on the rather unfortunate phrases used by the judges at various points in the process. As someone who was disappointed in varous ways by the books I read before the announcement I can say now that the eventual winner has its own failings but is a book we can be happy to see brought to more readers, and welcome recognition for a writer who deserves plenty of praise (although maybe for other books......discuss!)

The first thing to enjoy about this book is the feeling of calm and comfort that comes from reading the work of a well established writer (actually the first thing to enjoy is the delicious muted cover design, the dark edged pages...). No tricks or gimmicks, plenty of mature observation and detail, sentences and paragraphs filled with insight that make you want to stop for a moment to savour their import. This short novel wastes no time in introducing its major theme of memory, the opening sentence 'I remember, in no particular order:' followed by six images of relative normality, all of which will be illuminated in the pages that follow. That too is another joy, the way in which Barnes can take an image and make it mean so much more by adding to it experience and loss. Each memory as it is reclaimed and re-examined only highlights the way in which loss and remembrance go hand in hand, for 'Memory is what we thought we'd forgotten."

Our narrator Tony Webster has reached the point in his life where the stasis he always aspired to has been reached. A career ended in retirement, a marriage ended in amicable divorce - 'I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded – and how pitiful that was.' Then comes a letter from solicitors dealing with the estate of his childhood friend Adrian, informing him that Adrian's diary has been left to him, although it is currently in the possession of another figure from his past, ex-girlfriend Veronica. The reappearance of these names from the past is nothing less than an exhumation, literally in the case of Adrian who committed suicide, and metaphorically in the case of Veronica who left Tony so hurt he decided to practically erase her from his life (the scant details he passed on about her to his wife have rendered her a caricature - 'The Fruitcake') and whilst this forces him to examine once again his school days and first relationships the diary promises some kind of secret or revelation that may shed light on his whole life. If he can only get a hold of it.

Let's not worry about the plot any more though. As I mentioned in my review of Sebald's Austerlitz there seems to be far more pleasure in the effort to remember than in what is actually remembered. The revelations in this novel, the 'twist' that you may have heard mentioned in other reviews, are probably the parts that I liked least (someone else, who shall remain anonymous, said it was tantamount to the ending of an episode of Eastenders), it is the insight into the idea of remembering, of the narrative we tell ourselves about our life that engages more than the plot itself ('...the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but - mainly - to ourselves.'). Barnes also uses two or three recurring images to great effect in his exploration of time and shows also that the tiniest gesture can have the most profound meaning if we can only see it. As I said earlier, those fleeting images in the first few sentences of the book will all assume a greater significance.

Back in those school days where Tony and his classmates were filled with that confidence that comes with privilege - 'that they had ever been anything like us, and we knew that we grasped life -  and truth, and morality, and art - far more clearly than out compromised elders' - he and his two closest friends marked their union in a simple way.

Another detail I remember: the three of us, as a symbol of our bond, used to wear with the face on the inside of our wrist. It was an affectation, of course, but perhaps something more. It made time feel like a personal, even a secret, thing.

This image is typical of Barnes. It resonates immediately as truthful, acknowledges its own pretension straight away and also sets itself up for a payoff later; all in three short sentences. This novel seems to be filled with moments like this. Classroom discussions about who gets to decide what becomes history feedback into the personal relationships we follow. 'History isn't the lies of the victors...It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated' but they are presumably damaged and this is a theme that Barnes develops as Tony looks back on his relationship with Veronica.

I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question, on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it, and how this affects our dealing with others. Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.

Tony's memories of his defining relationship with Veronica are filled with deliciously insightful comments ranging from where she and her family lived - 'in Kent, out on the Orpington line, in one of those suburbs which had stopped concreting over nature at the very last minute, and ever since smugly claimed rural status.' (This is Chislehurst, which is down the road from where I grew up, meaning that the sentence above had me guffawing on the train) - to the ability of a jilted partner to skewer his ex. When Veronica and Adrian partner up after the end of her relationship with Tony he writes a vitriolic letter which will become another of the documents of this novel. But after Adrian's suicide Tony is pithy in his analysis.

The bitch, I thought. If there was one woman in the entire world a man could fall in love with and still think life worth refusing, it was Veronica.

Ow. John Self covers some interesting ground with regard to regretting our harsh words in his own review of this book so I won't say any more on that but return once more to time and memory. Another of Barnes' recurring images is the Severn Bore, a natural tidal surge that sends a sizeable wave the wrong way up the River Severn (follow this link to see some amazing videos of the phenomena). If we look back through our lives, follow the river of our memories, we expect to always see time flowing in one direction. But as Tony is forced to look once again at his life, or the story of his life as told by himself, his very concept of time alters.

I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory. So when this strange thing happened - when these new memories suddenly came upon me - it was as if, for that moment, time had been placed in reverse. As if, for that moment, the river ran upstream.

Such are these revelations that some readers may be tempted into their own reversal, turning back to the first page to begin the novel again with a new perspective.

Read more...

'an ordinary miracle'

Staring At The Sun
by Julian Barnes

I don't know what kept me from reading Julian Barnes for so long. I think I was put off by titles like Flaubert's Parrot which made him seem like a poncey intellectual writer and even by the way he looked, slightly haughty (we have a children's book at home which displays various faces: happy, sad, angry, cheeky - there is one called snooty which isn't a million miles away), an absurd prejudice which isn't so much judging a book by its cover but by its author photograph. Arthur and George changed all that, a brilliant book that combined intelligence, a gripping plot and beautifully detailed characterisation to make the kind of novel that you just don't want to end. Staring At The Sun was published in 1986, two years after his breakthrough novel Flaubert's Parrot, and found its way into my hands after a friend recalled it being a book that made a big impression twenty odd years ago. Would it still retain that impact today? I can't answer for him because he said he'd read it after I had but here are my thoughts.

The book begins with a startling image as Sergeant-Pilot Thomas Prosser flies a 'poaching' mission over Northern France on a 'calm, black night in June 1941'. Having stayed out longer than he intended he is surprised by the rising sun, whose light suddenly reminds him of the danger he is now in and sends him on a swift descent down to 8,000 feet.

Then something happened. The speed of his descent had driven the sun back below the horizon, and as he looked towards the east he saw it rise again: the same sun coming up from the same place across the same sea. Once more, Prosser put aside his caution and just watched: the orange globe, the yellow bar, the horizon's shelf, the serene air, and the smooth, weightless lift of the sun as it rose from the waves for the second time that morning. It was an ordinary miracle he would never forget.

Nor will we. A startling image, as I said, and one that burns itself, as a glance at the sun will do, through the rest of the book. Prosser isn't our main focus however. Barnes places Jean Serjeant at the centre of the novel and we will follow her life from its idyllic beginnings in the country before the outbreak of war, forward to her old age in 2020. Her childhood sees time often spent with her 'favourite uncle' Leslie, where she frequently acts as his caddie during his slow progress around the golf course, a journey punctuated by regular interruptions: the cigarette smoked from beginning to end without letting the ash drop, the screaming sessions in the woods where they scream at the sky until they collapse exhausted, the Shoelace Game which I won't explain, and the endless questions: Which club to use, why did Lindbergh only eat one and a half of his five sandwiches, why is the mink excessively tenacious of life? At the age of 17 comes the outbreak of war, an event that combines with her age to force along her slow maturation, for Jean is certainly naive.

She hadn't had many suitors, but didn't mind. Suitor was such a silly word that the men who were suitors must be silly too. 'He pressed his suit.' She had heard that phrase somewhere, or read it, and it always struck her that this was what was wrong with suitors. Were they called suitors because they were always pressing their suits? She liked men smart but she didn't like them spivvy...the four men she knew still divided up the same way. Suddenly she picture herself kissing Tommy Prosser, and the thought of his moustache made her shudder: she had practised once on a toothbrush, and it had confirmed her vividest fears. Michael was taller than any of them, and had Prospects of Promotion., a phrase to which her mother always awarded capital letters. He was, Jean admitted, a little shabby beneath his engulfing overcoat, but after the war she could smarten him up. That was what women did in marriage, wasn't it? They rescued men from their failings and vices. Yes, she thought, smiling: I shall press his suit.

Prosser has been billeted in her house and their conversations about flying, Courage, Bravery, Fear and the incident that opened the book provide the novel with many of its major themes. Michael is a local policeman and the man who will become her husband. Much of Barnes' surprising humour comes in Jean's swift sexual education, something she approaches with dread, her only experience coming from a manual for young couples passed on by 'one of the brisker, more modern wives of the village.'There is great fun to be had with the confusing jargon that serves only to confuse Jean further.

The word turgid kept appearing, as did crisis; she didn't like the sound of those two. Enlarged and stiffened, she read; lubricated by mucus; turgid again; soft, small and drooping (ugh)...She was astonished by how often the word sex seemed to be married to some other word: sex-attraction, sex-ignorance, sex-tide, sex-life, sex-function. Lots of hyphens everywhere. Sex-hyphens, she thought.

As marriage and her obligations come nearer she finds she can't help but think of his penis 'the thing that would join their bodies together - the sex hyphen.' and she begins to find the whole thing funny, only to be informed on one of many excruciatingly embarrassing trips to the doctor - 'Funny, my girl, is the one thing it is not.' Her marriage to Michael, their honeymoon and early years of marriage are sensitively handled by Barnes providing humour and pathos in equal measure ('When she thought of Michael and sex she imagined an overfilling water tank which occasionally had to be drained; it didn't have to be done too often, it wasn't exactly a nuisance, it was just part of running the house.'), and achieving more for my money in a few pages than McEwan did with the whole of On Chesil Beach.

Back to those themes though. Jean's inquisitive streak gets the most out of Prosser, questioning him about flying and trying to understand what event might have changed him from 'brave Hurricane pilot' to 'grounded, ratty and frightened'. There is no major incident, Prosser only knows what it was the first time after it happened the second time, a slow accumulation of incident and feeling that has left him 'twice burnt' and possibly finished. He knows what it means to be 'windy' and the danger and humiliation that come with it. It isn't too much of a strain to link Jean's own fears about adult life with Prosser's and through the book Barnes examines what bravery means in the pursuit of our own ideals and passions. Having done this subtly at first it gets a bit heavy-handed in the middle, just the sheer repetition of the word brave(ry) begins to feel clumsy after a while; but for a woman like Jean living in the time she does, we know that it will take just that to make a more fulfilling life for herself.

The real shock comes with the third section of the book where we join Jean in the future and find Barnes in surprising speculative-fiction mode. An ageing population, legalised euthanasia, fundrugs, Old People Suicides, The General Purposes Computer. You know you're in the future when the capital letters start to come out. The problem with a lot of this is of course that it feels dated; the GPC for example isn't much more than a search engine, an attempt to collect together the sum of human knowledge in a searchable database. One of its functions, TAT (The Absolute Truth) even feels very close to something that featured in Doctor Who recently. Perhaps it isn't fair to accuse a 25-year-old book of feeling dated but I'm sure no-one would level the same criticism at Blade Runner (1982), or rather Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (1968). The introduction of suicide as a theme also seems a little odd until Barnes manages to link it together with the other elements of the book. This after all is an examination of a life lived, 'How do you tell a good life from a bad life, a wasted life?', and what can you do when the answers to that and other questions don't go the way you thought they would? It is the bolder elements of this novel that raised my eyebrows when reading but which have kept me thinking after finishing it. Perhaps most importantly it has forced me to reassess an author I had never really given a fair chance previously. Any suggestions for what I might read of his next would be gratefully received.

Read more...