Customer Reviews

Arthur & George

5 star:		(54)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Although I'm aware of his reputation, I have never read Julian Barnes before. But I could tell from the beginning of this book that I was in the hands of a master. In ARTHUR AND GEORGE, Barnes writes very convincingly in a Victorian Age style. His book describes the parallel experiences of George Edalji, a methodical Englishman of East Indian descent, and Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Peer of the Realm, and sportsman.

This book is based on a true story of how George's legal predicament evolved into a landmark case regarding appeals. I am reluctant to reveal plot details for fear of spoiling anyone's enjoyment of the tale. Rest assured that the book is abominably clever, and Barnes has a real gift for slipping in details that reveal much to the observant reader.

I will warn of two things, however. First, this book employs a good deal of exposition, particularly in the early going. Stick with it, as once the background is painted in, Barnes does marvelous things moving the tale forward.

My other concern is that the book does lag badly at its mid-point mark. Although the two protagonists are quite different, Doyle is oddly the less interesting of the two characters at that stage. We come to admire George and his steadfastness, while we come to see Doyle as a man constantly on the move, seemingly trying to escape from under the heel of his own repressed virility. (Boy, I never thought I'd write a sentence like that.)

These cavils aside, a brilliant book. I'm glad to have read it.

In ARTHUR AND GEORGE, author Julian Barnes presents the intersection of two lives - one successful and celebrated the other obscure -- until a strange conjunction of events propels each of them into the glaring spotlight of the British judicial system. The famous person is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; the unknown and ill-served man is George Edalji, the son of a Parsee Anglican Clergyman and his Scottish wife. Edalji is accused and convicted of a series of barbaric attacks on farm animals, incarcerated, and after several years in prison, released but not exonerated.

Enter the recently-widowed creator of Sherlock Holmes, who decides to use the same skills of his fictional detective in a quest to absolve Edalji and solve the crime. Utilizing both facts and deduction, as well as modicum of subterfuge and a healthy dose of influence, Conan Doyle sets to work on cracking the case.

Author Barnes has done a superb job of researching this true crime story--which at the time rivaled the Dryfuss case in France. Long-since forgotten by the cavalcade of history, the circumstances are revived and reviewed by Barnes in a thoroughgoing manner. He allows the reader to garner the impressions and facts that have guided his research into the crime, and is scrupulously accurate in his account of these two men and their contemporaries.

It makes for an often riveting narrative--and is "so adventurous a tale it may rank with most romances" as W. S. Gilbert might have put it. The reader follows the surprising twists and illuminating turns, and is deeply sympathetic to both Arthur and George, men whose lives are anything but ordinary, as well as to all the main characters in the novel. It is clear that Barnes has become warmhearted toward them and he succeeds in helping the reader to become fond of them as well.

Some passages in the book are quite tender and lyrical. There is poignancy to the moment he describes when Sir Arthur encounters the winner of a strong-man competition. Barnes' description of the various facets of Conan Doyle's personality is also outstanding.

The surprises continue till the last pages and the closest comparison one might make would be to E. L. Doctorow's RAGTIME, which similarly recounts an historic event in a way that the narrative flows like fiction. Indeed, as has been said, "Fiction is real life with the boring bits taken out." Barnes has done this, splendidly.

If you find this review helpful you might want to read some of my other reviews, including those on subjects ranging from biography to architecture, as well as religion and fiction.

Julian Barnes, with his usual elegant prose style, imagines the intertwined lives of two real nineteenth century figures, the solicitor George Edalji and the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, most famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. And as befitting a story associated with Holmes, even if at once removed, at the center of this tale lays a mystery. But Barnes, an experienced mystery writer under a nom de plume, has bigger game afoot.

The book moves from an intimate biography of the two men to the gradual revelation of the criminal case that stands at its center. The case echoes in its bare outline Peter Schaffer's play "Equus". But the playing out of the case, and the novel itself, echoes an even more illustrious progenitor, EM Forster's "A Passage to India", exposing the false promise of the protections of the British law when left in the hands of individuals prey to racism and class conciousness.

These larger themes are woven into a narrative of supense, emotional urgency and full-bodied characters, making this one of Barnes's most successful works to date. Like the Edwardian fiction it calls to mind, this is old-fashioned reading at its best.

Arthur & George is the story of two boys who came of age in late Victorian England. One became a celebrity author; the other, a humble solicitor whose claim to fame should have been a treatise on railway law. We follow their lives from early childhood to the end, experiencing life with them in a time and place far removed from the western world in the twenty-first century.

Julian Barnes weaves for us a story, one scene at a time that helps us to realize who Arthur and George are. One man was famous; the other became infamous. One man was widely considered what is best in Englishmen; the other was "not the right sort." One was a man of faith in the unseen; the other a man of faith in himself. One helped to clear the name of a fellow countryman; the other could not clear his own name unaided.

In Arthur & George, we are granted a glimpse into the psyche of men, the struggle to balance our desires with what we want to be and the hope that personal integrity will ultimately prove stronger than whatever adversity we face. Barnes explores a thought quite dear to my heart: justice can be denied but character will endure. Men of good character--of strong character, who have not surrendered to the prejudices of others--will not be defined by their circumstances; men of substance will always (if belatedly) be known for who they are. Or, as Horace Greeley said,

Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, money takes wings, those who cheer you today may curse you tomorrow. The only thing that endures is character.

Barnes is a wonderful storyteller and reading his prose is a pleasure. To read Arthur & George is to visit another place and time and to discover that for however things change in the world around us, things remain very much unchanged in matters of defining who we are.

This novel is based on a real series of events which themselves seem as strange as any fiction concocted by Sherlock Holmes. The first two-thirds of the book give us, in alternating chapters, parallel biographies, with no contact between them whatever, of the two very different men, the stolid solicitor George Edalji and the bluff Arthur Conan Doyle. We have here a most subtle examination of the development of two very different personalities, and an imaginative capacity to enter into their minds. There is a degree of sensitivity in Barnes' writing which we do not find in Conan Doyle's. One is gripped by the psychological tensions under which each of these men labour: Arthur as he wrestled with his sense of honour towards his gentle ailing wife but also towards the woman with whom he was in love and who loved him; George as he struggled with the fate as it was enmeshing him. (Brilliant as Barnes' verbal picture of the two men is, it is, I think, a pity that the book does not include photographs of them. The ones I have seen on the Internet are in themselves eloquent of the differences between the two men - the one the haunted face of a half-Indian, the other Elgaresque in its Englishness.)

In 1903 George was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for crimes he had not committed. The way he coped with imprisonment is surely unusual, but I found it convincing. After a campaign of petitioning from his friends, the Home Office came to the conclusion that the length of the sentence had been excessive and he was released after three years, but without his name being cleared. George and his friends continued to campaign to have his name cleared; and it was at this stage, two thirds through the book, that Arthur took up George's case. A criticism I have of the book is that there is no satisfactory explanation why he should take up this particular case: the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories had, to his irritation, often been asked to help solve a crime, and it is said that up to this time he had regularly declined. The account of their discussion at their first meeting may be based on documentation, but I don't find it at all convincing - odd, since nowhere else does Barnes' dialogue fail in this way.

I have also to say that from that moment onwards, the psychological tension of the novel rather fades away and a detective story takes over, as Arthur acts in a Sherlock Holmes-like way to clear George and to identify the real perpetrator of the crimes. Thanks to Arthur's campaign, the Home Office eventually had to give a free pardon (there was as yet no Court of Appeal, and the Edalji case contributed greatly to such a court being set up later in 1907); but did it in a thoroughly weasly way: ensuring that no one was actually blamed for the miscarriage of justice (except, by implication, George himself!), refusing to pay him compensation, and failing also to take any notice of Arthur's identification of the true criminals leads. All this leads to a let-down towards the end of the book which as a novelist Julian Barnes would surely have liked to avoid but which was forced upon him by the historical facts of the case. The novel does not deal with the anti-climax of the next five years or so, during which Arthur failed to get Captain Anson, the prejudiced Chief Constable of Staffordshire, to pursue the true criminals. Instead, Barnes counteracts this feeling of let-down with a short, spine-tinglingly written final section about the memorial meeting for Conan Doyle (it took the form of a spiritualist s ance in the presence of over a thousand people in the Albert Hall), a quarter of a century after Arthur and George had last met. And on the last two pages of the book there are two unexpected twists to the story.

All this is set against the carefully researched social and political conditions of the period and an understanding of Victorian-Edwardian mores and mind-sets. The whole book, written in a beautifully limpid style, is a magnificent blend of scholarship and imagination. One really cares about the two protagonists as people and, as the story develops, one is kept on tenterhooks as one is by a good thriller. A real treat of a book.

I ordered this book from the library, and when it arrived I had forgotten what it was about. Therefore, I was well into the book before realizing that Arthur was Conan Doyle, and that the book was based on historical fact. It is so well written as a novel, that it would be unnecessary to know anything about the real figures in the book, but knowing a little makes the book even more rich and complex. I stayed up late reading about George's persecution and woke up the next day worried about him. My son got to watch a lot of TV today while I rushed to finish this book (I hope he doesn't read my reviews someday and realize he can get away with anything if I have a good enough book...)

I last encountered Julian Barnes in "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" - an intriguing title, if ever there was one. He then drifted out of my consciousness for many years until, as such coincidences do occur, I picked up two of his books in as many weeks: this one and a collection of short stories whimsically titled "The Lemon Table". As his titles go, "Arthur and George" is resolutely straight forward and no-nonsense, much like the book's primary characters.

When I started the book I had no idea who or what it was about, so there was a pleasurable frisson when I realised a few chapters into it that the "Arthur" of the title is none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. George Edalji is a bit more obscure, being the son of a Parsi pastor (a contradiction, surely, but truth is stranger than fiction) and an Scotswoman.

George is a solicitor, "stalked" by a series of anonymous letters and bizarre occurrences and then accused and convicted of a series of even more bizarre animal mutilations. He is released after serving some part of his sentence and seeks Arthur's assistance in clearing his name. Arthur takes up his cause with characteristic fervour, though mixed results.

On one level this is a straight forward and quite brisk narrative about a curious chapter in English law, one which resulted indirectly in some much-needed reforms. It is also a quiet look at rural and urban life in Victorian England, racist hangovers from the Raj, "spiritism", love and marriage, fame and obscurity.

It is as if Mr Barnes has invited us to peep in at the window and has very kindly pulled the curtains aside. Make what you will of what you see, but this is what there is to see.

The book is peopled with actual characters and deals with events that did occur and have been well-documented, but Mr Barnes brings to the narrative a well-tempered imagination as to motives, dialogue and the characters' introspective moments. (Hence my use of the term "factional".)

The two protagonists share an Englishness that is, strangely enough, not really native to either: one is a "half-breed" and the other is Irish Catholic. But both have a curious doggedness and indomitable will that is quite at odds with their external appearances (and differences).

This is a very "English" novel with an aura of Dickens (it shares some of that chronological setting) and perhaps, Hardy (in its depiction of George's semi-rural life).

Mr Barnes' writing is always temperate and measured and thoroughly enjoyable. He alludes to some fairly obnoxious things (such as the thinly disguised racism that seems to lurk behind George's victimisation and conviction) with an admirable restraint that nevertheless makes the point quite forcefully.

The narrative begins by alternating between Arthur and George from their birth up until when their paths cross in the strangest of circumstances. There is a great cleverness in the way Mr Barnes uses the present tense to describe George's life until the moment of his arrest. Arthur's life, on the other hand, is narrated in the past tense until he meets his wife and life begins, so to speak. Very clever, but so smoothly done that at no point does it appear forced or gimmicky.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable and evenly paced book, narrated with a clear calmness that is refreshing.

The strange case of George Edalji, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's quest to prove him innocent after years of public humiliation and imprisonment, is an interesting one -- I just don't think Julian Barnes is the right author to tell it. His approach is an intellectual and chilly one, when I think a little more emotion and heart would have done more to draw the reader -- at least this one -- in. And Barnes is inconsistent in his storytelling. After having Conan Doyle agonize at length over how his children will react to his potential remarriage, Barnes never tells us; the wedding and wedding party are presented in laborious detail (including a description of the bride's gown that seems to have been copied verbatim from accounts of the time), and yet not a word from the kids. Oh, well, I guess it wasn't important after all.

I'm a fan of mysteries, so I found the section in which Conan Doyle plays Sherlock Holmes quite rewarding. But the book is ultimately done in by Barne's pedantic, scholarly approach. He's obviously done his research, but does he have to include every piece of it? (An insignificant cricket match is described in an excruciatingly detailed play by play; what's the point, and why should we care?) And when Barnes tries for poignancy and profundity (particularly in the endless epilogue), the results are generally perfunctory and flat. Additionally, the headings that Barnes has given to the book's individual parts strive for meaning, but are just mystifying and pretentious.

All in all, I think a non-fiction approach (from a Sebastian Junger, perhaps) would have been a much more effective way of telling this fascinating story.

It is difficult to write a review that does not give away matters that Julian Barnes reveals only gradually in the carefully-paced exposition to this magnificent novel. So I will confine myself to things that the reader cannot help reading elsewhere on this page or in the reviews printed prominently inside the front cover. The "Arthur" is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, physician, creator of Sherlock Holmes, and pioneering spiritualist. The "George" is an unassuming solicitor who becomes the victim of a malicious campaign of threats and accusations, which come close to destroying him. After their stories have been laid out separately but in parallel, eventually George's case becomes known to Sir Arthur, who dashes to his defence, making it into a cause célèbre.

All this is a matter of historical record. As he had done in FLAUBERT'S PARROT, Barnes takes the art of biography (or in this case two intertwined biographies) and uses it to create a new form, the novel of biographical interpretation. He has a wonderful ability to imagine the hearts and minds of his characters. By contrasting Arthur's happy marriage and rising success with George's isolation and misfortune, he gives depth to both of them. And by the time that the creator of Sherlock Holmes has taken on George's case as a mystery to be solved and injustice to be righted, I had quite forgotten that I was not reading one of Conan Doyle's own stories.

In fact, I sat down intending to heap praise on Julian Barnes for his skill in setting up Holmesian expectations but then avoiding the clear-cut ending of a Sherlock Holmes tale. Things here do not go as smoothly as in fiction, and although solutions to the various mysteries do emerge, they seem almost peripheral to the developing story. Then it occurred to me that Barnes was following the historical record here too; it is not so much that he was shaping the story in less predictable ways, but that he chose this particular history precisely because it would lead him into shades of gray rather than neat black and white. George's legal problems, for example, have much less to do with fact and proof than about how facts may be twisted or shaded by people with prior assumptions, whether arising out of prejudice or (in Sir Arthur's case) from the desire to right a wrong. Indeed it is George who emerges as the more logical and objective of the two men, not the author who had enshrined just those qualities in his creation of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle is seldom shown with his feet firmly on the ground, but as a scientist who becomes a spokesman for spiritualism, a lover sighing for the woman that his honor will not permit him to have, and the white knight in search of a cause.

As the jacket wisely says, this book is about "the differences between what we believe, what we know, and what we can prove." It is also a brilliant exploration of the space between historical fact and the novelist's imagination.

After finishing Julian Barnes' brilliant new novel, I can declare myself sure of one thing: the fellow is a terrific writer. Not only he builds an impressive novel on a little-known historical fact but he manages to be a brilliant autobiographer, offering us an insightful, engaging and very human description of the world-famous writer A.C. Doyle.
At the outset, the novel presents two separate narrative paths, narrated in alternate paragraphs: one chronicles the life of A.C. Doyle and the other that of George Edalji, who is later accused of a crime he didn't commit. It is Doyle who, playing the detective himself, uses his wits and his clout to revise the Edalji's case and save him from his wrongful accusation.
Barnes proves to be an excellent writer, weaving sentences that bring to mind the great novels of the past. Not to mention the wealth of careful research that must have gone into the novel...
Not only, the life, passions and torments of the great A.C. Doyle are laid before our eyes in an eloquent and convincing way, allowing the reader to "get to know" the character in the deepest sense of the word.
It is true that at times the novel loses its steam and becomes a bit boring but overall it proves to be a wonderful literary experience, one that I warmly suggest to everyone.