Renee's Book of the Day: Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

Arrived home yesterday morning, and the tally for the two week vacation: only one book read, Arthur & George by Julian Barnes. This is par for the course, though I did bring two books just in case.

I spent most of the 11-hour plane trip from San Francisco to Taiwan reading Arthur & George. I especially liked the beginning section of the book, when Barnes introduces us to each of the boys and their very different lives. And when I figured out that Arthur was Arthur Conan Doyle, I was delighted. How was it that I didn’t know what this book was going to be about before I started reading?

Here’s the gist:

In 1903, George, a solicitor, was accused of writing obscene, threatening letters to his own family and of mutilating cattle in his farm community. He was convicted of criminal behavior in a blatant miscarriage of justice based on racial prejudice. Eventually, Sir Arthur ("Irish by ancestry, Scottish by birth") heard about George's case and began to advocate on his behalf. In this combination psychological novel, detective story and literary thriller, Barnes elegantly dissects early 20th-century English society as he spins this true-life story with subtle and restrained irony. (Amazon.com)

On the plane, I followed Arthur and George through to their young adulthood, attended George’s trial, and by the time we landed in Taipei in the evening of the following day, George and Arthur finally met for the first time. I felt like I had stayed up all night. I had, in fact, stayed up all night.

We spent the first two days at my Grandparents’ house in Tainan, where I got a lot of reading done. That seems to happen when visiting Grandparents. Then our proper vacation began when we took a jaunt to Green Island, off the east coast of Taiwan, with my parents. Between putting around the island on our scooters and eating sashimi fresh of the fishing boats, there was no longer time for less frivolous pursuits.

It wasn’t until the end of the week, on our flight to Tokyo, that I finished up the book. Maybe it was that I was distracted by the fun of vacationing, but I found the second half of Arthur & George less fascinating than the first. Until about three quarters of the way through, I had been all set to proclaim the book one of the best I’ve read this year, but somehow the magic of Barnes’ turn-of-the-century England lost some of its luster as the story dragged on. With no cathartic ending (due to it being a true story?), the momentum of the book seemed to have been lost somewhere soon after Arthur took on George’s case.

It was probably just the unusual circumstances of where I was when I read it, I’m sure. The descriptions of the two very different men in their very different social worlds is so elegant, while the plot is all the more fascinating because it reads like a Victorian detective novel. Julian Barnes was my favorite writer for a long while, and there is nothing in his latest work that indicates that he has lost his touch.

Want to see pictures from our trip? I’ll tack some on the end of each post this week. Enjoy!

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes