Alongside the characteristically self-deprecating tone of Neil’s hesitant ruminations stands something more steely.
Yet it would be a mistake to think that Barnes is simply repeating old tricks in Elizabeth Finch. The story turns on a long relationship, which changes through the decades it focuses on moments of evocative return. Several features of this novel are located in recognizably Barnesian territory. His elusive example, intertwined with the lives of Neil and his fellow students, leads the reader from a personal narrative to the broader framework of history. A third character, embedded in the ambiguities of textual record and legend, becomes prominent in the narrative: Julian the Apostate, the philosophical Roman emperor. It is the story of Elizabeth Finch, the enigmatic woman who delivered the course. But, as Neil often tells us, 'this is not my story'. The story of Neil’s life – his only story – turns on his experience of a year-long course for mature students on 'Culture and Civilization' that he once took, and its enduring legacy through years of reflection. More concerned with the ambiguity of ideas than with clarity of plot or character, it is a heartfelt celebration of the life of the mind – though its defiance is qualified by the wryness we would expect from Julian Barnes.
In Elizabeth Finch, we are treated to everything we cherish in Barnes: his eye for the unorthodox forms love can take between two people, a compelling swerve into nonfictional material (this time, through Neil’s obsessive study of Julian the Apostate, following on notes Elizabeth left for him to discover after her death), and the forcefully moving undercurrent of history, and biography in particular, as nourishment and guide in our current lives.This uncompromising novel denies its readers many of the pleasures of fiction. While other personal relationships and even his family drift from Neil’s grasp, Elizabeth’s application of her material to the matter of daily living remains important to him, even after her death, in a way that nothing else does. Neil, the narrator, takes her class “Culture and Civilisation,” taught not for undergraduates but for adults of all ages we are drawn into his intellectual crush on this private, withholding, yet commanding woman. This beautiful, spare novel of platonic unrequited love springs into being around the singular character of the stoic, exacting Professor Elizabeth Finch. “I’ll remember Elizabeth Finch when most other characters I’ve met this year have faded.” –John Self, The Times Novel:įrom the best-selling, award-winning author of The Sense of an Ending, a magnetic tale that centers on the presence of a vivid and particular woman, whose loss becomes the occasion for a man’s deeper examination of love, friendship, and biography. Book Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes is available to download free in pdf epub format.
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