Short Stories, Irish literature, Classics, Modern Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction, The Japanese Novel, Post Colonial Asian Fiction, The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and quality Historical Novels are Among my Interests








Thursday, October 18, 2012

England, England by Julian Barnes

England, England by Julian Barnes (2009, 275)



I am very glad England, England was not my first Julian Barnes (1946, UK) novel because if it was it would have been my last one and I would have been deprived of the very real pleasure of reading three much better novels by Barnes.   In order of preference my favorite Julian Barnes novels are Arthur and George, Flaubert's Parrot and A Sense of an Ending.   Before I read England, England  I planned to read all of his novels but I do not think I will be reading any more near term.   I do not desire to write long posts about books I do not like and I checked the Amazon reviews on this book and they were all pretty negative, some were really vicious.

The main plot is supposed to be about a hyper wealthy Englishmen who plans to build a mini-amusement type replica of England on The Isle of Mann for tourists.   Some of the book is taken over with talking about the plans for this and far to much of it to a totally uninteresting  romance between two of Sir Jack's employees.

Barnes's other books were much better and maybe this is his worse.  I do not endorse this book to anyone other than someone determined to read all of the novels of Barnes.

Mel u
The Reading Life
@thereadinglife

3 comments:

JoV said...

Sorry to hear you didn't like it. I have Arthur and George with me. I'll avoid this then.

Suko said...

Thanks for your honest review. I am not familiar with this author's work.

@parridhlantern said...

Enjoyed Flaubert's Parrot, agree totally about wasting time on things you loathe