16 BOOKS

The Observer Review 14 March 2004

Things can only get bitter

Lost love. Failed art. Encroaching old age. Thank goodness Julian Barnes still has humour to offer
STEPHANIE MERRITT
The Lemon Table
by Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape 16.99, pp218
AT THE heart of Julian Barness new collection is perhaps the most common and predictable theme in literature: the business of ageing and its attendant emotions. Most forceful among these is regret, naturally, and a creeping terror of what Larkin calls age, and then the only end of age, but Barness characters bring an awareness of their own folly for refusing to relinquish the pleasures and passions of the younger self, and a concurrent awareness of a growing inability to pursue those passions with consistent vigour. But the human response to mortality is not a new theme for Barnes his 16year-old narrator was dwelling on it in his first novel, Metroland and nor is the failure of love or art truly to vivify or satisfy us. Like most of his lifes writing, the play was concerned with love. And as in his life, so in his writing: love did not work. The quote comes from the central story, The Revival, a partially biographical piece about Turgenev, but it might easily be applied to Barness own writing. How love works in his life is a matter of speculation, though his famously long marriage and the exquisitely tender half-chapter in his novel, A History of the World in 10 Chapters, leave an optimistic impression. None the less, in Barness fiction, love rarely works according to anyones hopes or expectations. His diptych of love and betrayal, Talking It Over and Love, Etc., which follow the same love triangle over a real-time gap of 10 years, is perhaps the wisest and funniest dissection of contemporary relationships in recent English fiction. Even his Booker-shortlisted England, England, ostensibly a satire on the crisis of national identity and an opportunistic heritage industry, has at its centre a love story in the process of failing from its very beginning. In The Lemon Table, love and sex are to be preserved reverently in memory by the old but are seen as a foolish indulgence if pursued into the present. In Hygiene, a retired major makes his annual trip to London for a regimental dinner, armed with a shopping list for his wife, with all his mind set on his yearly rendezvous with a prostitute called Babs. For years, the prospect of this encounter has kept his spirits young in the midst of domestic tedium: He liked to think that Babs never changed, and she didnt, not in his mind, not in his memory and his anticipation. But learning of Babss unforeseen death brings a renewed awareness of his own deterioration, the realisation that the regimental dinner would increasingly consist of seeing who wasnt there rather than who was, and a gratitude for the predictable and solid presence of his wife. The narrator of The Fruit Cage must come to terms with his 81-year-old fathers abandonment of a lifelong marriage for an affair with a woman in her sixties, which prompts him to reflect on how little he knows of either love or age: Why make the assumption that the heart shuts down alongside the genitals? Because we want need to see old age as a time of serenity? Barnes has already articulated his thoughts on this subject in the person of Mme Wyatt in Love, Etc. with her vehement little speech about how the memory of desire still burns just as fiercely in the years when you are sagely supposed to have left it behind. Along similar lines, The Revival is a speculative account of Turgenevs last love affair, at 60, with an actress of 25, and is concerned again with the question of consummation, with whether Turgenevs respectful letters contained myriad euphemisms or genuine restraint: Is this the truth, or is that the truth? We, now, would like it to be neat then, but it is rarely neat; whether the heart drags in sex, or sex drags in the heart. Barnes once wrote: I am a writer for an accumulation of lesser reasons (love of words, fear of death, hope of fame, delight in creation, distaste for office hours) and for one presiding major reason: because I believe that the best art tells the most truth about life. To illustrate this, he has, at times, attempted to enter the mind of a well-known artist as a fictional character, or as a subject for philosophical reflection; most conspicuously in Flauberts Parrot, but he also used Gricault in A History of the World. Here, he turns not only to Turgenev for a study of the collision of art and love in age but also, in the final story, The Silence, to an unnamed composer, whom literary or musical detectives may quickly identify as Sibelius and whose views are deliberately made the last word in the collection. This final first-person narrative crystallises the submerged ideas of preceding stories. The symbolism of the books title is made explicit the composer explains that, for the Chinese, the lemon is the symbol of death, so that his local caf table where he gathers with friends to discuss mortality becomes the lemon table. Mirroring the physical waning of previous protagonists, this narrators creative flow has terrifyingly dried; for 30 years, he has composed nothing significant. Cheer up! Death is round the corner, he repeats bitterly. There is no redemption in his vision; attending a friends funeral, he says: I reflected upon the infinite wretchedness of the artists lot. So much work, talent and courage and then everything is over. To be misunderstood, and then to be forgotten, such is the artists fate. Once again, the question of the relationship between art and life must be chewed over: is it, as Freud and Wagner

Barnes has always been a nonconformist; his novels smudge the boundaries between fiction, dramatic monologue, epistle, criticism and essay
suggested, that creativity provides a compensation for the artists inability to live life to the full, or, as the composer more prosaically argues, the other way around? Certainly, I am neurotic and frequently unhappy, but that is largely the consequence of being an artist rather than the cause. Stylistically, Barnes has always been a nonconformist; his novels smudge the boundaries between fiction, dramatic monologue, epistle, criticism and essay and this collection of stories manages the same in miniature. All have a photographic clarity, a psychological realism that embraces extremes of feeling. Love, marriage and art can all be cruel and tender, coarse and sublime at the same time. Although he is not primarily considered a comic writer, there is a deliciously wry streak running through these stories that counters the inevitable morbidity; Knowing French, a fictional exchange of letters between the author and a frustrated elderly reader in an old folkery, is warm, puckish and affectionate. Fear

Julian Barnes: deliciously wry. Photograph by Martin Godwin

of death, fear of the art tapering off; perhaps a natural focus for a writer in his late fifties, though Barnes once said that he thinks about death every day of his life. On the evidence of this collection, though, his writing only grows stronger and wiser by experience. To order The Lemon Table for 14.99 plus p&p, call the Observer Books Service on 0870 066 7989

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Julian Barnes homepage www.julianbarnes.com/

JUST PUBLISHED
URBAN TRIBES Ethan Watters Bloomsbury 10.99, pp214 Anyone familiar with Bridget Jones or Sex and the City will probably have had the are friends the new family? debate already. Its fairly obvious that with increasing numbers of metropolitan singles living away from their nuclear families, the nature of social support networks and social morals is changing dramatically;Watters defines his study in terms of Seinfeld:A comedy of manners in an era when the manners were all in flux.This is an entertaining look at the shift in morals and expectations for twenty- and thirtysomethings, but dont expect to be startled by his findings. BIG FAT LOVE Peter Sheridan Macmillan 12.99, pp309 Philo is a proper comic grotesque; a short, immensely fat woman who pitches up at a Dublin convent asking to become a nun, as a refuge from her violent husband and the mess she has made of her life. Swearing and smoking like a trooper, Philo is not typical bride of Christ material, but when Sister Rosaleen decides that charity requires her to give Philo a chance, the sisters and the local community quickly find that her earthiness and honesty are just the kind of life force theyve been missing. Sheridan is the brother of filmmaker Jim and himself the author of a bestselling Irish memoir.This, his second novel, is unashamedly heartwarming, with plenty of salty Dublin dialogue that just dodges caricature in favour of affectionate humour. A PROFOUND SECRET Josceline Dimbleby Doubleday 20, pp340 The story of a passionate relationship between the authors forebear, Amy Gaskell, and painter Edward Burne-Jones, this enthralling family romance explores a lost world of hidden love, expressed through a sequence of letters that miraculously escaped the bonfire. This is a portrait of Victorian love that is more compelling than many novels and more informative than most history books. It also suggests that if you do have an affair, dont commit the details to writing. To order any of the above titles at a special price, call the Observer Books Service on 0870 066 7989

The beauty of brevity

Muriel Sparks novel proves that her true forte is the short story
ADAM MARS-JONES
The Finishing School
by Muriel Spark
Viking 12.99, pp154
THE CORE of Muriel Sparks twentysecond novel is the paradoxical relationship between Rowland Mahler, the principal of College Sunrise, the finishing school of the title, and Chris Wiley, one of his creative-writing students. At 17, Chris is a problem student for a strange reason: he is simply too creative, writing a historical novel (about Mary, Queen of Scots) with great assurance and politely rejecting every suggestion that Rowland makes. Rowland, though inevitably a father figure, is hardly more than a decade older than Chris and has tasted early literary success in his own right. As an undergraduate, he wrote a play for the National Theatre which was successfully produced there, although nothing he wrote afterward, according to his agents, could even be given away. Now he is hoping to have lightning strike twice, by publishing a brilliant first novel. But the lightning seems to have other ideas, and with Chris on the premises, writing imperturbably on, Rowland finds it impossible to make any headway with his own manuscript. Muriel Spark got her start as a writer of short stories (in fact, she was first published after winning a competition organised by this newspaper) and it may be that the small tussle of wills which is the subject of The Finishing School would be better suited to the shorter form. It isnt in Sparks nature to write long shes the least expansive novelist imaginable but with other books set in institutions, not only The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie but also The Girls of Slender Means and The Abbess of Crewe, she made sure that minor characters fully justified their existence. Here the students, other than Chris, are essentially spectators and when the narrative switches periodically to Rowlands wife, Nina, who worries whether their marriage can survive his jealousy

Marry in haste, repent in Scotland

LIZ HOGGARD
The Distance Between Us
by Maggie OFarrell
Headline 14.99, pp384
MAGGIE OFarrell is extremely good at menace. Even when her characters allow themselves to be distracted by the more conventional storylines of love and family, there it is, throbbing below the surface. Her first book, After Youd Gone, opens with a woman glimpsing something at an Edinburgh railway station that sickens her. She flees back to London, is involved in a car accident and spends most of the narrative in a coma. We have to run the full, tense arc of the novel to find out what she has witnessed. OFarrell likes to probe the soft tissue beneath the skin. Her style is alternately lyrical and forensic. No surprise, then, that her new book, The Distance Between Us, opens with a similarly eerie setpiece: a woman sees a dishevelled red-haired man on Waterloo Bridge, an encounter which compels her to take flight from her life as a successful London radio producer. Once again, there is no explanation. We are immediately tumbled into the interlocking stories of an extended Scottish-Italian family; twins Stella and Nina; and Jake, a British film assistant far away in Hong Kong. OFarrell, who was born in Northern Ireland and grew up in Wales and Scotland, is very good at evoking the lives of mixed race, culturally displaced people. Jake is more Chinese than English, while Edinburgh is presented as the home town of vibrant Italian emigr rather than rich Morningside ladies a nice comic touch. But the air of menace never goes away. Out celebrating Chinese New Year in Hong Kong with his new (and somewhat clingy) girlfriend, Mel, Jake is pitched into a disaster as overcrowding in the streets results in a terrible crush (a truly horrific moment in the novel). People die in the ensuing stampede and Jake is told that his girlfriend will not survive the night. Although they have only known each other for four months, she begs him to marry her in the hospital and he makes the guiltridden gesture, only for her to recover. Trapped in a loveless relationship, he takes her home to Scotland, where her parents immediately begin planning a belated white wedding. Jake, unable to stop events spiralling out of control, takes off for the Highlands on a mission to seek out his birth father. And, of course, it is here that he finds true love with guess who? Stella, the woman who saw the ghostly apparition on the bridge. You can see it coming from a mile, but you dont resent it because the courtship is so delicate and sensual. And still there are thrilling shards of menace: a bat that attacks a woman on a bus, digging into her scalp; a twin dying of a mysterious wasting disease; vicious school bullying and just the faintest hint of murder. OFarrell writes with lyrical precision about sex, fear and sibling rivalry. Her eye for the telling detail makes you look at the most mundane human activity with new eyes. Its hard for contemporary novelists to put a new spin on eroticism, but she manages it, while the bond between the twins is eerily exclusive. Plot-wise, OFarrell keeps all the plates spinning, although Jakes storyline is by far the most interesting, even if he is clearly an object of female wish-fulfilment. Just occasionally, you tire of an overconstructed narrative of mystery and half-truth. My other complaint is that Maggie OFarrell has a habit of lingering over the physical qualities of her heroine: Stella, porcelain white skin, sleek dark hair, blue vein pulsing erotically at her neck (sounds a bit like a selfportraitof the author?). But she makes few other mistakes in this graceful and hypnotic novel. To order The Distance Between Us for 12.99 plus p&p, call the Observer Books Service on 0870 066 7989

Muriel Spark: unrooted. Photograph by Murdo MacLeod and frustration, the effect is less to extend the central conflict than to dilute it. Exile is always a drastic step for a writer, even when voluntary (Spark moved to Italy in the early Sixties, mainly to retain her privacy). Unrootedness seems to spread from author to creation. In The Finishing School, Spark defies unworthy caution by making almost all her characters very young and the action contemporary (one of the students is writing a thesis on the massacre of the Nepalese royal family in recent years, an odd piece of phrasing). If any reader points out that Chris is a very unusual teenager still to be listening to Phil Collins and Michael Jackson, its easy to imagine her responding that, of course, hes unusual, hes writing a novel, for one thing. Nevertheless, the book gives the impression of being oddly insubstantial, even when it deals with worlds such as publishing and selling film rights with which this author is profoundly familiar. Only occasionally is there a reminder of the Sparks manner at its best, with all its uncharitable lustre: An awfully nice boy, Rowland said. In his tone was a touch of regret, as if Chris had been an awfully nice dog that however, for some overwhelming reason, had to be put down. To order The Finishing School for 10.99 plus p&p, call the Observer Book Service on 0870 066 7989

Occasionally there is a reminder of Sparks best manner, with its uncharitable lustre