A review by tillandsia
England, England by Julian Barnes

4.0

I liked several things about this book: the central idea is interesting and original; Martha Cochrane, the main character, is very well written; the first section of the book - which describes her childhood - is really moving; there are many thoughtprovoking details. I liked its central themes: authenticity vs imitation, "organic" vs constructed tradition, (historical) memory vs storytelling, and how the two halves of these pairs are often impossible to tell apart. At the same time I felt that the book was only scratching the surface: it kept making the same recurring points about these topics without ever getting any deeper. This made it boring after a while, even if there were always some witty or moving passages that made it worth reading to the end. There were also some plot holes - the motivations of characters and the relationships between them were not always clear -, and some parts that were, in my opinion, not very well developed, as if they had not been thought through well enough (for instance, how can a list of popular stereotypes about England not include bad food and rainy weather?). Nevertheless, all in all I gave it four stars because of the interesting main idea and the many poetic musings about history and tradition.