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A review by bookisgood_2020
England, England by Julian Barnes
2.0
A theme park based on England & English history. History, that is politically correct so that cancel culture can’t touch it. The monarchy is touchable now as the royal family lives here in a replica of Buckingham Palace. A replica so flabbergasting that people disremember the original. Originality expires & the park rises with its colossal claws of capitalism when the rich arrives here for a pole dance of English legacy. Dancing on this lap of satire & dystopia, this is Julian Barnes’s 1998 Booker-shortlisted novel England England.
Based on this peculiar world, the ambitious novel booms with the inkling of small dark memories creating big unforgettable hole. And that hole is slowly widened when you are introduced to a world where money can buy anything. A vision so bleak that every sentiment can be stripped down to a price and every character (Martha, Sir Jack Pitman, Paul) is lost in a loop of symbolism & anti-symbolism. Everything means something yet everything is worthless.
This is not a novel with postmodernism & structuralism blended into it. It is unapologetically based on these theories. So the narrative is more faithful towards these literally theories than the art of fiction itself. And that is why it suffers from the disease of intellectual snobbery.
It’s avant-garde but emotionally dead. You don’t care about this world or its people as you start despising both after a point. In Orwell’s 1984 we get a murky world with some characters to hold onto. Now imagine a dystopia-in-process with emotionally unavailable characters. That is what England England is. Even in a game of existential crisis, some meaning (probably a slight one) must come out of a pessimistic chronicle.
But Barnes altogether takes away the concept of meaning from the storyline. There is no free will. No growth. No surprise. It is like a dark wall that claims to be a moonless night. But you know that even a moonless night makes you anticipate the moon. But England England doesn’t even do that. You just anticipate for the book to end. Torture Torture.
Based on this peculiar world, the ambitious novel booms with the inkling of small dark memories creating big unforgettable hole. And that hole is slowly widened when you are introduced to a world where money can buy anything. A vision so bleak that every sentiment can be stripped down to a price and every character (Martha, Sir Jack Pitman, Paul) is lost in a loop of symbolism & anti-symbolism. Everything means something yet everything is worthless.
This is not a novel with postmodernism & structuralism blended into it. It is unapologetically based on these theories. So the narrative is more faithful towards these literally theories than the art of fiction itself. And that is why it suffers from the disease of intellectual snobbery.
It’s avant-garde but emotionally dead. You don’t care about this world or its people as you start despising both after a point. In Orwell’s 1984 we get a murky world with some characters to hold onto. Now imagine a dystopia-in-process with emotionally unavailable characters. That is what England England is. Even in a game of existential crisis, some meaning (probably a slight one) must come out of a pessimistic chronicle.
But Barnes altogether takes away the concept of meaning from the storyline. There is no free will. No growth. No surprise. It is like a dark wall that claims to be a moonless night. But you know that even a moonless night makes you anticipate the moon. But England England doesn’t even do that. You just anticipate for the book to end. Torture Torture.