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A review by richardr
England, England by Julian Barnes
The previous two novels by Julian Barnes that I'd read (Metroland and The Noise of Time) were both relatively conventional realist novels. By contrast, England, England is either more of a Swiftian parable about English identity. One of the difficulties with talking about English identity is how recessive it is, where discussions of it quickly fall back on banalities like queuing or zombie concepts like stiff upper leaf. Barnes resolves this by dwelling on two particular aspects of English identity: crass commercialism and the dead hand of history: the sense that England is a country with a great future behind it and that much of the present is essentially occupied by a nostalgia industry. In essence, the Isle of Wight is re-developed as a heritage theme park where all of the stereotyped aspects of Englishness (Big Ben, Stonehenge, red phone boxes, Beefeaters etc) can be enjoyed in one convenient tourist package. By contrast, the original England slides into isolation and reverts to a medieval society as the country is re-wilded (insert Brexit themed joke of your choice here). The premise is in short a Baudrillardian one that the fake becomes more real than the original.
In some ways this sort of concept is more the sort of thing I'd have expected from someone like Will Self: there is indeed a Self short story called Scale, wherein a drug addict living next to Bekonscot model village experiences a series of Alice in Wonderland adventures as he shrinks down through a Russian doll's nest of model villages. In Self's case, the country is run by the Nationalist Trust government, wherein the National Trust has taken over the country through a coup d'etat (Derek Jarman had a similar idea in Jubilee, where the Trust operate border checks on anyone trying to enter the Home Counties from London). The Self story embraces a sense of surrealism, whereas Barnes does seem to be trying to depict events realistically. I'm not sure this really works when the concept is what Barnes is trying to depict rather than the characters embodying it.
In some ways this sort of concept is more the sort of thing I'd have expected from someone like Will Self: there is indeed a Self short story called Scale, wherein a drug addict living next to Bekonscot model village experiences a series of Alice in Wonderland adventures as he shrinks down through a Russian doll's nest of model villages. In Self's case, the country is run by the Nationalist Trust government, wherein the National Trust has taken over the country through a coup d'etat (Derek Jarman had a similar idea in Jubilee, where the Trust operate border checks on anyone trying to enter the Home Counties from London). The Self story embraces a sense of surrealism, whereas Barnes does seem to be trying to depict events realistically. I'm not sure this really works when the concept is what Barnes is trying to depict rather than the characters embodying it.