Elizabeth Finch
From the Booker Prize-winning author of THE SENSE OF AN ENDING
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3.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The Sunday Times Bestseller from the Winner of the Booker Prize
She will change the way you see the world . . .
'I'll remember Elizabeth Finch when most other characters I've met this year have faded' The Times
Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration. Neil is just one of many who fell under her spell during his time in her class. Tasked with unpacking her notebooks after her death, Neil encounters once again Elizabeth's astonishing ideas on the past and on how to make sense of the present.
But Elizabeth was much more than a scholar. Her secrets are waiting to be revealed . . . and will change Neil's view of the world forever.
'Enthralling . . . A connoisseur and master of irony himself, [Barnes] fills this book with instances of its exhilarating power' Sunday Times
'A lyrical, thoughtful and intriguing exploration of love, grief and the collective myths of history' Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Booker Prize winner Barnes (The Sense of an Ending) delivers a tepid, talky meditation on the impact of a professor on a middle-aged man. Former actor Neil, wounded by the end of his marriage, signs up for an adult education course titled "Culture and Civilisation" taught by Elizabeth Finch, an author of two scholarly works. He's immediately entranced by Finch's calm, rigorous presence as she lectures on St. Ursula, the abolition of slavery, and Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor of Rome, causing Neil to feel his "brain change gear." After the course ends, Neil meets Finch for lunch two or three times a year for two decades, though she never eases her reserved demeanor. One day, Neil learns Elizabeth has died and is astonished that she has left him her books and papers. Scouring her bequest for clues on the private life she kept hidden, he honors her frequent references to Julian the Apostate by writing the essay on the emperor that forms the novel's central section, which, via Barnes, is reliably intelligent and perceptive. Barely characterized beyond his preoccupation with Finch's ideas, which Barnes shares in lengthy quotations from her lectures and notebooks, Neil, though, is less character than mouthpiece. "You can see, I hope, why I adored her," he effuses, but Finch's appeal remains as mysterious as she does. Even devoted fans may be disappointed.
Customer Reviews
Too clever for me
English post-modernist (shudder) author. Oxford educated. Worked as lexicographer for the OED, then as literary editor and film critic before becoming a full time writer. Won the Booker for ‘The Sense of an Ending’ (2011). Shortlisted three times before that.
Neil, the narrator, a twice-divorced actor turned farmer, eulogises Professor Elizabeth Finch, an iconoclastic academic whose adult classes in Culture and Civilisation he once attended, and with whom he shared twice yearly lunches for another 20 years until her death. Following a concise, if indulgently literary, introduction to the protagonists, Mr Barnes launches into a dry student essay style treatise on one of his erstwhile mentors faves: the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate. Never heard of him? No matter. Mr Barnes who, by mysterious coincidence, also goes by Julian, will fill you in. (Or see footnote 2). I’d like to tell you that the final part of the book made sense of it all for me, but I’d be lying.
Mr Barnes has an extraordinary command of the English language. If he sounds like a ponce, it’s because he’s being ironic. Or not. On a positive note, the page count was low.
Footnotes
1. Other Finch faves include Epicetus, St Ursula (of the 11000, or possibly only 11, virgin martyrs fame) and Goethe. Make of that what you will.
2. Julian the Apostate tried to rid Rome of all that pesky Christianity and get the paganism band back together.
3. Reviewers in The Guardian, The London Review of Books, and elsewhere assert that Elizabeth Finch is a fictionalised tribute to the late author Anita Brookner, a friend of Mrs Barnes.