Marred by an out of nowhere reference to Trotsky as an apostate. Surely anyone reasonably familiar with the ground would have Stalin in the frame. Didn’t Hitchens teach him anything? ( )

Barnes has obviously been in this game long enough to know that he would never find a decently large audience for an extended essay about his namesake, the philosopher-emperor whose attempt to marginalise Christianity and put the Roman Empire back on a sane course of Hellenistic paganism was ended by his death on a Persian battlefield in 363. So he hit on the ingenious tactic of burying it in the middle of a short novel in which the narrator, Neil, dubbed "King of unfinished projects" by his daughter, tries to find out more about the life of his friend and sometime Foundation Course tutor, Elizabeth.

Of course, we soon discover that there are serious limitations to what we can ever really know about another person, whether it's the fourth-century Apostate or a reclusive private intellectual ("she never married," as Elizabeth sums herself up acerbically in one of her notebooks). And Neil's limitations as a biographer give Barnes plenty of licence to keep us dangling and withhold any satisfying resolution. This is a book about the process of living (and loving), not the result. Enjoyable, as a couple of hours spent in the company of Julian Barnes usually are. ( )

"I sometimes wonder how biographers do it: Make a life, a living life, a glowing life, a coherent life out of all that circumstantial, contradictory and missing evidence."

Neil, the narrator of this short novel, is taking an adult-education class on "Culture and Civilization" taught by the eponymous Elizabeth Finch. Neil is fascinated and intrigued by her, and even develops a sort of crush on the much older Elizabeth. After the class ends, he continues a friendship of sorts with her, meeting monthly or so for lunch, although her personal life remains very much a mystery to him. After she dies, he learns that she has left him her papers, and he tasks himself with finding out her secrets.

The book is structured in three parts. The first consists of Neil's recollections about the class and Elizabeth. The second part consists of a dry academic essay on Julian the Apostate, a historical figure referenced by Elizabeth in the class and who seemed to be of some significance to Elizabeth. The essay is factual and purportedly written by Neil. The third part consist of what Neil is able to find out about Elizabeth.

Overall this appears to be a character study, as there is very little plot. Many reviewers felt that the middle section, the essay on Julian the Apostate, bogs the book down. I tend to agree. I found it interesting, but I'm not sure what Barnes was attempting to accomplish by its inclusion, or what exactly its purpose was.

I found this to be a pleasant read, but I've liked the other books I've read by Barnes (A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters; Flaubert's Parrot) much more. I never felt compelled to pick it up, and for the most part found it rather aimless. But it was short.

3 stars

First line: "She stood before us, without notes, books or nerves."
Last line: "And any ironic laughter you hear will be mine." ( )

The problem with reading a favourite author is the ingrained expectation of loving each book not, per se, as much as the last one, but in the same way. While I felt something was missing from the work, it’s possible that it was an intentional choice, driving home the point that we never really know much about history, about other people, about ourselves. There are several clues along the way that the narrator is unreliable in the sense that he ‘misses’ several small things around him regarding how other people view the title character and himself. Having just read Neville Morley’s “Writing Ancient History” re the errors and omissions of historical interpretation, it seemed like Barnes was exploring similar arenas, in fiction form.

I blame the back copy of the book for creating some distance as well: having been set up to expect one kind of narrative (Elizabeth Finch was much more than a scholar. Her secrets are waiting to be revealed . . .and will change [the narrator’s] view of the world forever) was misleading and in its “clickbait” use, unnecessary.

Employing self-aware irony and conveying that magical love/need we have for a person, sometimes for inexplicable reasons which are rationalized afterwards, Barnes continues his exploration of collected memory vs personal memory: getting our history wrong is part of being a nation, being part of a religion, a family, of being in a relationship. ( )

I loved "Sense of an Ending" but this is just more of a exposition on the life of the Emperor Julian who was the last pagan Roman emperor.

Told from the viewpoint of an adult student of Elizabeth Finch, a teacher of (I suppose) philosophy and the author's extreme infatuation with her.

I weeded through most of it. ( )