DEJA VU
|
Whether it is actually possible for the pilot of a plane changing altitude rapidly during the dawn to see the sun rise twice I don't actually know, although it sounds very unlikely to me. However that is the theme with which this story starts and ends. The start and end are very neatly tied together, and so indeed are all the various strands of the plot. Clever and deft workmanship of this kind is what I have learned to expect by now after experiencing five novels by Julian Barnes, and it is the sort of thing that leaves me unable to make up my mind whether I like his work or not.
After at least the last two novels I vowed to myself that I would never read another page by him because he is such a clever-clogs, and good heavens does he know it. For all that, whenever my eye lights on something bearing his name I keep picking it up, because he is just so exceptionally talented. He is talented as a writer, as a novelist and as an essayist. You will find coherent and convincing portraiture in this book, hung around the 100-year life of Jean, but really no less persuasive in the depiction of Leslie, Gregory, Michael, Tommy Prosser, Rachel and even Olive. That would form a good basis for any novel, but until near the end of the book I kept wondering whether the plot-line was really a device to string together a series of essays by the ultra-intellectual Mr Barnes. The lengthy sequence on what it must be like to die in an airliner crash is a rather blatant intrusion on the general narrative, but being the craftsman he is Barnes can get away with even this as being related in a tenuous way to the overall theme.
The reason why he can do that is that he keeps it skilfully vague and uncertain what the overall theme actually is. Is it the life of Jean, or is it the philosophical ponderings on the nature of God and the afterlife with which the book concludes? You tell me and I'll tell you - I don't really know which it is meant to be, and I don't think I'm meant to know. The book was published in 1986, I see, and the predictions for 21st-century computing have not really worked out as Barnes seems to have expected, but I find no fault with him for that. Indeed it could still turn out Barnes's way, I suppose. If I have a criticism at all of the numerous intellectual extravaganzas it would actually be that the interactions between Gregory and the computer regarding God, death and the rest of it run a distinct risk of being platitudinous. By what token we human beings presume to believe that if there is a Creator of the cosmos He shares human sensibilities I don't know, but I suggest a reading of Olaf Stapledon's `Star Maker' as a salutary mental corrective for Barnes or anyone else inclined to this outlook.
However even if we focus on the strictly narrative thread it is excellent. Jean's story is clear, it is coherent and it is involving. If I had to defend the book against a charge of artificiality and over-ingenuity in the way the various sub-plots and sub-threads are linked and associated, I don't think I could do it. This is just Julian Barnes, that's the way he is, and we just have to take him or leave him as we feel inclined. In fact this book does not annoy me in the way Flaubert's Parrot did, and I suppose I am having to recognise that talent of this order doesn't grow on trees and that if I chose to ignore Barnes I would be missing out on something major.
|
|
Maybe There Is an Absolute
|
There are some questions that men and women have been asking since questions were formed and given their name. And for these questions there still are no answers, no proof that a person who has fears can rely on, can take absolute unconditional comfort in. For me this is what Mr. Julian Barnes was addressing in his book, "Staring Into The Sun", for you it may be different, but I believe you will share the enjoyment I have gained.
This is the 9th book I have read by this Author. While I would not presume to claim I know what his message has been in the other 8 books, I do feel I had a better grasp with those I previously read than with this novel. All of the writer's work leaves plenty of room to drill down and experience his books as a reader. This time he was not just exercising his talents creating either a uniquely interpretive work, or a wholly original one, rather he was addressing what is common to us all.
Jean Sarjeant is described on the jacket as, "having an extraordinary disdain for wisdom". Another character in the book describes her as abysmally stupid. This book tracks her life for a century, and she is many things, however neither those descriptions I have just mentioned. Jean is extremely inquisitive; she also is unconventional to the point that some may find her a bit eccentric. In the course of the book she has a son that shares all of her disinterest in what normal society defines as "normal".
The issues at hand and the answers to the questions they have generated for millennia, having nothing to do with conventional wisdom, nor do they shed their answers when confronted by a high I.Q. or the most technologically advanced man-made machine. This is not so much a story about answers, but of differentiating between knowledge and understanding, and acceptance or the rejection of an idea due to lack of definitive information.
The Absolute Truth, which takes the form of T.A.T. in the book, is embraced by many and rejected by Jean. In the latter parts of the book, radical changes have taken place in society's views of death, but death itself never has changed nor does it here. Jean pursues those big unknowns that everyone struggles with, at one point or another, in her own manner, while her son pursues the quest he is on through technology.
I found it interesting that I finished this novel just as we embark on the year 2001, a date that has been anticipated for so long due to Arthur C. Clarke and his, "2001 A Space Odyssey". We have not reached the levels of technology that he envisioned, and I believe the same may be said for our own carbon-based development as well. Mr. Clarke delved into the most fundamental of issues, and Mr. Barnes takes his turn here. This time the story stretches to 2021, the issue is what more have we learned if we have learned any more at all.
The book is striking, and the special sunrises and a sunset are very dramatic. The questions may be old, and they may also never be answered. However as long as the topic is dealt with using the talent of Mr. Barnes and others, their ideas will always be interesting to read.
As to the absolute comment, it may be that certain questions have never had answers, and that they never will.
|
|
|
Stunning
|
|
Breaktakingly good prose, from a true master. A book that tells the 100 year story of one woman, taking us from the nineteen twenties to the twenty twenties. It is enormously sympathetic. The book poses many questions about life, and credits the reader with the intelligence to find his or her own answers. Moving, and ultimately quite melancholy, it is the sort of book that will leave you feeling emotionally richer. There is a review quote on the back of the book which says "Undoubtedly much too good to win the Booker prize" No kidding.
|
|
|
A book of wondrous things...
|
|
it follows the life of a young woman from the II WW up to her last days in the following Century. A book that leaves one, though slightly melancholy, with a warm feeling inside. It's like an old house, full of unexplored rooms and every room having its own particular smell, story and mood. Jean, the main character grows up and introduces us to an array of other characters. From a fighter pilot that saw the sun rise twice; her cowardly or is he brave?, Uncle Leslie and his wonderful tricks; up to her own somewhat insipid son, who dissatisfied with his insipid life contemplates suicide. The book spans nearly a hundred years and though it is written in the last quarter of the last century Mr. Barnes creates a believable 2000 and beyond. Even the role of computers and a sort of World Wide Web is foreseen in his well crafted book; well worth a read.
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada