Julian Barnes: Arthur And George

[StillILearn]

Has anybody read this book? Does anybody else think it sounds good?

Arthur & George is Julian Barnes' fictionalized account of the events surrounding two historical figures, Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji. The men were polar opposites; Doyle was witty, athletic, outgoing, and a natural storyteller, while Edalji was a quiet, unassuming, and pragmatic solicitor. Someone was mutilating farm animals in a village in Staffordshire, and the police decided Edalji was their man. This was partly due to Edalji being half-Indian. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison. When the animal killings continued, public outcry won him an early release after three years. Edalji wanted exoneration, though, and he wrote to Doyle asking for his help in clearing his name. Getting the chance to play Sherlock Holmes in real life, Doyle eagerly accepted the task. Julian Barnes captures not just the essence of these two men, but also the Edwardian era of the time. Arthur & George has received positive reviews with the Sunday Times saying, "Barnes’s suave, elegant prose - alive here with precision, irony and humaneness - has never been used better than in this extraordinary true-life tale, which is as terrifically told as any by its hero Conan Doyle himself."

 

[StillILearn]

Here's another one that looks good ...

In The Final Solution, Michael Chabon brings back an elderly Sherlock Holmes, although he never mentions him by name and refers to him as "the old man." The great detective is 89-years old, retired, and content to just take care of his bees. It's 1944 and one day he encounters a boy with a parrot. The boy is a mute Jewish refugee from Germany and the parrot speaks in a mysterious series of German numbers. When a man is murdered where the boy is lodged and the parrot disappears, the game is afoot. Holmes wants to solve the mystery, not just to find the murderer, but to reunite the distraught boy with his parrot. Michael Chabon presents a version of an elderly Holmes hampered by age at the end of his life juxtaposed against the life of a boy in the early stages of his life, with the evil of Nazi Germany and its "final solution" as a back drop. The Final Solution has received mostly positive reviews with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch saying, "What ultimately distinguishes The Final Solution isn't its intellectual pleasures but its acute emotional insights. In particular, Chabon offers a vividly human Holmes, opening an illuminating window on the detective's interior life that Arthur Conan Doyle kept firmly shut and curtained."

And, has anybody else read any of Laurie R. King's books about Russell and Holmes?

This is her latest:

Setting sail from their adventures in India during the spring of 1924, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes turn their faces toward San Francisco. Russell knows that the time has come to close up the house and business interests she inherited on the death of her family, ten years before. Little does she anticipate the complexity of events her past is built upon, the layers of trust and betrayal that are locked inside her memory. Only Holmes suspects what lies therein--and even he is not prepared for the danger that unfolds.

 

[steffee]

I haven't read any of them, and haven't heard of Laurie R. King, but back to Amazon I go, because they do sound very good, especially The Final Solution by Michael Chabon... the story reminds me a bit of a book I read at school about a peregrine falcon.

 

[StillILearn]

I haven't read any of them, and haven't heard of Laurie R. King, but back to Amazon I go, because they do sound very good, especially The Final Solution by Michael Chabon... the story reminds me a bit of a book I read at school about a peregrine falcon.

Laurie R. King is the only author here that I've read, and I can vouch for her Mary Russell series. It really is excellent.

 

[steffee]

Just received Arthur and George this morning. I ordered a set of the Booker Prize Short Lists a couple of days ago (for a bargain £29.99), and received them this morning... I had no idea when I first saw your post, that it was a Booker nominee!!

Also got:
The Sea by John Banville
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
The Accidental by Ali Smith
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

 

[StillILearn]

Just received Arthur and George this morning. I ordered a set of the Booker Prize Short Lists a couple of days ago (for a bargain £29.99), and received them this morning... I had no idea when I first saw your post, that it was a Booker nominee!!

Also got:
The Sea by John Banville
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
The Accidental by Ali Smith
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Looks like a good haul, steffee! The only one I've read so far is the Ishiguro one. (I do love that man) The Sea also got some rave reviews here.

 

[Clara]

I've heard really good things about 'Arthur and George'. I've read the Ishiguro and the Barry books and loved them both. Happy reading!

 

[Doug Johnson]

It recieved an excellent review here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2133506/

 

[Shade]

I thought Arthur & George was great. Here are some thoughts I posted elsewhere:

Arthur & George is the (based-on-a-true) story of what happens with meek, mixed-ethnicity solicitor-at-law George Edalji meets heroic sporting fictioneer-about-town, Arthur Conan Doyle in the early 1900s. The chapters alternate - at least to begin with - between accounts of George's and then Arthur's childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and so on. It got lavishly lip-smacking notices from many reviewers, and on the evidence ("Evidence, Holmes?") of the first hundred pages alone, rightly so. Barnes writes with muscular precision and absolute assurance, despatching a great deal of character and plot in a two-page vignette before switching characters.

It's a book of many parts, though altogether seamless in the end. After the alternating intros, it becomes a gripping account of George Edalji's persecution, prosecution and wrongful conviction for a series of 'horse-rippings' in Staffordshire. Then we have a detailed account of Conan Doyle and the three women in his life: 'the Mam,' who earned his everlasting (in this life and beyond, given his spiritualist leanings) love and respect for bringing up her family against the shifting seas of his drunkard father; Touie, his wife who becomes consumptive and sentences him to a life of celibacy; and Jean, his lover, who is prepared to wait for as long as it takes for the TB to take Touie...

Then Arthur and George come together, and apart, and the close of the novel is

Spoiler

the spiritualist meeting in the Albert Hall in memory of Conan Doyle after his death. Or: his physical death...

On its winding way the book takes in various aspects of the hall-of-mirrors of belief and proof; how people support one another, whether family, lovers, or merely those thrown together by chance; and the benefits of protest and the willingness to "make a noise." Barnes shows that it is lightness of touch, calm possession and lack of partial stridency which can set miscarriages of justice most blazingly alight. Edalji's case - fictionalised but true - resonates all the more movingly for its artful presentation.

And not least among Barnes's achievements is the sense, rare enough among the cleverer sort of literary fiction, that Arthur and George are brought to convincing, breathing life, are people not characters, and completely real. Which is not to be reduced by the fact that, of course, they were.

 

[pontalba]

And, has anybody else read any of Laurie R. King's books about Russell and Holmes?

I have all the Russell/Holmes of hers. I liked the first 5 the most. As for the 6th, Justice Hall, I was disappointed that Holmes wasn't in it more than he was. I bogged down in The Game
and haven't picked it up again, but I think that was my mood at the time. I have purchased her last one Locked Rooms, but due to you know who haven't gotten to it.

I've not heard of the Chabon.....hello? Is that you Amazon? Yes, I'd like to find out about.....

 

[StillILearn]

I have all the Russell/Holmes of hers. I liked the first 5 the most. As for the 6th, Justice Hall, I was disappointed that Holmes wasn't in it more than he was. I bogged down in The Game
and haven't picked it up again, but I think that was my mood at the time. I have purchased her last one Locked Rooms, but due to you know who haven't gotten to it.

I've not heard of the Chabon.....hello? Is that you Amazon? Yes, I'd like to find out about.....

It's just "one click" away!

I recently read Locked Rooms and I loved it. The great San Francisco fire and earthquake (this is its centennial) is the star of that book.

Thanks to Shade, I guess I'll be right behind you in the queue (that's Q to you, pontalba) at amazon to get Arthur and George.

 

[pontalba]

StillI I did order The Final Solution thru Zooba today. Plus a couple of others regarding you know who from Amazon. /sigh/
After all, all my TBR stacks haven't hit the ceiling yet.

 

[StillILearn]

StillI I did order The Final Solution thru Zooba today. Plus a couple of others regarding you know who from Amazon. /sigh/
After all, all my TBR stacks haven't hit the ceiling yet.

"Hello? Is this Book Buyers Anonymous? I think I may need help."

 

[pontalba]

StillILearn posted:

"Hello? Is this Book Buyers Anonymous? I think I may need help."

The recorder droned on...."I'm sorry, the number you have reached, is out of service, please hang up, and do not call again....."