Elizabeth Finch

I love Julian Barnes and his writing. Two of his novels I appreciate the most are: The Sense of an Ending and The Noise of Time. But I have read nothing like this novel before. Julian Barnes combines historical facts and philosophy in a fictional novel about Elizabeth Finch.

Elizabeth Finch, or EF, is a charismatic professor who teaches adult students. The narrator, Neil, is a student in her “Culture and Civilization” class. He finds her very interesting, even “seductive, but not in any conventional way.” They remain in contact, even when he finishes his classes. They meet on a brief lunch every three years.

The fictional intertwines with historical facts. In the middle of this novel, we can read an essay about Julian The Apostate’s life. Elizabeth Finch is a novel about platonic love and admiration for one person. This novel generally deals with biography - EF’s, Julian The Apostate’s, and partly also narrator’s.

I liked the first part of the novel the most. Second part consists of Neil’s essay on Julian The Apostate, and this part was a bit off-putting for me. Here, my interest in this novel fell a bit. The third part continues narrator’s exploration of EF.

Although this novel is very good and imaginative, it is also complex. And it is not a novel for general readers. I’m guessing it was never meant this way. So a lower average rating wouldn’t surprise me at all. As I mentioned, this novel is not a lightweight read, and I struggled a bit with some parts while reading just an ebook. The audiobook format improved this a lot.

I was lucky to receive ARC and ALC and partly listened to an audiobook and read an ebook at the same time. Both formats are very good, but those who would find this novel overwhelming could find an audiobook a better option. For readers who want to reread and dissect the novel or its parts an ebook or physical copy would be best. Both formats together are also an excellent choice.

Goodreads

Details:

• author: Julian Barnes
  
• full title: Elizabeth Finch
  
• genre: literary fiction
• format/type: bookfiction
  
• country: United Kingdom
  
• topics: #biography, #platoniclove, #culture, #religion, #history, #philosophy
  
• publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  
• publish date: 16.08.2022
  
• pages: 192
  

My Rating of the Book:

• content: 💙💙💙💙

About the Author:

Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer of postmodernism in literature. He has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize - Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005), and won the prize for The Sense of an Ending (2011). He has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.

Following an education at the City of London School and Merton College, Oxford, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary. Subsequently, he worked as a literary editor and film critic. He now writes full-time. His brother, Jonathan Barnes, is a philosopher specialized in Ancient Philosophy.

He lived in London with his wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh, until her death on 20 October 2008.