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Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9781400097036
ISBN number: 1400097037
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 464
Printing Date: January 09, 2007
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: January 09, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 22232
Studio: Vintage
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Amazon.com:
A real tour de force from masterful author Julian Barnes is Arthur & George, which was short-listed for the 2005 Man Booker Prize. Late-Victorian Britain is brought to vivid life in the true story of the intersection of two lives: one an internationally famous author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the other, an obscure country lawyer, George Edalji, son of a Parsi Midlands vicar and a Scottish mother. They start out very differently. Arthur pursues a career in medicine before he discovers that he is really a writer; George, on his way to becoming a lawyer--near-sighted, timid and friendless--is victimized by locals because he is easy to scapegoat--a half-Indian in lily-white Great Wyrley.
The victimization of George takes the form of nasty letters, the theft of a school key, and finally, the accusation that he has mutilated animals. Meanwhile, Arthur is becoming more and more famous for creating Sherlock Holmes, whom he tries to kill off once and is forced to resurrect because of his fans' outcry. He marries, fathers two children and then, when his wife is invalided by consumption, falls madly in love for the very first time with Jean Leckie.
The novel's style is smoothly revelatory. We slowly come to realize that George is half-Indian, that Arthur is the famous Doyle, that the woman he loves, chastely, is not his wife and, sadly, that George will not prevail over the forces ranged against him.
When George, desperate to resume his law career after imprisonment, sends Arthur the sad chronicle of his history, Arthur sees immediately that he could not be guilty and sets out to clear his name. This case of George's lifts Arthur from the slough of despond into which he has sunk after his wife, Touie, dies. He is guilt-ridden, constantly wondering if he was attentive enough, if she could possibly have known about Jean. Realizing the immense injustice George has suffered, he is shaken out of lethargy and, in Holmesian fashion, sets out to solve the case.
Julian Barnes is a gifted writer of enormous accomplishment. This novel is thoroughly engrossing, filled with Barnes's trademark themes of identity and love, longing and loss, and ultimately, an examination of man's inhumanity to man. --Valerie Ryan
Product Description:
As boys, George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur, living in shabby genteel Edinburgh, find themselves in a vast and complex world at the heart of the British Empire. Years later—one struggling with his identity in a world hostile to his ancestry, the other creating the world’s most famous detective while in love with a woman who is not his wife–their fates become inextricably connected.
In Arthur & George, Julian Barnes explores the grand tapestry of late-Victorian Britain to create his most intriguing and engrossing novel yet.
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Rated by buyers 
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If you're reading these reviews, then you know the story is based on history. I didn't, until I reached the end and read the author's note. Just because Doyle was the author of the Sherlock Holmes books didn't necessarily make the story fact to me.
So I very much disliked the ending until I found out it was based on actual history, and that was, in fact, how the story ended. Then I was able to appreciate it much more.
Overall, the story is well told. They're quite the study of opposites. George is portrayed in detail, you get such a tremendously strong impression of his character it's as if you've met him several times. Doyle seems a little scattered. WHile George is cerebral, internal, and content to be with himself, Doyle is external, receives his satisfaction from interaction with those around him and needs that stimulus to keep himself going.
Does the story bog down in the middle, as the one reviewer said? I didn't think so. For me, it bogged down at the end, when it became numerous pages of narrative. But then, as I say, I learned that it was factually based, and my perception changed to one of appreciation.
Rated by buyers 
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The novel wades back and forth between alternating lives of Arthur and George. Arthur, a Scot, was a promising student and athlete with consider wit, charm and appeal. George, on the other hand, was born poor, the father of a Parsee Indian, has terrible eyesight, is unpopular, and has far less promise. Arthur's influence and power expands as he matures and he moves within the upper class. George, on the other hand, passes from one day to the subsequent seemingly unnoticed - sleeping and praying in his father's bedroom and devoting his life to studying railway law - leading a life of a quiet common man. And then, the lives of the two men cross when George is accused of crimes that he could hardly comprehend, no less commit - but, because he is a "different sort" George goes to prison because of racism and corruption in the police force. Julian Barnes brings the characters alive in this fictional re-creation of a real life detective story - he keeps you engaged and absorbed in this page turner.
Rated by buyers -
Julian Barnes inhabits the lives of these two men and with a dry wit gives us a look at Edwardian England from two quite different viewpoints, while providing some insight into things about prejudice and intolerance that never change. Based on a true incident, as films sometimes say, this story of Arthur Conan Doyle resolving some ambivalence in his own life by crusading for an Anglo-Indian solicitor who had been falsely accused and convicted of some ugly and pointless crimes carries the reader along effortlessly. In a prose that is lucid and compelling, Barnes makes the the story of the obscure Edalji as gripping as that of the famous Conan Doyle. He maintains these two points of view with an iron discipline, never lapsing into omniscient narrator, which adds to the mystery. We never do find out who committed the atrocities against animals that Edalji was accused of, and that's not really the point. It is a novel about prejudice and entitlement and change in society -- not at all irrelevant to a time in the United States when a grey man and a woman are both running for president.
I'd previously read Flaubert's Parrot by Barnes, another equally readable book in which he uses an historical literary figures to explore the interior of a character.
Rated by buyers -
This is a wonderful book. Smart, well-written and somehow gripping in its pace and style.
Rated by buyers -
I should begin by saying that while I am a great admirer of Barnes' literary skills, I have not always counted his essays, novels and stories among my favorites; there always seems to be a sneering undertone, a condescension towards the characters, those he disagrees with, Americans, and even the reader. Thus it was I resisted reading this book for a long time, even after a friend proclaimed it the best book she'd read in a decade.
I don't know that I'd go that far, or even as far as calling it the best book I'd read in a year, but Arthur and George is certainly among the top ten. The story is well known, at least among Conan-Doyle fans; famous titled writer takes an interest in what he sees as a miscarriage of justice. But Barnes approaches the story in an unusual- for him- way. He starts with a pair of parallel tales that don't intersect until well into the novel. (Fans of Richard Powers' novels will see strong parallels here.) And unusually (I think) for Barnes, his treatment of the main characters is uncommonly kind and sympathetic- especially so for Conan Doyle, who had many unlikable traits and opinions.
I won't go into the plot, as much of the pleasure in this book depends on the unexpected turn and surprise. Suffice it to say that this is a very involving, meticulously crafted, tale that will drag the reader along to the end, and will not disappoint.
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