Book
Review
This
Booker winner of 2011 is a short novel that takes you to peaks of insights and intellectual
probes into life. But the plot nosedives
to the standards of mediocre thrillers with the suspense revealed at the end. The author is a brilliant writer and hence
the reader is not left disappointed in spite of that apparent flaw.
What
is life? This is the most fundamental
question raised by the novel. Can it be
understood and explained by logic and reason?
Can people live together without causing “damage” to one another? How do we react to the ineluctable
damage? Is life mostly about the damages
and our responses to them? “Some admit
the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help
others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid
further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are
ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.” (44)*
Adrian
and Anthony are two of the four fast friends at school who are brilliant and
are conscious about their superiority too.
But Adrian ends up killing himself at the age of 22. “In the letter he left for the coroner he had
explained his reasoning: that life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for
it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the
nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person
decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is a moral and human duty to
act on the consequences of that decision.” (48)
There
are a couple of allusions to Albert Camus’s argument that the only question
worth answering in life is that of suicide.
Is life worth living? What makes
it worth living? Can Camus’s answer, “intellectual
honesty”, satisfy us fully? Do we need
something more than mere logic and reason to sustain us through life? What about that terrible subhuman part of our
being, the dominant part, the emotions?
Julian
Barnes packs a lot of fiery material in his small novel of 150 pages. Almost every page of the novel puts some
spark into your brain and makes you think deep.
About life. Its meaning. The worthwhileness of putting up with
it. If one can really see through life,
see life with complete transparency and objectivity, would one still choose to
put up with it?
In
spite of all the intellectual acumen, will life leave you feeling terribly “average”
in the end because you haven’t understood what life is really about? “Average, that’s what I’d been, ever since I
left school,” the protagonist of the novel realises. “Average at university and work; average in
friendship, loyalty, love; average, no doubt, at sex.... Average at life;
average at truth; morally average.” (100)
Most
lives consist of “compromise and littleness” (140) and does the ego of the
intellectual permit him to accept that simple fact? Is the intellectual above the compromise and
littleness? “We thought we were being mature
when we were only being safe. We
imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way
of avoiding things rather facing them.
Time ...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem
wobbly, our certainties whimsical.” (93)
And
the time comes at the end. When death
approaches. Too late. Or does it come at all? Will our life rather be “merely the story we
have told about life. Told to others,
but – mainly – to ourselves”? (95)
A
lot of big questions are raised in this small novel about life and its
meaning. Reading the novel is like
taking a plunge into a metaphysical pool.
The suspense revealed at the end comes as a terrible anticlimax, a
thumbing of the nose at all the intellectual quests and questions. Is the author telling us that life is nothing
more than what Shakespeare’s Macbeth described as a tale told by an idiot, full
of sound and fury, signifying nothing?
* All page numbers refer to the 2012 Vintage paperback edition
of the novel.
I have been thinking of getting a copy of this ever since it won the Man Booker Prize. But someway or other, I missed. After reading your review, I decided to order it today. I love Barns's way of expressing things. Thanks Tomichan for sharing this.
ReplyDeleteYou will love the novel, I think.
DeleteI have been searching for a good but comprehensive read from sometime to gain back my reading habit. This book seems to be my interest with all you have mentioned above. I would certainly buy it and will come back to this post to share my feedback with you. Thanks a ton for this one, I am sure it will stimulate my thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to have provoked interest in two persons at least. Do return with your analysis. I' d love that.
DeleteHmm. A thought provoking work, no wonder that's why it won the Booker! I am reading a lot of Buddhist philosophies these days so whatever you have written about life and death here, according to this novel, doesn't make sense if I am to believe what I am reading that "both life and death are suffering and in continuum based on our accumulated karmas, good or bad. Our ultimate goal should be to end this cycle." But I don't want to limit myself to some beliefs, said or done, as I have no first hand experience in any of them so I would keep myself open to whatever I come across. Would definitely read this book!
ReplyDeleteIife is made very complex by other people: 'damage' as the novelist calls it. I have experienced that even if I keep my karmas pure other people will poke their nose and many other organs as well into my affairs and make my life a hell. A contemporary of Camus said, 'The other is my hell.' (Sartre)
Delete