Book Review: “Elizabeth Finch” by Julian Barnes
All Brains, Very Little Heart
I usually like long books — books that you can spend all day under the covers with and be enraptured by. However, sometimes I like short books, too — titles you can easily digest in a sitting or so. Such books tend to make for pleasing reviews, at least as far as I’m concerned, since I like being able to file my words quickly and self-publish them in this forum. Well, Julian Barnes’ new book Elizabeth Finch falls into the latter category. I read it in two sittings and the whole thing is less than 200 pages. It is a novel with some pedigree — after all, its author has won the Man Booker Prize in the United Kingdom, and book awards don’t get too much bigger than that! However, I must remark with sadness that I was disappointed and underwhelmed with Elizabeth Finch. Part of the reason is that — even though a lot of people consider me to be really smart for someone who only has an undergraduate degree — the content and point of this novel largely sailed right over my head and down the river into the vast ocean. This is a tale for intellectuals and academics, since, after all, this is a novel that is partially set on a university campus somewhere in England, probably during the ’80s as I would imagine. (The book doesn’t make it quite clear as to the date of its setting.)
Elizabeth Finch is about the titular character, an older woman who lectures a group of students in what is presumably a graduate-level course in European literature (though the novel doesn’t come out and explicitly state this, either). One of her students, a twice-divorced former television actor named Neil, is so smitten by her that he goes out with her on luncheon dates throughout the rest of her life to discuss intellectual matters. She dies of cancer eventually. Neil is willed all her writings upon her death and comes to know her brother, Christopher. Neil is essentially a man who is obsessed with Ms. Finch, to the point of wanting to write a biography of her life. This is a bit unusual, perhaps, as Neil never had sex with her. In that way, the novel is about the platonic love between members of the opposite sex and I suppose there’s a good moral here for readers. I wish the novel had mined this vein a little more acutely.
However, Elizabeth Finch is a bit of a slog for such a short novel. The entire midsection of the book is taken up by an essay that Neil has written about Julian the Apostate, monotheism, and the early Christian church. Even as a Christian myself, I found this to be a part of the book that tried my patience because the author assumes that you, the reader, are as brilliant as he is — and no offense is meant there, I mean that quite literally. (As I’ll note later, I think Barnes is a gifted author.) I also didn’t see a really clear connection between this section and what it had to do with the male protagonist’s infatuation with his former professor. I hate to be disrespectful and sound churlish, but this segment of the read was downright boring — which surprised me as matters of religion do interest me. I think I can be charitable and say that if the bulk of this material had been written in a more accessible manner without references to obscure writers and theologians, I would have enjoyed it much more and perhaps would have found it more interesting. It would have helped, too, if the linkages to the main story about the life and times of Elizabeth Finch were made much clearer vis-à-vis this essay.
Another criticism I have of this book — and I hate to be trashing it in any way, so forgive me if I wind up sounding in any way remotely harsh — is that for a book that’s about one man’s platonic admiration for a member of the opposite sex, we don’t get a sense of what makes Elizabeth Finch tick. She dies relatively early on in this short read, and what we are mostly presented with are memories. I would have liked to have gotten to know her much better as a character and, surely, that bit of the book about Julian the Apostate could have been excised to make this much more of a character study, in my ever so humble opinion. If you put this another way, you could say with a great deal of fairness that I was expecting an entirely different book than what we are presented with here. The resulting novel that Barnes has written aims for the head instead of the heart, and that is — if you’ll excuse the obvious allusion — devastatingly heartbreaking to read.
Would I recommend Elizabeth Finch? To the average reader, I would alas say no — as much as I would hate to slag on a book of this nature. It’s really clear to me that Barnes has a brilliant mind and may be something of a genius. After all, you must be a man or woman of extraordinary talent to win a Booker Prize. It’s additionally clear to me that Elizabeth Finch is a book that could be “high art.” If you enjoy watching an author riff on obscure references and write in pseudo-academic prose, then all the power to you. You will likely enjoy this book, then, and I would be happy to hear why you enjoyed it in the comments section adjacent to this review on Medium. However, I, myself, could not make heads or tails of this work and I am not sure what it was trying to say. I can say — and I hope this doesn’t sound bitter in any way — that I was pleased that the book was short because I think I might have otherwise abandoned it if it had rambled on at some considerable length. Take from that what you may. Elizabeth Finch is an acquired taste. While it presents male-female relationships in unique ways and proves that you can be just friends with someone who doesn’t share your genitalia, it’s a book for someone with a Master’s degree. If that doesn’t put you off, then Elizabeth Finch may be a pleasant surprise. If so, I’d be sincerely interested in knowing why because, in the end, I just didn’t understand the point of this one. Sorry!
Julian Barnes’ Elizabeth Finch was published by Knopf USA / Penguin Random House Canada on August 16, 2022.
Of course, if you like what you see, please recommend this piece (click on the clapping hands icon below) and share it with your followers.
Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
