Arthur and George

As expected Arthur and George is compelling and beautifully written and contains a wealth of subtelty. It also makes me feel exceedingly uncomfortable. Julian Barnes has a knack for lulling you with his deceptively simple prose full of descriptions of bucolic lifestyles with loving families and then introducing some extreme nastiness or moral quandary. I find myself catching my breath and going "oh, I hadn't realised that that was the case" and I look back and can see there were clues planted in the choice of words far earlier on.

Before She Met Me was like this. There were certainly some very very dark parts of Staring at the Sun which I only vaguely remember as being about a pilot in the second world war with suicidal tendencies as a result of love gone wrong (sounds like I need to read it again).

Talking it Over and the sequel (Love etc??)were also full of nastiness but it was less unexpected because these books were more obviously experimental in form.

Last night I forced myself to stop reading before I galloped through the whole thing and wasted it. This was very hard. I was however extremely glad that there were significant delays on the train this morning and I had an extra twenty minutes to read before work. Thank-you City Rail.