How are you getting on with the Mid Sussex Reading Challenge?
While it currently isn’t possible to borrow print books from our libraries, there are thousands of free eBooks available through our eLibrary, and we’re adding new titles all the time. Or, if you’re struggling to find a book for this month’s challenge theme, you can skip to any other month of the challenge or use your wildcard – to reread your favourite book.
Today, we’ve got a new review from a local reader who chose to skip ahead to the July challenge and read a debut novel. Read on to find out their views on Metroland by Julian Barnes.
For a debut novel, Barnes produces a quite mature display, despite the storyline concerning the coming of age travails of Christopher in north London. Metroland is less experimental than the novel Mr Barnes read from to us when he visited our university department a decade or so later.
Early on Christopher, and his best friend Toni, two boys, cope with school and growing up, with a sharp sense of humour. There is a droll rendezvous with a veteran rail commuter which enables us to learn the history of the eponymous Metropolitan line and its environs. This context is later contrasted with a bird’s eye view of Kilburn.
However, Barnes generally eschews the sociological, for a generous mix of philosophy, French literature and art – themes all his later work envelope. The dialogue can be cut and thrust, riveting like a play, especially when a little older, the action takes Christopher to Paris.
The interchanges with Annique, as well as les amis Anglais, would I think, adapt well to the stage. Christopher’s return to the UK is handled matter of factly, his marriage to Marian, and his burgeoning career into publishing.
The novel settles down to a frank denouement, of hard achieved social realism. The closing scenes see Toni visiting the married couple, and a poignant chapter on an old uncle’s sad demise. Finally a rather sober school dinner reunion rounds off the general picture of domestic content and brings down the curtain.
I like Barnes’ quirky, offbeat momentum, and there is enough drama and also a degree of social candour to keep things very earthy.
What have you been reading recently? Let us know by sending in your own review, posting in our Facebook group or tweeting us @WSCCLibraries using the hashtag #MidSussexReadingChallenge.
You’re also very welcome to join our Virtual Reading Group on Facebook to chat to over 500 local readers about books and reading! It’s free and everyone is welcome.
Finally, visit our Current Offer page to find out how West Sussex Libraries can support you at this time.
The views expressed in this review are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of West Sussex Libraries.
Mid Sussex Reading Challenge 2020 
Never been a huge Barnes fan since ‘Flaubert’s Parrot’ and ‘The History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters’. I really ought to give him another go. There is a sort of dry density that has put me off in the past.
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