Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes

For a long time all I knew of this novel was the title and that it was post-modern and meta-fictional, so for some reason that led me to believe it was narrated by a parrot. And that led me to not read it for quite awhile (not that there's anything inherently wrong with a novel narrated by a parrot.) I really can't imagine why I leapt to that conclusion, but this is in no way a book about or by a parrot. It's a clever Kundera-ish expansion of what a novel can do. Some critics call it a satire of literary criticism, but if that was all it was it wouldn't be of much interest--what an easy target, after all. Instead it combines the first person woes of an academic while throwing in literary criticism, literary biography, and yes, satire. But it's simultaneously satire of lit crit (the grand puzzle that frames the novel is which of two stuffed parrots was Flaubert's inspiration) while working as a piece of lit crit (My favorite bit is the list of all the things the narrator would ban from literature) and as what seems to be a pretty sincere bit of author-love for Flaubert. Since it's told in first person it actually struck me as largely realist in that this guy would obsess about these things. This is the way he'd tell his life story because his life is so wrapped in Flaubert's. In other words, it would be less realist if bits of Flaubert bio were thrown into a third person narrative or a first person narrative of a non-Flaubert-related character. So the novel is post-modern metafiction but not randomly so.

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

This is my first Julian Barnes novel, and while it took me a couple of tries to get past the opening--it ping-pongs so quickly between the two main characters at the start that I kept stopping--but once I got going I really admired and enjoyed it.

The Arthur of the title is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame and the George is an English-Indian solicitor accused of insane crimes that he didn't commit. I could never quite tell if it was based on a real case or if Barnes made the whole thing up (Google would tell I'm sure), but I'm often a sucker for the real life author as fictional character genre and I enjoyed imagining Conan Doyle via Barne's creation. (confession: I've never read any Sherlock Holmes).

But what really struck me about the novel is the way it uses the conventions of mystery within a literary novel. The end, which I won't give away, is a bold move away from the conventions of mystery but Barnes gets away with it because of his beginning (for the first 20-30 pages you have no idea you're headed toward a mystery). Anyway, I've noticed lately that literary authors, like Kate Atkinson, are taking on the mystery genre more directly and I think it's been good all around--whether you think of them as literary novels with strong plots or genre novels with strong characters--they're a pleasure to read. It can be useful for a novelist to acknowledge that we're pretty much all writing mysteries--not necessarily about crimes but about things unknown which will gradually be revealed--and so understanding the rules of the genre (multiple suspects, red herrings, tension, subplots and unexpected developments to name a few) can help with even the most literary construction.