Book Review: Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes

By Sara Sadeghi Avai

Julian Barnes manages to bring history to life in this romantic and rather academic story. We are thrown into the middle of a university philosophy class and, along with every other classmate, watch as Neil falls in love with Professor Finch and her stoic ways. Barnes’s ability to create love and admiration of one character by another gives way to the boundless magic of imagination and humanity in writing. The author has built and broken a character in front of our eyes, and what we (and Neil) are privy to about Elizabeth’s life haunts us. Split into three parts, the book constitutes an academic essay about Julian the Apostate—a philosophical and historical icon for Elizabeth and the subject of Neil’s eventual tribute to her—sandwiched between Neil’s intimate account of learning about his beloved and respectable professor through her death, her past, and ultimately his own future.

Our first-person narrator is a beautifully spoken one and although one can argue the main character is Elizabeth Finch, I would argue that it is Neil who becomes the dreamlike person we readers would love to meet. We learn of his relationship with Elizabeth throughout the story, and Barnes is immaculate in placing clues in Neil’s sentences, creating the sense that Neil is telling us a story and laying the crumbs for us to follow. Does she love Neil, too? Or is their friendship just one of a love of academia and life’s great questions?

Suffice it to say I was hooked from the first page, and my love of academia lore, the professor-student dynamic, and romantic stoics drank up each page. Although the middle chapter felt like a small interruption to a flawless narration, the final chapter combined nostalgic emotion and present-time feelings, creating a catharsis in the story’s final pages. As an English major, this was an absolute win for me, and I would recommend it to any history or romantic buffs.

Thank you to Random House Canada Publishing for providing a complimentary copy of the novel for an honest review.

Book Review: Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King

By Sara Sadeghi Aval

Content warning: sexual abuse

The intertwining of stories and people has long captivated readers. Thrusting the reader into a new world with each chapter not only creates multiple universes but makes clear the connections across the human experience. In Five Tuesdays in Winter, Lily King pens ten short stories and worlds that deal with love and loss, and the reactions that we have in the face of them all. Five Tuesdays in Winter is King’s fifth major publication, and her book Euphoria has been acknowledged as one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review.  

Although each story is written in either first or third person perspective, the author maintains an intimacy with the reader through her positioning of the characters in their surroundings, and within their lives. King’s ability to adjust her tone from character to character helps the reader believe and imagine clearly. Her use of internal dialogue gives us an inside look that is difficult to conjure when switching universes. The book begins with the teenager Carol, who is sent to take care of a family and finds herself facing her first emotional and sexual struggle, moves on to the bookseller Mitchell who stands a few feet from his love and cannot bring himself to say so, and ends with a single mother and author who is coming to terms with the outcome of her life and relationships. King manages to pull the heartstrings of humans at each stage of their lives. Within a few pages, she outlines each character’s circumstances, their immediate situation, and their catharsis (if one was had).

After finishing the first story “Creature” I found myself flipping through the pages hesitantly, not in fear of what I might read but to savour the lessons I read on each page. While I could not fully relate to the characters older than me or divorced, I continued to end each chapter with highlighted sentences where I had experienced eureka moments. I often admire authors that can make the reader truly believe they are not alone in losing love, in betrayal, in fear, or in perseverance. I was brought back to books like Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, with its similar passion and pain and depth of characters and their toils. Five Tuesdays in Winter is a must-read for anyone who has ever loved. 

Thank you to Grove Press for complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.