Tuesday 3 January 2012

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes, Vintage, 512 pages
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

An intriguing fictional account of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's real life campaign to clear the name of George Edalji, an English-born, Indian solicitor sentenced for the Great Wyrley Outrages, a series of vicious attacks on farm animals in rural Staffordshire. The events themselves, their background and their consequences are told alternately from Arthur and George's points of view, giving insight into their surprising similarities as well as cultural and personal differences.
Conan Doyle emerges as a truly larger-than-life character: successful doctor, athlete and eventually the famous writer we now know him to be. Although he resents being confused with Sherlock Holmes, his most famous creation, Arthur feels partly duty-bound and partly personally compelled to use his deductive powers to prove George's innocence. The case is brought to his attention as he fights apathy and depression following the death of his first wife and a crisis in his feelings for his mistress. The challenge of detective work proves to be his salvation, reinvigorating the middle-aged writer and bringing back his zest for life. In spite of his foibles and eccentricities, the biggest of which is his dysfunctional, pseudo-chivalrous attitude to women (he and his 'mistress' remain in a purely platonic relationship for a decade, and he vehemently opposes women's suffrage), Arthur's keen intellect and generosity make him a profoundly  sympathetic character. A touching illustration is his kind conduct when acting as a celebrity judge in a strongman competition: seeing the winner walk off alone with no money for accommodation, he puts the athlete up in a hotel room for the night.
George is the physical and in many ways psychological opposite to Arthur. Slight of stature, extremely near-sighted and highly literal-minded, George is a "nerd" by today's standards and considered odd even in his own time. The son of a vicar, with whom he continues to live well into his twenties, George leads a sheltered life and appears supremely naive and innocent. He holds the highest standards for himself and others, refusing to attribute his social isolation and eventual conviction to racial hatred. Indeed, his refusal to view himself as any different or lower in status to white Englishmen verges on denial. But like Arthur, George has the logical and (seemingly) objective, detached mind of a detective. Having heard of Conan Doyle and the Sherlock Holmes stories, he appeals to the author to help demonstrate his innocence. Interestingly, although he deeply appreciates Arthur's help, George also recognises that Conan Doyle's defence of Edalji is just as flawed and derived from conclusions based on circumstantial evidence as the original indictment. The vivid portrayal of these two eccentric characters is the main selling point of the book. The novel really comes into its own when Arthur and George eventually meet to exchange ideas about the case and discover each other's similarities: a keen intelligence, a mutual passion for justice, and a love of order and routine in life. Another fascinating part of the book is Conan Doyle's heated exchange with Captain Anson, Chief Constable of Staffordshire, who reveals hitherto unknown facts about George and maintains that he must be guilty. Ultimately, we hope that George is innocent and, like Arthur, want to believe it. But nothing is certain, there are no credible witnesses to the crime, and no one knows what happened; to this day, the Wyrley Outrages remain an unsolved mystery. It's not the solution but the detective work involved that brings satisfaction, as Arthur himself discovers. Getting to know the two characters through their own subjective points of view is a detective story in itself.
I rated Arthur and George 4/5 - overall, a fascinating story with well-depicted characters with a slightly disappointing ending which emphasizes Arthur's obsession with spiritualism.

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