Volume 36, Number 16 · October 26, 1989
Balancing Act
By Robert M. Adams
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
by Julian Barnes
Knopf, 307 pp., $18.95
The new work of fiction by Julian Barnes is his fifth since 1981, and about as much entitled to the name of a 'novel' as to the name of A History of the World. Like its predecessor, Flaubert's Parrot, it is a novel in deep disguise. Setting aside the matter of titles, a reader who picks up this new book will find it to consist of ten or eleven short stories, mostly sardonic in tone, written with meticulous point, at a temperature not far from zero centigrade. Several are connected with one another, thematically if not by narrative links; they create, if not a history, then a vision of the world. There's a fair bit of factual material woven into the prevailing fantasy, a good bit of impersonation in different voices, a couple of relatively straight narrations, and also something like a rhapsody. It's a book to keep the reader on his toes.
Review, 1284 words
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