Elizabeth Finch

March 1, 2022

When he signed up for an adult class called Culture and Civilization, Neil didn't expect to develop a sort of intellectual crush on demanding professor Elizabeth Finch. Their relationship shapes his life, even after she dies--she leaves him notes on his latest obsession, Julian the Apostate--as Booker Prize winner Barnes explores the many variations on love and the undercurrents of "culture and civilization" in our lives.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 18, 2022
Booker Prize winner Barnes (The Sense of an Ending) delivers a tepid, talky meditation on the impact of a professor on a middle-aged man. Former actor Neil, wounded by the end of his marriage, signs up for an adult education course titled “Culture and Civilisation” taught by Elizabeth Finch, an author of two scholarly works. He’s immediately entranced by Finch’s calm, rigorous presence as she lectures on St. Ursula, the abolition of slavery, and Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor of Rome, causing Neil to feel his “brain change gear.” After the course ends, Neil meets Finch for lunch two or three times a year for two decades, though she never eases her reserved demeanor. One day, Neil learns Elizabeth has died and is astonished that she has left him her books and papers. Scouring her bequest for clues on the private life she kept hidden, he honors her frequent references to Julian the Apostate by writing the essay on the emperor that forms the novel’s central section, which, via Barnes, is reliably intelligent and perceptive. Barely characterized beyond his preoccupation with Finch’s ideas, which Barnes shares in lengthy quotations from her lectures and notebooks, Neil, though, is less character than mouthpiece. “You can see, I hope, why I adored her,” he effuses, but Finch’s appeal remains as mysterious as she does. Even devoted fans may be disappointed.

July 1, 2022
The latest work of fiction from prodigious, award-winning Barnes focuses on Elizabeth Finch, a charismatic, unusual, and unerringly assured university lecturer. The narrator is Neil, a student in Finch's "Culture and Civilization" course in which she beguiles and enthralls her students with her thought-provoking takes on history. Neil is enraptured by her class, and continues to meet with Finch for lunch for 20 years after it is over. Neil's two divorces and many careers stay in the background as he focuses on Finch and those in her orbit. Once Neil acquires her notebooks, the novel takes a W. G. Sebald-like detour through the historical depictions of Julian the Apostate, whom Finch admired. Merging the ear for voice, language, and character Barnes displays in his fiction with the exhaustive research he conducts for such works of nonfiction as The Man in the Red Coat (2019), this is a lyrical, thoughtful, and intriguing exploration of love, grief, and the collective myths of history. Barnes adds yet another remarkable title to his astoundingly remarkable body of work.

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August 1, 2022
A man processes his crush on a former teacher and the impact of what she taught. Late-period Barnes novels have either been tales of doomed love (The Only Story, 2018) or intellectual persecution (The Noise of Time, 2016). This slim, contemplative, modestly successful novel blends those two themes. The Elizabeth of the title is a professor teaching a continuing education class called Culture and Civilisation, with a particular focus on the conflict between Greco-Roman and Christian philosophy. Neil, the narrator, is her eager pupil, entranced by her intellectual rigor and self-possession. What kind of past and inner life produced, as he puts it, "the most grown-up person I have known"? Upon her death nearly two decades after the course, he has an opportunity to find out: Though their relationship since the class was limited to occasional lunches, she's bequeathed him her library and papers to puzzle through. Neil's investigations send him deep into the life of the Roman emperor Julian, a fierce critic of nascent Christianity, and the book's middle section is consumed by a somewhat drowsy contemplation of Julian's life. Whether all this philosophy makes Neil a better person is an open question; he mentions two divorces, but the exes, and the reasons for the splits, are entirely off-screen. But Barnes plainly wishes to elevate Elizabeth to a moral leadership role he feels British society is sorely lacking. (She causes a brief furor when anti-intellectual conservatives seize on a lecture she delivers on Julian's critique of Christianity.) Barnes renders all this with his trademark grace and equipoise but at a low boil; the story has few of the fireworks or twists of The Only Story and The Sense of an Ending. Elizabeth is an intriguing character, but one is left wondering if Barnes, like Neil, has saddled her with more import than she deserves. An engaging if slight tale of intellectual romance.

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September 23, 2022

In this latest from Booker Prize winner Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot), Professor Elizabeth Finch, who teaches a course on culture and civilization, is an object of fascination to a group of adult learners. Intensely private, unconventional in style, and outspoken in her opinions, Elizabeth encourages her students to think broadly and consider viewpoints other their own. For Neil, the narrator, the course is life-changing. Long after it ends, he maintains a friendship with Elizabeth, meeting her for lunches until her death from cancer. It still comes as a surprise that she bequeaths her books and papers to him. The bigger mystery is what she expects him to find in them. Her notebooks lead him to Julian the Apostate, the Roman emperor whose break with Christianity for a more inclusive view of religion was first admired and later reviled. Neil's research continues where Elizabeth left off, leading him to philosophers, historians, and writers from Julian's own time to the present. VERDICT With a little too much ado about Julian (the author's namesake?), Barnes blends fact and fiction as he has done before into an imaginative whole.--Barbara Love

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.