Arthur and George

A friend who was new to the blog checked it out recently and later asked me if we actually read any of the books that we talk about. That was my clue that I needed to get back to posting on some of the books that I’ve read recently, instead of cracking wise. Next in my queue, is the Booker Prize short-listed Arthur and George by the three time Booker-nominated author, Julian Barnes.

(warning: spoilers ahead) Arthur and George is an historical fiction account of certain events in England at the end of the Nineteenth Century and beginning of the Twentieth. The titular “Arthur” is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who we know is destined to become the legendary creator of Sherlock Holmes. George is George Edalji, the son of a Church of England vicar, a first generation Englishman, and a promising young attorney.

The book follows the two men from childhood with each chapter sub-heading typically named after one of the other so that the reader is aware of whose story is being told as the novel jumps between them and other key figures. The two men’s lives are notably different, and they do not intersect until George has been accused, convicted, and imprisoned for committing the “Great Wryley Outrages“.

For various reasons, it appeared obvious to outside observers that George had been wrongly convicted. Once out of prison, George fights to clear his name and to be restored to the legal bar so he can continue to work as an attorney. In a rather unlikely turn of events, but all true, Arthur becomes involved in the campaign to clear George of all wrong doing.

The case highlighted several interesting issues with the British court system at the time. The judge hearing George’s case had no legal training and was a representative of the local gentry. Even scarier, once a case had been decided at the time, there was no recourse for appeal other than to write a letter to the Home Office (whatever that is) explaining your plight. There was no legal reason for the Home Office to read, much less act, on your letter.

Arthur was able to bring publicity to the case and helped to expose some of the more suspect evidence used to convict George. Eventually, in classic Orwellian language, George is declared innocent of the charges, but he is not compensated in any way since the government did nothing wrong in convicting him. As a result of George’s case, the needed judicial reforms were eventually implemented.

I thought the book was mostly very well written and fascinating. The problem for me began when I realized that George’s case had been resolved and there was still a hundred pages to go. The book continues on until George attends a memorial event for Arthur’s death. The men had seen fit to run into one another exactly once in the interim. The book’s WikiPedia entry says that the book touches on some of Barnes’s most cherished themes: how people change over time, death, spirituality, etc. Great. I could have done without a large chunk of descriptions of Arthur’s interest in and defense of spiritualism and seances. It seemed, to me, to take away from the more interesting interaction between the two men and their differing backgrounds. It also suggests that regardless of what happened, one of them was really much more interesting than the other. Why not call the book Arthur and George, but Mostly Arthur.

An aside: The book’s official web site could be one of the more annoying book sites I have ever visited. You have to play “concentration” with words like “British!” (their exclamation point, not mine) and “clever” to reveal one by one the ten reasons why they think that you should buy the book. But at least it has lots of flash animation and is difficult to navigate.