The Book Review: England, England by Julian Barnes
As I continue my quest to read more and more by Julian Barnes for my thesis, I try to read his novels first and then branch out in the field of essays and other published works. I’ve read The History of the World in 10 and ½ Chapters and The Sense of an Ending before and now it is time to review England, England.
Published in 1998, England, England focuses mostly on ideas and themes that I have already encountered in the novels I have read so far by him: England, England depicts the rather odd idea of the megalomaniac Sir Jack Pitman to turn the Isle of Wight into a miniature replica of England for the potential purchasers of Quality Leisure, aka the rich. The novel is a great allegory of the relationship between history and memory, and how history is inferior to memory in most cases. This idea is a reoccurring motif in Barnes’ works; it’s the main topic of The Sense of an Ending as well.
England, England is also a depiction of a phenomenon wide-spread in our culture: the inclination towards replicas rather than original art: a replica is easily accessible and convenient, especially for a tourist. Theme parks are more and more popular, offering incredible amounts of guided fun for money.
The book is divided into three parts: it starts with England where we are acquainted with our protagonist, Martha Cochrane. We get a glimpse into her childhood which seems peaceful and happy until the point when her father leaves the family. Martha cannot answer the question What is your first memory? but she decides on one that seems important: she used to play with a The Counties of England jigsaw puzzle and she believes that her father took one of the puzzle pieces with him when he disappeared.
In the first part of the novel we get a detailed and intricate picture of how memory works: Martha knows that she doesn’t really remember some of her memories, she can only imagine them in great detail because they were told to her countless times when she was a child. Some other memories she recalls vaguely, there are details that seem definitely unimportant (like the colour of a tablecloth) and get washed out with age (failing at a competition seemed like a much bigger deal when she was younger).
These memories and the motif of the England jigsaw puzzle serve as great points to reflect on in the second part of the novel entitled England, England.
Even though the second part is the longest, it seems to take focus off Martha in the first section of it. It starts off with the grand plan coined by Sir Jack Pitman, a rather eccentric businessman to create an England theme park which would contain every aspect of Englishness. Martha is hired as the resident cynic to help with the project development, but it remains unclear why her presence is actually needed. She is mostly there to give the idealistic thoughts some edge and pull the process back to reality, even though it is hard to grasp any ounce of reality in the situation. Jack Pitman is mostly concerned with looks, about himself and his project: he wears items of clothing which should only be worn by members of certain clubs, he doesn’t care about historical facts, he encourages the altering of those just to fit the purpose of England, England.
The theme park is designed to have everything English in one place, no matter what it is. The project developers create a poll for potential purchasers of Quality Leisure in twenty-five countries, and they come up with a list of the 50 most mentioned things about England (the list includes Wembley Arena, the Royal Family, double-decker buses, hypocrisy, stiff upper lips, Manchester United and Robin Hood). Sir Jack doesn’t agree with most of them since he is, in his words, a true patriot, so he easily changes facts into conveniences to match the England he has in his vision. Even Doctor Max, the Official Historian takes part in altering historical truth for the sake of the theme park: they come up with a little back story starting from the saying “Heavens to Betsy” and create the island’s logo and slogan from that hypothetical woman (not necessarily called Betsy) who was supposedly swept up by strong wind with a basket off eggs but still managed to arrive safely on the ground with all the eggs intact. The story is a legend, at best, because the staff tries to make it happen naturally and enhanced but they never succeed, but they still decide to use this very convenient and spectacular story as a main attraction of the island.
From this point on the events focus on how the Isle of Wight is made into England, England: Sir Jack tries to gather as many of the customs and people he can, but they are easily replaced by doubles, replicas or actors. The main idea is not to have authenticity, but to look authentic enough for a tourist to enjoy himself. They even interview a man who is supposedly more intelligent than the average with vast knowledge of the English culture, but Dr. Max is shocked to see that he barely remembers any facts about English history.
Martha and Paul, her boyfriend, the Ideas Catcher at Pitco (his job is to document what the meetings are about) decide to look into one of Sir Jack’s habits of visiting Auntie May every single week, without missing a week ever. They hire a reporter famous for uncovering scandalous stories and find out about their boss’s weird fetishes and sexual preferences, which results in Martha blackmailing her boss into making her the CEO of the project as a response to Sir Jack trying to fire them.
Martha takes over the business and she is, indeed, very successful: England, England becomes a world-known tourist attraction with tons and tons of people visiting. The theme park is starting to overshadow the real England, shattering its economy and pushing it into nothingness easily, but it still doesn’t stop Martha, Sir Jack or anyone else on the project, they keep the show going. It only becomes clear that the deceit won’t work well on the long run when the employees on the island start to lose control of reality. No worker uses his or her real name, they are simply addressed as the characters they are supposes to portray: e. g. Robin Hood, Lady Godiva and so on. This results in some of the people slipping too deeply into the mindset of the character, they lose their grasp on reality (Robin Hood and his Merrie Men start actually hunting and robbing), others cannot keep the façade up, they fall out of character which is not accepted by the visitors. The slippage in personality of the employees grows to be nearly uncontrollable and a great threat to the island while Martha realizes that she is falling out of love with Paul and that she is a main leader in something she used to resent in her youth.
The third part of the novel, entitled Anglia serves as the aftermath of Martha’s departure off the island of England, England. It shows an “old” England forced into poverty because of the theme park, less and less populated and with almost no means of survival. Even its name is changed to Anglia, the inhabitants are forced back into a much simpler living (e. g. coal mining, steam trains etc.). Martha Cochrane comes back to this island after a long journey around various parts of the world, and takes part in reviving the village of Fete and the English countryside as she remembers it. The ending is in no way glorious or positive, and to me, it isn’t even negative, it leaves us with the same feeling Martha feels when she finds a leaf in her old book and she has no memory of the day she has put it in there, it ends with emptiness.
The story has a very interesting topic: the failing of the original when a replica exists, history as an easily modifiable ‘story’, the ways in which memory works, failing to recall crucial details but having clear images in our minds about things that don’t really seem important, etc.
What I miss in this story is the development of characters: Barnes presents us with a strong female lead; Martha Cochrane is an independent, clever woman who is able to take control of her own life and lead well, but her inner world doesn’t seem to change thoroughly, even after the realization that she’s been doing something she doesn’t believe in. Her relationship with Paul starts and ends just by fading into and out of her life, she doesn’t seem to be attached to him. Barnes is capable of describing their emotions and articulate their thoughts in a very descriptive manner, but somehow there is no space for empathy with these characters. Even though Martha is supposed to be the protagonist of the story, her most important scenes take place in the first part of the novel when the readers get to know her past and her childhood. There is less and less space to feel empathy for any of the characters throughout the rest of the story, most of their personalities submerge under Sir Jack’s tyranny and there is no way for their relationships to develop because of the habits and ticks they have (e. g. Dr. Max’s only personality trait is that he speaks like a TV persona, even when he has a very important thing to say, his shallow focus on appearance, to appear smart makes him seem the exact opposite of it).
In my opinion, the novel discusses an interesting topic and has a nice allegory to build it up on, but the story in itself isn’t engaging. I would say that it is not the best by Barnes that I have read, but it is surely a nice approach to the topic of memory and history and the theme of artistic originality versus replicas. I would rate it a 3/5.
