DNF @ 25%

This is a beautifully written book for someone who is more philosophically minded than me and doesn't mind a meandering plot line of one man's thoughts about his college professor.

This ARC was provided by the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I really appreciated the way that Barnes approaches romance from an unusual way. This was a beautifully written and insightful book.

This book just wasn’t for me. It was very rich in philosophy and historical fiction. Normally, I would love to read something like this, but there was just something that didn’t sit right with me.

"Elizabeth Finch" is a short, dense, philosophical novel by Julian Barnes. It follows Neil, a former student of the charismatic Elizabeth Finch, who rekindles his relationship with her posthumously as he examines her letters. While the novel raises many interesting questions, it is a little dry and cannot be rescued from tedium by its short length. There are better works in Barnes' canon.

I usually like long books — books that you can spend all day under the covers with and be enraptured by. However, sometimes I like short books, too — titles you can easily digest in a sitting or so. Such books tend to make for pleasing reviews, at least as far as I’m concerned, since I like being able to file my words quickly and self-publish them in this forum. Well, Julian Barnes’ new book Elizabeth Finch falls into the latter category. I read it in two sittings and the whole thing is less than 200 pages. It is a novel with some pedigree — after all, its author has won the Man Booker Prize in the United Kingdom, and book awards don’t get too much bigger than that! However, I must remark with sadness that I was disappointed and underwhelmed with Elizabeth Finch. Part of the reason is that — even though a lot of people consider me to be really smart for someone who only has an undergraduate degree — the content and point of this novel largely sailed right over my head and down the river into the vast ocean. This is a tale for intellectuals and academics, since, after all, this is a novel that is partially set on a university campus somewhere in England, probably during the ’80s as I would imagine. (The book doesn’t make it quite clear as to the date of its setting.)

Elizabeth Finch is about the titular character, an older woman who lectures a group of students in what is presumably a graduate-level course in European literature (though the novel doesn’t come out and explicitly state this, either). One of her students, a twice-divorced former television actor named Neil, is so smitten by her that he goes out with her on luncheon dates throughout the rest of her life to discuss intellectual matters. She dies of cancer eventually. Neil is willed all her writings upon her death and comes to know her brother, Christopher. Neil is essentially a man who is obsessed with Ms. Finch, to the point of wanting to write a biography of her life. This is a bit unusual, perhaps, as Neil never had sex with her. In that way, the novel is about the platonic love between members of the opposite sex and I suppose there’s a good moral here for readers. I wish the novel had mined this vein a little more acutely.

However, Elizabeth Finch is a bit of a slog for such a short novel. The entire midsection of the book is taken up by an essay that Neil has written about Julian the Apostate, monotheism, and the early Christian church. Even as a Christian myself, I found this to be a part of the book that tried my patience because the author assumes that you, the reader, are as brilliant as he is — and no offense is meant there, I mean that quite literally. (As I’ll note later, I think Barnes is a gifted author.) I also didn’t see a really clear connection between this section and what it had to do with the male protagonist’s infatuation with his former professor. I hate to be disrespectful and sound churlish, but this segment of the read was downright boring — which surprised me as matters of religion do interest me. I think I can be charitable and say that if the bulk of this material had been written in a more accessible manner without references to obscure writers and theologians, I would have enjoyed it much more and perhaps would have found it more interesting. It would have helped, too, if the linkages to the main story about the life and times of Elizabeth Finch were made much clearer vis-à-vis this essay.

Another criticism I have of this book — and I hate to be trashing it in any way, so forgive me if I wind up sounding in any way remotely harsh — is that for a book that’s about one man’s platonic admiration for a member of the opposite sex, we don’t get a sense of what makes Elizabeth Finch tick. She dies relatively early on in this short read, and what we are mostly presented with are memories. I would have liked to have gotten to know her much better as a character and, surely, that bit of the book about Julian the Apostate could have been excised to make this much more of a character study, in my ever so humble opinion. If you put this another way, you could say with a great deal of fairness that I was expecting an entirely different book than what we are presented with here. The resulting novel that Barnes has written aims for the head instead of the heart, and that is — if you’ll excuse the obvious allusion — devastatingly heartbreaking to read.

Would I recommend Elizabeth Finch? To the average reader, I would alas say no — as much as I would hate to slag on a book of this nature. It’s really clear to me that Barnes has a brilliant mind and may be something of a genius. After all, you must be a man or woman of extraordinary talent to win a Booker Prize. It’s additionally clear to me that Elizabeth Finch is a book that could be “high art.” If you enjoy watching an author riff on obscure references and write in pseudo-academic prose, then all the power to you. You will likely enjoy this book, then, and I would be happy to hear why you enjoyed it in the comments section adjacent to this review on Medium. However, I, myself, could not make heads or tails of this work and I am not sure what it was trying to say. I can say — and I hope this doesn’t sound bitter in any way — that I was pleased that the book was short because I think I might have otherwise abandoned it if it had rambled on at some considerable length. Take from that what you may. Elizabeth Finch is an acquired taste. While it presents male-female relationships in unique ways and proves that you can be just friends with someone who doesn’t share your genitalia, it’s a book for someone with a Master’s degree. If that doesn’t put you off, then Elizabeth Finch may be a pleasant surprise. If so, I’d be sincerely interested in knowing why because, in the end, I just didn’t understand the point of this one. Sorry!

I thought this book sounded interesting but for me it turns out it wasn’t. I picked it up in the Read Now section of Netgalley.

Part one: Neil falls in love with his professor, Elizabeth Finch, who spouts wisdom in the style of Mary Poppins. She kind of dresses like MP, too. Neil obsessed about EF (Elizabeth Finch) and starts meeting her for lunches, which become an extension of her philosophy class until she dies. In her will, she leaves him her papers and books and one last assignment.

Part two: the assignment. Neil writes an essay.

Part three: Neil searches for the true identity of EF. Is it even possible to know a person after they die?
Elizabeth Finch is quite short (192 pages), but it’s slow reading. The themes may be similar to Barnes’ other books, but the writing is philosophical in a more academic way. I may have liked it better if I had been in a different mood.

3/5 Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely loved the first part of the book; found the middle part quite boring; then the third part brought one and two together.

The book starts off with Neil, the narrator, describing his favourite professor: Elizabeth Finch. He is obsessed with practically everything about her. It’s not that she is particularly good looking or the object of his romantic yearnings; it’s more that he has such an appreciation for her intellect and her way of doing things. He is in awe of her and describes every aspect of her public life in detail. After taking her course, he remains friends with her and they regularly meet for lunch. She obviously thinks very highly of him, as well; because she leaves all her books and papers to him upon her death.

While going through her things, Neil tries to decide if she meant for him to do something with them. He thinks about publishing something about her, but then decides that she wouldn’t have liked that. He goes through her notes and research on Julius the Apostate and writes up a full study. He looks at the man from different angles and analyzes his deeds and motives. It’s as if Barnes wanted to write this analysis himself, but didn’t think it would be read outside of a novel, so he gave it to Neil as a homage to Elizabeth Finch. The write up is vaguely interesting, but a little much for a novel about a man and his favourite professor.

The third section of the book, brings the study of Julius the Apostate and the ode to Elizabeth Finch together, but it was a little too late for me. The momentum of part one was lost with the erudite descriptions of religion and politics in part two. Overall, I did not enjoy this book as a novel. The writing is fabulous, as only Julian Barnes can write; but the disparity between the styles and subjects of part one and two was too much. Perhaps I have missed the point because I was in the wrong mood for this one…?

I have read Barnes for years, always with difficulty. I think he’s a brilliant writer, concise and precise but I am always left unsatisfied, as with Elizabeth Finch.

I enjoyed parts of this book, his description of Elizabeth Finch reminded me of my English teacher in high school. Part two was a lesson in essay writing, if you like history you would enjoy it. This is not a book I would pick up to read again but as I said I did enjoy parts of it. There are a lot of quotes that I wrote down to read again. I received an arc and the views and opinions are my own.

I enjoyed reading this novel.

I felt lost in the middle section, but I did see the significance in part three.

Elizabeth Finch is a character that I would like to meet in real life.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

As brief as this book is, it was a hard slog at times, in my opinion a lesser entry in the Barnes oeuvre. The pearly prose is there, and there are some remarkable passages and observations, but any narrative flow comes screeching to a halt with the insertion of a 50-page essay, in the middle of a not-quite-200-page novel, about Julian the Apostate, a 4th-century Roman emperor. I think I understand why it’s there—something about the profound unknowability of the truth and significance of a human being, how perspective varies from person to person and over time—but talk about a boulder in the road. The emperor Julian was an interest, even obsession, of Elizabeth Finch, the charismatic teacher of an adult education course taken by our narrator, Neil. She becomes something of an obsession to Neil, who continues to see her a few times a year over the course of the following decades, who thinks about her constantly and, even after her death, continues to try to penetrate her mystery but is forced to accede to her ultimate unknowability.

I absolutely love Julian Barnes and consider him a brilliant literary mind. So of course I was very excited when I got my hands on his latest, Elizabeth Finch. While 2/3 of the book more than lived up to my expectations, the remaining 1/3 was a bit of struggle hence my rating which falls somewhere in the middle.

Story's narrator Neil attends a course on Culture and Civilization taught by Elizabeth Finch and falls under the spell of her person, spell that ends up lasting a lifetime. While most of the story revolves around Neil's perception and recollections of Elizabeth, one part of it veers off course when Neil, inspired by notes Elizabeth left him after her death, immerses himself in examination of life and philosophy of Julian the Apostate.

While Elizabeth Finch came alive for me from the parts of the story that revolved around Neil's images of her, I found Neil's writings on Julian the Apostate really dry and kind of pretentious. And while the style serves a literary purpose in the grander context of the story, while reading those parts I felt I was back in University having to wade through mandatory course readings I found uninspiring. Fortunately Neil's romanticized recollections of Elizabeth Finch and his obsessive investigation in other people's relationships with her yield a lot of beautiful writing and absolutely lovely quotes that I could not help saving for future reference.

This is a book for avid Julian Barnes fans and probably caters more to those with slightly deeper philosophy/history/academia inclinations than mine.

My gratitude to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for gifting me an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This book wasn't what I thought it would be. Felt more like I was reading a "heady" essay than a novel. I had read Julian Barnes before and enjoyed "The Sense of an Ending" but I struggled with this one. While I like the idea of learning more about people after they have died, I felt I had to work too hard with this book with little reward.

Thank you Netgalley, Penguin Random House Canada, Random House Canada and Julian Barnes for free e-ARC in return of my honest review.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth Finch is a DNF for me. I was excited to get into a character-based book, to see the build up of Elizabeth Finch, the intellectual, the professor, seen by one of her students, Neil. I was looking forward to embrace the character-based novel with little plot development and dive in in EF character exploration. At first 50 pages, I got what I was in for. However, tiny descriptions about “racy” EF and some fantasies of her male students, who will always be “boys” repelled me from the narrator. It seemed that EF’s intellectual capabilities, which at first appeared to be paramount, turned out to be insignificant compared to the “fantasies” of male students.

Anyway, I do feel like I was the wrong audience for the novel. I wished I enjoyed it more.

I enjoyed the first part of this book a great deal. The writing was excellent and I felt I made a connection with the characters immediately. The character of Elizabeth Finch was fascinating and I could have read hundreds more pages on her. I loved getting to know her as a mentor and teacher, as well as a strong woman and intellectual with an incredible sense of mystery about her. I was intrigued reading about her insights into history and philosophy, as well as the impressions she made on her student, the narrator. However, I stopped reading during the second part of the book which is a long 'essay' on Julian the Apostate. I was expecting a novel and do not generally enjoy long academic essays.

The rating 4/5 applies to the part 1 which I read.

This novel is about a man named Neil who is obsessed with his university professor Elizabeth Fitch. The novel serves as a homage to this woman who inspired our narrator to, well, think. Although Neil loves Elizabeth’s class (Culture and Civilization), he does not write his final essay and invites Elizabeth to lunch. Lunch is a biannual event where Neil and Elizabeth meet and talk, with Elizabeth always giving Neil something to think about as well as paying for lunch.
When Elizabeth dies, she leaves her academic journals, and Neil has to decide what to do with them.
Along the way, Neil decides to write that final essay he never got around to writing all those years ago. The author includes this lengthy essay about Roman Emporer Julian Apostate within the pages of the novel itself.
I found this short novel somewhat interesting. It definitely was a deviation from the summer reads I have been consuming. There is no real suspense or intricate plot to speak of; rather, it is more a novel about a man’s relationship with a woman he found fascinating.
I found the character Elizabeth Fitch fascinating; I would have loved to have read HER story.
This novel isn’t for everyone. It seemed to me that Barnes wrote this story more for himself rather than to entertain the reader, which is perfectly fine with me.

If we are fortunate, at some point in our lives when we have been students, we have had a teacher who captivates us by engaging our minds, making us think deeply, and ultimately, making us feel smarter. For narrator Neil, the instructor of his Culture and Civilization course, Elizabeth Finch, is that educator. She’s sharp and pithy, regularly delivering aphorisms about history and more and I found myself highlighting frequently as I read. EF, as Neil refers to her, is an intriguing figure who has an impact long after the teaching is over. For years after, they meet for lunch, and, when she dies, Neil finds himself engaged to make something of all of the academic flotsam she has left.

Midway through the book we turn the page to discover a lengthy essay (written by Neil standing in ostensibly to make up for the final essay that he never handed in for her course). The essay takes up EF’s scholarly focus: the controversial figure of Julian the Apostate who was the last non-Christian emperor of the Roman Empire who soundly rejected Christianity throughout his reign. For someone who is not a religious person, this was my fourth book this year that was, at least in part, explicitly about religion (the others: The Books of Jacob, The Netanyahus, and Haven). And, while I was interested enough in the essay, it definitely bisected the narrative in a way that took me out of the story.

I was initially intrigued by the book. It’s always interesting to have a singular view of a character from a narrator. What they say and don’t say always speaks not only about the character but, of course, about the narrator themselves. However, I found there was something of a very male gaze in the way that Neil looked at EF that rubbed me the wrong way; while it is her mind that he appreciates, he also refers to her at some point as “racy” and this, combined with earlier descriptions of her as a tweedy, brogue-wearing practical woman, meant I couldn’t help think that Neil saw her as that “sexy librarian” trope and once I had thought about it, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

This is the first Julian Barnes book I’ve read so I’m not in a position to compare it to his other works. And I suspect I’m missing something as a result. I appreciated the essay about an historical figure I knew little about. It’s a historical “what if”, imagining how the course of history might have been different from a turning point centred around Julian. Elizabeth Finch is most definitely one of those books best described as “an intellectual read” (whatever that really means) that asks readers’ patience to engage with an historical essay for nearly a third of the book. It is a short read and so, if you’re intrigued by the idea of an enigmatic woman academic seen through the eyes of one of her rather more ordinary male students along with an academic essay about a fascinating historical figure, then give it a try.

A short book in three parts, Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes introduces us to narrator Neil who attends a Culture and Civilization with the titular character in an adult learning class. Neil is instantly taken by this unusual woman and her interesting views and interpretation of history. For years after the class, always a student, Neil and Elizabeth meet regularly to share an Italian lunch and talk about their views. One day, Elizabeth dies and leaves all of her books and notes to her former student. What will he do with them?

When meeting her brother, Neil learns more about his teacher, but has more questions than answers. After reviewing the notes, it becomes clear to Neil that Elizabeth had a passion for Julian the Apostate. The second part of this story includes Neil’s essay about Julian, which is quite interesting about Julian, in parts a history lesson and cultural references to this day. A passion project for Neil.

When finished the work, Neil reaches out to others from his class and learns from his former classmates how this teacher impacted them all in different ways. Everyone has a teacher who has inspired them and this book had me remembering those who have made an impact on my life like Elizabeth Finch did to her students.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

# of Pages: 192
Genre: Literary Fiction, Philosophy, Historical Fiction
Star Rating: ⭑⭑/5

This short novel follows the story of a woman named Elizabeth Finch (affectionately referred to as EF by the narrator) through the lens of a man, Neil, one of her former students. Elizabeth Finch is mysterious, intelligent and well-spoken, captivating the minds of her students and creating in Neil somewhat of an obsession. After her death, he finds that she has left him her papers and her library. In the hopes of uncovering more of EF than she readily presented - a secret, perhaps - he finds himself delving into Julian the Apostate, a topic previously discussed in her classroom.

While the overall concept had me intrigued, I was disappointed to find that the actual execution was not what I’d expected and seemed to drag. The book, midway through, dives into a dissertation on Julian the Apostate - this is where I put it down. I couldn’t empathize with the characters, nor did I feel a sense of anticipation for what was to come. While the author, Julian Barnes, makes beautiful use of vocabulary and sentence structure, it didn’t feel enough to keep propelling me further into the novel.

Though it wasn’t for me, I do recognize that I perhaps wasn’t the intended audience and that this novel may be better received by literary academics, historians, or those with a keen interest in dissecting religious theory.