Vintage International- Staring at the Sun

Geschreven bij Staring At The Sun

Als Julian Barnes fan, vind ik deze eerder teleurstellend

Geschreven bij Staring At The Sun

Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun
Title, Small masterpiece
Delightful, fictional portrait of Jean Sarjeant (b. 1923) from childhood to old age and still alive, even now, because the book ends somewhere around 2022. So it contains a few sci-fi elements, esp. towards the end. Key events in her long life are called Incidents. Her first Incident is her carrying the sand iron whenever her eccentric uncle Leslie went golfing and the magic of these sessions. The second Incident is changes at home caused by WW II. The third Incident is Tommy Prosser, a pilot whose flying antics led him to see the sun rise twice, billeted in her family home. Readers are advised to discover and enjoy reading about Jean’s later main events themselves, which include a policeman, an improbable child and the Seven Wonders of the World.
Young Jean is curious and naïve, but hopeful she will one day find answers to things she does not understand, or at least be able to ask the right questions. Once, Jean asked her dad, ‘Why is it three o’ clock?’ Whereupon Dad turned to her and said, ‘That is not a real question”. ‘Why is the mink so excessively tenacious of life’ is another of many such early questions that return later in the book.
Towards the end the book becomes philosophical and preoccupied with questions that can or cannot be answered, the existence of God and death. When one of the characters seeks the aid of a government computer system purported to contain all known knowledge, called GPC (General Purpose Computer). It has masses of data about the mink, but no answer to Jean’s old question.
Julian Barnes has crafted almost every paragraph into a small piece of joy to read and it is unmistakable that he enjoyed writing this quirky book full of English humor, erudition and ideas. Old memories and images rear their heads again and again in the most unexpected circumstances. And Jean and the other characters are very well drawn.