[.ca] Before She Met Me (ISBN 0330300059)

barnes makes it hard to care:
i'm told that his latest, england, england has the same problem. the characters that barnes creates are such irritating and hateful gits that you just don't give a damn whether they live or die. 'before she met me' is the mildly nauseating tale of a self-obsessed middle-aged loser who can't live with the fact that his wife had an existence (and one or two boyfriends) before marrying him. he goes slowly mad and that's pretty much it. don't waste your time with this, mercifully short and smartly written though it is.

No One Escapesý:
I am well into reading a sixth book by Mr. Julian Barnes, so while I may have yet to complete his entire body of work, I do think I can say this is not only a dark exception to his writing, but contains topics that are deviant. Individual conduct may be more appropriate than topic, as the most bazaar behavior is reserved for one player. Others in this book are eccentric bordering on the repugnant, but no literary rules states we must like who we read about. For example, if a writer/amateur psychologist, who revels in his flatulence can be endured, you will get through the book. There is no gray area with this particular character, no compromise, be amused, or be repelled, those are the options. There are many other minor players that all are people you would not miss meeting, however the main character will test your thresholds for the bizarre. A man marries for the second time. He brings to this union his own history of relationships with women from earliest unfulfilled fantasies, to complete biblical knowledge of his female counterparts. Like her Husband, the Wife too brings her own life experiences both real, and the fictional, as her career as a "minor actress" occasioned the illusion of intimacy on the screen of silver. As his curiosity of seeing an old film, becomes an obsession of repeated viewings, and videotaped collecting, the Husband departs reality, pauses for bizarre ritual, and finally plummets with finality. The effort here is tolerating the sideshow freakish behavior that is repellent. If the reader can do so, the reward of this writer's skill is the only satisfaction you will have. This is certainly not a book I would recommend as an introduction to this man's work. If this were the first of his I came upon, it surely would have been the last. However once read in the context of his body of work, while divergent, annoying, and filled with players who may only gain your contempt, the effort is worth it.

Great British Humor:
Before She Met Me is a book filled with the great British humor of Julian Barnes. It has its flaws, to be sure, but they are minor ones. One of the characters is truly reprehensible, but his appearances are so few and far between that I think his horrid behavior can easily be overlooked. What bothered me more, with this book, were the female characters. One of them seems quite true to life but the other one did not. She seemed wooden, a cardboard cutout. Barnes is a terrific writer, but in my opinion, he has yet to create a believable, good, female character. The writing in this book is really first rate British humor (I expect it may be too British for some). It is an escapist book but I don't think that should lessen its importance. After all, don't we all need to escape now and then? If you want to laugh and have a little fun, if you want to forget your troubles for awhile, then try Before She Met Me. It might do you a world of good. It did me.

Funny but not believable:
Julian Barnes' second novel, from 1982, is _Before She Met Me_. It's about a 40ish academic, who falls in love with a slightly younger woman, and leaves his shrewish wife to marry the younger woman, an ex-actress. For most of the book it's very much in Kingsley Amis territory, right down to the fart jokes (pretty good ones, for fart jokes) and the scathing depiction of the awful first wife. Then it moves into Martin Amis territory. The conceit is that the hero sees one of his new wife's movies, and becomes jealous of the actor with whom she is portrayed (in the movie) as having an affair. All this is from long before they met (hence the title). This whole thing really unhinges the guy, and things go from bad to worse, as he starts to obsess about every affair his wife might have ever had, and he watches her old movies (she was always a minor actress, too) over and over again. It's very funny and readable, but wholly unbelievable. The guy's reactions are just not plausible, and Barnes doesn't make them plausible. All this creates a certain distance, which works against us caring about the ending. I'd still say go ahead and read it because page by page it's good fun, but it doesn't work.

Cliched, predictable, unbelievable:
I thought this book was a pretty formulaic male cliche-ridden rant. Let's start with the wife who does nothing but shop. Professors in the making usually have an aversion to such idiots, and I can never believe they would have got together in the first place. Second, the girlfriend. Decides to stop being an actress because she was only so-so. I've never met an actor who didn't act because he or she was fundamentally driven to it, never met one who walked away from it this easily either. And by the way, you don't just drop out of one career and then have a mid-level, established job in a totally different and unrelated field. She would have had to start at the bottom, with its accompanying humiliations, self-doubts, etc. Girlfriend has no complexes or faults? Don't buy it. Beautiful young blond would be hopelessly in love with a fat-assed wimpy professor? Just doesn't ring true. This is very standard poor-me male stuff of the sixties, seventies, etc. There is nothing intertextual or new here.