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Review

Review by bookpagedev

Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio’s current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad. DiCaprio was lucky to be aboard James Cameron’s film Titanic. By now, as everyone knows, the film can be described only in superlatives. It is the most expensive movie ever made, the highest-grossing motion picture of all time, the first film ever to gross $1 billion worldwide. Its soundtrack is surprise the best-selling ever. And it won more Oscars (11) than any film since, God help us, Ben Hur. The ship itself may have sunk for good, but its story has been resurrected, with a mixture of horror and glee, in books, documentaries, exhibitions, movies, and even a Broadway musical. And still they come. Herewith, marking the September release of Titanic on home video, a harvest of new books and booklike things. We might as well begin with another superlative the two biggest, most impressive, and most expensive books on our list. Even if you barely know the Titanic from the good ship Lollipop, you will enjoy Titanic: An Illustrated History, by Don Lynch. Throughout, the lively text is illuminated by photos, drawings, maps, and the beautiful photorealistic paintings of Ken Marschall, who has emerged as the disaster’s visual historian. Marschall gets his own book, with text by Rick Archbold, in a fascinating survey of his three decades of work, Art of Titanic (Hyperion, $40, 0786864559). Sketches, photos, and 80-plus gorgeous paintings illuminate the complicated process of historical illustration. No photograph can match Marschall’s poignant visions of either the gaiety aboard ship or the gloomy depths of the wreckage.

Simon and Schuster is publishing Titanic: Fortune and Fate ($30, 0684857103), the companion volume to the Mariner’s Museum exhibition of the same name. Artifacts include personal mementos, letters, and other moving records of the lives lost that night in 1912, with a text emphasizing less the well-known play-by-play and more the personalities involved. There are all sorts of stories of the shipwreck, but naturally eyewitness accounts are the most impressive. One such survivor, an observant young woman named Violet Jessup, wrote her memoirs in 1934. They are published for the first time in Titanic Survivor: The Newly Discovered Memoirs of Violet Jessup, Who Survived Both the Titanic and Britannic Disasters (Sheridan House, $23.95, 1574090356). She was a steward aboard the Titanic and a wartime nurse aboard the Britannic, and her story is as compelling as any in the disaster’s lore. Surprisingly, it’s also funny.

If you worry you missed the boat and want to catch up, you might try The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Titanic (Alpha Books, $18.95, 0028627121), by Jay Stevenson and Sharon Rutman. Like others in this series (which add up to a veritable idiot’s encyclopedia), this book manages to cram an astonishing amount of information into an irresistible browser format. Robert D. Ballard, co-leader of the 1985 expedition that found the sunken ship, first published his story in 1987. Now there is a newly updated trade paperback edition, The Discovery of the Titanic: Exploring the Greatest of All Lost Ships (Warner, $13.99, 0446671746), by Robert D. Ballard. Its many illustrations include paintings and touching sea-bottom photos.

If you really want to get behind the scenes, you should turn to a paperback entitled The Titanic Disaster Hearings: The Official Transcripts of the 1912 Senate Investigation (Pocket, $7.99, 0671025538), edited by Tom Kuntz. Following its 500 or so pages of compelling (okay, somewhat compelling) transcripts you’ll find an index of witnesses and a digest of their testimony. The most original new contributions to Titaniana are not even books at all. The Titanic Collection: Mementos of the Maiden Voyage (Chronicle, $24.95, 0811820521) is a handsomely packaged collection of facsimile documents. They come in a booklike box designed to resemble a steamer trunk, complete with hinges. A tray sets inside the trunk, and both spaces are filled with extraordinary facsimiles. Items include copies of a first class passenger ticket, the menu for the fateful night, the music repertoire, telegraph flimsies, luggage labels (yes, they’re adhesive), smudged and scribbled postcards, and many other documents. The packaging on Titanic: The Official Story (Random House, $25, 0375501150) is not quite so impressive, but the facsimiles are great fun. These documents are larger, and include stateroom charts, a newspaper page, the ship’s register form, telegrams. Far more evocative than mere photos of artifacts.

As you leave the bookstore with this armload, on your way to buy the video of Cameron’s *Titanic*, rest easy in the knowledge that at least a sequel seems unlikely.

Michael Sims is a frequent contributor to BookPage and the author of Darwin’s Orchestra (Henry Holt).

Among the unlikely results of a shipwreck 86 years ago is Leonardo DiCaprio's current starring role in the daydreams of teenage females from Boise to Baghdad. DiCaprio was lucky to be aboard James Cameron's film Titanic. By now, as everyone knows, the film can be…

Children's & YA

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Sometimes all it takes to enchant a little person from sunup to sundown are family members with smiling faces, sing-song language, and anything enhanced with plenty of bold, primary colors. Caroline Uff’s latest book, Hello, Lulu!, is designed with this in mind.

Uff’s presentation is so engaging that toddlers just beginning to associate words with people and objects will be able to grasp and repeat Lulu’s simple story. The book’s brightly illustrated pages and almost life-size faces of Lulu, her family, friends, toys, and pets are accompanied by simple sentences that identify each drawing by plainly stating this is or Lulu likes . Even the name Lulu is easy and fun to pronounce for a small child, and once he or she catches on to who Lulu is, the proceeding pages introduce similarly pronounceable objects and people, like Lulu’s new bright red shoes, or her cupcake-bearing grandma.

Toddlers will recognize most of Lulu’s objects of affection, for Uff has drawn them in rich, bright pastels: A powder blue bunny makes a snuffle, snuffle sound; a fat goldfish goes blub, blub ; the seafoam-green bubbles Lulu blows with her friend go pop! . Bright backgrounds frame the round dot-eyed faces; teddy bears and different snacks are sometimes framed in regimented blocks, and other times in page-spanning solids or patterns of playful colors and textures.

In addition to its brightness and bouncy words, Hello, Lulu shows the uncomplicated harmony and security of a child in the presence of her family and friends sharing and smiling. With so much bold color and illustrated associations to good things, Hello, Lulu lets the child’s eyes and feelings make special connections to the 21 pages between its covers.

Sometimes all it takes to enchant a little person from sunup to sundown are family members with smiling faces, sing-song language, and anything enhanced with plenty of bold, primary colors. Caroline Uff's latest book, Hello, Lulu!, is designed with this in mind.

Uff's presentation…

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Lord Berners the name can hardly be uttered without a sniff and a smirk. The author’s full name says it all: Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Baronet, 14th Baron Berners. This peer of England, the last of his line, lived during the period (1883-1950) when the privileges of the aristocracy fell rapidly into anachronism and absurdity. The stories and short novels collected in this edition can be read as fables of this decline, a haunting mixture of hilarity and melancholy that could only have come from the pen of a man called by his own biographer The Last Eccentric. Lord Berners’s writing tends to be funny in a way that only a very small number of brilliant English writers have the levitating capacity to be, and he ought to be read only when uninhibited laughter is an option. Take the scene in the novella The Camel, in which Mr. Scrimgeour, the church organist, bungles the vicar’s entry on Sunday morning with a disastrous performance.

Lord Berners’s prose is at all times beautiful, as clean as an English lawn, just as sharply cut, and with just as many surprising felicities to the senses. It would perhaps be nearest the mark to call his writing musical, especially since this self-same Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson was also an outstanding musician, whom Igor Stravinsky considered the best mid-century English composer. Music features centrally in the 1941 novel Count Omega, whose composer-hero succumbs to his own ambition. It is a comic twist on the Faust legend, a striking forerunner to Thomas Mann’s tragic musical novel Doctor Faustus, which appeared only a few years later.

In First Childhood, the first of his two splendid and equally funny autobiographies (both published last year by Turtle Point Press), Lord Berners describes a portrait of his Victorian grandmother which hung in the dining-room at her estate. It showed her dressed in a rather elaborate evening gown of the period, smiling benevolently in complete disregard of a terrific thunderstorm that was approaching her in the background. He goes on to remark that the picture might, in fact, have stood for an allegory of the later Victorian period. In Lord Berners’s own time, the storm had broken. The fact that he continued to smile benevolently through his wonderful stories is both a touch of his class and his class’s last hurrah.

Michael Alec Rose is a music professor at Vanderbilt University.

Lord Berners the name can hardly be uttered without a sniff and a smirk. The author's full name says it all: Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Baronet, 14th Baron Berners. This peer of England, the last of his line, lived during the period (1883-1950) when the…

Children's & YA

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Life in colonial America during the mid-1700’s was both exciting and dangerous. Welcome to Felicity’s World 1774 takes the reader back to a time in our nation’s history when colonists had to decide whether they would embrace the ideals of independence as American Patriots or remain under the rule of King George III of England as British Loyalists. Rumors of war had circulated and spread rapidly for months. Now the colonists had to brace themselves for the reality of war with England. Life in the colonies was about to turn upside down.

Felicity Merriman is only nine years old when the book begins. As the story unfolds, readers are treated to a small, yet unique, glimpse of life in the mid-1700s. Though Felicity is a fictional character, the book carefully documents actual events, as well as cultural and societal aspects, through memories, excerpts from letters, and diary entries of boys and girls, men and women. Subject matter is highlighted and enhanced by numerous photographs and drawings of exceptional quality. Certainly this book is not just another dry historical account of America’s struggle for independence.

Part of The American Girls Collection series, Welcome to Felicity’s World 1774 begins with a map illustrating Europe, Africa, and the 13 colonies of the new world. No story about colonial America would be complete without descriptions of what children did for fun, toys they treasured, and games they played. School, chores, social etiquette, and fun were integral parts of a young person’s life, as were harsh realities of sorrow and death. Day-by-day activities, fashions, and proper grooming are detailed in text and colorful illustrations.

Readers age eight and above will be drawn to this captivating yet astounding account. Welcome to Felicity’s World 1774 has been meticulously researched and its information carefully presented. The result is a historically appealing book which is full of little-known facts that are easy to read and understand. Each page truly brings history to life. Cynthia B. Drennan is a retired university administrator.

Life in colonial America during the mid-1700's was both exciting and dangerous. Welcome to Felicity's World 1774 takes the reader back to a time in our nation's history when colonists had to decide whether they would embrace the ideals of independence as American Patriots or…
ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Questions and answers Is It Just a Phase ?: How to Tell Common Childhood Phases from More Serious Problems (Golden Books, $24, 0307440508) by Dr. Susan Swedo and Dr. Henrietta L. Leonard is a handy volume filled with solutions to all sorts of childhood problems, including thumb-sucking, picky eating habits, shyness, hyperactivity, fears, and a myriad of school woes. You’ll find suggestions for helping your child outgrow these problems, ways to recognize signs of serious situations, tips for when to consult a doctor, and lists of further reading.

Of course, parents always have questions just as sure as kids used to get chicken pox. With that in mind, The Parents Answer Book by the editors of Parents magazine is bound to become indispensable. And with 896 pages, it’s got plenty of answers about the health, safety, and development of children from birth through age five. Not only does it contain thoughtful discussions of just about everything under the sun, there are numerous practical pointers as well.

Alice Cary is a mother and a reviewer in Groton, Massachusetts.

Questions and answers Is It Just a Phase ?: How to Tell Common Childhood Phases from More Serious Problems (Golden Books, $24, 0307440508) by Dr. Susan Swedo and Dr. Henrietta L. Leonard is a handy volume filled with solutions to all sorts of childhood problems,…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Contrary to what its title might suggest, A Big Cheese For The White House is not about any of our presidents’ rise to power. Candace Fleming once again takes a fascinating bit of historical trivia and renders it into a droll tale for young readers. In an introductory note, Fleming states that while the events are all true, the characters are not, and that she has taken some license, such as using the term White House rather than President’s House, as it was known until the early 1800s. In this humorous story, the people of Cheshire learn that President Thomas Jefferson was eating cheese made in the town of Norton, Connecticut. Led by the wise and optimistic Elder John Leland, the Cheshire villagers rise to the challenge to outdo their rivals and create a bigger, better cheddar for President Jefferson to eat. With nearly everyone lending a hand, they use the milk of 934 cows, creating a cheddar weighing 1,235 pounds and standing four feet highÐbig enough that the president will never again need to serve Norton’s cheese. Sure enough, by the time the cheese gets from Cheshire to Hudson, New York, to Washington, D.C., people are eagerly awaiting its arrival.

This book is brimming with colorful characters, like Goodwife Todgers, Humphrey Crock, and Farmer Fuzzlewit, who lend their time and talents to the effort. Only Phineas Dobbs, the resident naysayer and pessimist, repeatedly proclaims that It can’t be done. S.

D. Schindler’s illustrations perfectly mirror Fleming’s wry, understated text. The color-washed pen and ink drawings create cartoon-like characters that are both realistic and humorously distinctive. Their unusual features and facial expressions match the quirky names Fleming has given them. Our country’s archives are filled with examples of entrepreneurial spirit and stick-to-it-iveness, but this story is light, witty, and above all educational. Two themes emerge. One is that with enough hard work and cooperation anything is possible, and the other is that the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

This book is so entertaining that children won’t believe it is based on a real event. As parents will attest, any story that leads to an interest in history is a refreshing and welcome addition to the bookshelves. A Big Cheese For The White House is a delectable triumph for Fleming.

Lisa Horak is a freelance writer.

Contrary to what its title might suggest, A Big Cheese For The White House is not about any of our presidents' rise to power. Candace Fleming once again takes a fascinating bit of historical trivia and renders it into a droll tale for young readers.…
ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Questions and answers Is It Just a Phase ?: How to Tell Common Childhood Phases from More Serious Problems by Dr. Susan Swedo and Dr. Henrietta L. Leonard is a handy volume filled with solutions to all sorts of childhood problems, including thumb-sucking, picky eating habits, shyness, hyperactivity, fears, and a myriad of school woes. You’ll find suggestions for helping your child outgrow these problems, ways to recognize signs of serious situations, tips for when to consult a doctor, and lists of further reading.

Of course, parents always have questions just as sure as kids used to get chicken pox. With that in mind, The Parents Answer Book (Golden Books, $35, 0307440605) by the editors of Parents magazine is bound to become indispensable. And with 896 pages, it’s got plenty of answers about the health, safety, and development of children from birth through age five. Not only does it contain thoughtful discussions of just about everything under the sun, there are numerous practical pointers as well.

Alice Cary is a mother and a reviewer in Groton, Massachusetts.

Questions and answers Is It Just a Phase ?: How to Tell Common Childhood Phases from More Serious Problems by Dr. Susan Swedo and Dr. Henrietta L. Leonard is a handy volume filled with solutions to all sorts of childhood problems, including thumb-sucking, picky eating…

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Will Self likes taking risks. His last novel, Great Apes, followed the stressed-out life of a psychologist who awakened one morning as a chimpanzee. In his essays Self has stalked prime ministers and fought British rock stars. His work breeds controversy, and his method welcomes experiment. Needless to say anything new by him is noteworthy.

In Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys, Self mixes the plausible with the absurd. Within this collection of short stories you will find a rock of crack cocaine as large as a hotel and meet a lexicographer who has learned to communicate with insects. These new stories turn a fun house mirror on modern circumstance. Their humor is grotesque, ticklish, and daft.

Take A Story for Europe for example. Here, Self plays on the fears and troubles of new parents. Worried that their toddler’s linguistic skills aren’t developing, Miriam and Daniel Green take their two-year-old to the doctor. A bewildered child development specialist informs the anxiety-taxed couple that their son is not only fine but also fully fluent in business German.

Elsewhere, in the poetically titled Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo: A Manual, Self takes us into the mind of a panicky adulterer. Nervous to the point of trauma, Self’s protagonist hallucinates that he is 60 feet tall. Incapable of hiding from his spouse because of his size, the guilty giant pleads with his wife for forgiveness, telling her that the palm-sized woman he has been caught with is nothing but a toy. No, these are not bad jokes or out-takes from The Twilight Zone, these are quintessential Will Self creations. For all their outrageousness, these tales radiate a narrative charm. For every goofy plot turn you’ll find an equally well plotted character or adroitly spun metaphor. Whether dealing with nerdy parents or hardened drug addicts, Self nails his subjects with an exacting, invigorating stylistic temper like that of the truly great satirists. Surely Self is one of them if that’s not too immodest a proposal.

Will Self likes taking risks. His last novel, Great Apes, followed the stressed-out life of a psychologist who awakened one morning as a chimpanzee. In his essays Self has stalked prime ministers and fought British rock stars. His work breeds controversy, and his method welcomes…

Children's & YA

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Look-Alikes, Jr. is best described as a visual feast. Although this book is targeted at younger children than its predecessor (Look-Alikes), older siblings and parents will enjoy it just as much. The premise behind these books is that they lead the reader into a land where things are not what they appear. For instance, a house might be constructed from a venetian blind, with a chimney of dog biscuit bricks, windows of tea bags, and a wallet for a front door. Each 2-page spread consists of a different three-dimensional scene created almost entirely from everyday objects used in unusual ways. A couplet gives one clue such as, The parlor’s a cozy place to sit/In a chair that looks like an OVEN MITT, then it’s up to the reader to discover the other look-alikes in the scene (there are between 48 and 94 in each). At the back of the book, Steiner offers tips on counting the look-alikes, suggests a game for older readers to play with a friend, and presents an extra challenge. She also Ôsolves’ the puzzle by giving the reader all of the look-alikes in each scene with asterisks next to the most difficult to find items.

I perused the book several times with a four-year-old assistant. The preschooler loved the pictures and was excited at the prospect of finding familiar objects used in unexpected ways. I found myself swiftly counting items, trying to find at least 48 per visual before the page was turned. It must be reported that the extra puzzle was not solved in one reading. What makes Look-Alikes, Jr. fun for every age is that each scene can be viewed as challenging or clever, depending on its particular audience.

Steiner’s first book, Look-Alikes, received numerous awards and was on best-seller lists for many months. All indications are that Look-Alikes Jr. will be equally successful, especially since it reaches out to a broader audience. What a great way to exercise the brain! Sarah Kim is a teacher and mother of a four-year-old.

Look-Alikes, Jr. is best described as a visual feast. Although this book is targeted at younger children than its predecessor (Look-Alikes), older siblings and parents will enjoy it just as much. The premise behind these books is that they lead the reader into a land…
ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Insight and inspiration In Parents Who Think Too Much: Why We Do It, How to Stop It (Dell Island, $12.95, 0440508126), Anne Cassidy proclaims that today’s kids have virtually taken over their parents’ lives. She recommends that parents drop out of parenting classes and forget the experts. Instead, they must remember to trust their instincts. Her thesis took shape when she was struck with laryngitis and couldn’t give her daughters the praise they’d grown to depend on what she describes as the steady stream of prattle about what a good job she’s doing or what she’d like to do next. She realized her children, and many others, were suffering from what she calls Attention Excess Disorder, which she deems the Malady of the Decade. Cassidy’s ideas are full of common-sense wisdom, delivered in a voice that sounds like a reassuring, often humorous, friend.

I was also riveted to Richard F. Miniter’s The Things I Want Most: The Extraordinary Story of a Boy’s Journey to a Family of His Own, the story of his family’s decision to take in a severely troubled 11-year-old as a foster child. The Miniters had already raised six children of their own and were running an inn in upstate New York. Instead of enjoying some well-earned tranquillity, they brought chaos into their lives in the form of a boy named Mike. This is a book you won’t forget.

Alice Cary is a mother and a reviewer in Groton, Massachusetts.

Insight and inspiration In Parents Who Think Too Much: Why We Do It, How to Stop It (Dell Island, $12.95, 0440508126), Anne Cassidy proclaims that today's kids have virtually taken over their parents' lives. She recommends that parents drop out of parenting classes and forget…

Children's & YA

Review

Review by bookpagedev

The moon is a sliver of ice melting in the sky when Papa wakes me for work. So begins Barn Savers, a simple story of a young boy coming to understand the labor that his father does and the value of a hard day’s work, a job well done.

The boy accompanies his father to work for the first time and learns his trade. They rise before dawn, pack their lunches and tools, and drive as the sun comes up over the hills. Their destination is a fading red barn in the middle of a wheat field. Their job is to save the barn from the bulldozers, and they save everything from the actual boards and windows to the date stone that reads 1893. Even an old pig trough is important enough to keep. The boy and his father salvage these seemingly mundane things for the sake of preserving the past and honoring history.

The illustrations play a vital role they paint the setting in soft splashes of pastels and in bolder primary colors. The rich red of the barn contrasts with the blue of the sky, and yellow drops of sunlight filter through the holes in the barn roof. These colors enhance the pastoral world the author creates the world of passing rural life, of a slower pace, that father and son are struggling to hold onto.

Yet there is a deeper level on which to read the story, a deeper truth to be learned, as there almost always is. Beauty is found within an object, not on the outside. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote in The Little Prince, What is essential is invisible to the eye. The father in this tale does not save the barns for the monetary value of the boards; he saves them for their sentimental value, for the charm of something old. He says, This barn will live for another hundred years, in a hundred different places. And he passes that legacy on to his son. The boy saves a part of the old barn, a rusty old weather vane, for his own bedroom. He too has learned to appreciate the character that comes with age.

The moon is a sliver of ice melting in the sky when Papa wakes me for work. So begins Barn Savers, a simple story of a young boy coming to understand the labor that his father does and the value of a hard day's work,…
ParentingFamily & Relationships

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Insight and inspiration In Parents Who Think Too Much: Why We Do It, How to Stop It, Anne Cassidy proclaims that today’s kids have virtually taken over their parents’ lives. She recommends that parents drop out of parenting classes and forget the experts. Instead, they must remember to trust their instincts. Her thesis took shape when she was struck with laryngitis and couldn’t give her daughters the praise they’d grown to depend on what she describes as the steady stream of prattle about what a good job she’s doing or what she’d like to do next. She realized her children, and many others, were suffering from what she calls Attention Excess Disorder, which she deems the Malady of the Decade. Cassidy’s ideas are full of common-sense wisdom, delivered in a voice that sounds like a reassuring, often humorous, friend.

I was also riveted to Richard F. Miniter’s The Things I Want Most: The Extraordinary Story of a Boy’s Journey to a Family of His Own (Bantam, $21.95, 0553109332), the story of his family’s decision to take in a severely troubled 11-year-old as a foster child. The Miniters had already raised six children of their own and were running an inn in upstate New York. Instead of enjoying some well-earned tranquillity, they brought chaos into their lives in the form of a boy named Mike. This is a book you won’t forget.

Alice Cary is a mother and a reviewer in Groton, Massachusetts.

Insight and inspiration In Parents Who Think Too Much: Why We Do It, How to Stop It, Anne Cassidy proclaims that today's kids have virtually taken over their parents' lives. She recommends that parents drop out of parenting classes and forget the experts. Instead, they…

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Julian Barnes’s concern with the ways we reconstruct, or even invent, the past has been a rich theme in several of his books (Flaubert’s Parrot, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters). But in England, England his first novel in six years that theme has its strongest vehicle to date. Whether the past belongs to the lifetime of a single individual or to the historical annals of Barnes’s native England, it is a slippery proposition. How do you distinguish the authentic from the phony, truth from embroidery? Barnes’s answer is: much of the time, you can’t.

England, England’s other themes relate to the nature of nationhood, the excesses of a free-market economy, the fraudulence of the tourism industry, the search for love, and the possibility of personal salvation. Yet, being a novel by Julian Barnes, it is not ponderous; it is masterfully plotted, stylish, vivacious, and devilishly funny. Barnes, who loves French literature, has the withering wit, and frequently the moral stance, of Moliere.

Like a Moliere protagonist, the novel’s central character bears the corporate title Appointed Cynic. Her name is Martha Cochrane, and the corporation she serves is Pitco, a multinational kingdom ruled by the megalomaniacal Sir Jack Pitman. We are a few decades into the next millennium, when Sir Jack, a kind of Rupert Murdoch/Donald Trump with Rabelaisian overtones, decides to crown his career by creating the ultimate theme park. Occupying the entire geography of the Isle of Wight, this leisure world encapsulates all of England’s best-known landmarks and offers recreations of as many incidents from British history as the average Joe has ever heard of. The island with its replicas of Stonehenge, Westminster Abbey, Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, and Buckingham Palace in time becomes more English than the mainland; it is therefore christened England, England. The old country, robbed of its vital tourist revenue and its standing in the European Union, gradually regresses into a near-feudal state. Even the royal family moves to the island, where their duties are minimal waving to crowds of tourists and their salaries large.

Julian Barnes is philosophical, like Iris Murdoch; narratively innovative, like John Fowles; satirical, like David Lodge; funny, like Tom Sharpe; erudite, like A. S. Byatt. Yet he is altogether, fascinatingly himself as any reader of England, England will gratefully discover.

Randall Curb is an essayist and reviewer in Greensboro, Alabama.

Julian Barnes's concern with the ways we reconstruct, or even invent, the past has been a rich theme in several of his books (Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters). But in England, England his first novel in six years that…

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