Book: A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes
Krishna
A mixed bag of tricks from Julian Barnes. It is indeed a collection of short stories and except for mention of woodworms in (almost) each one of them somewhere, there does not seem to be any connection between the stories, let alone with the history of the world. It is also, in my opinion, a remarkably inconsistent set of stories. Like a cleverly packaged musical selection with intent to sell as a package, the first and the last stories are the best. The former, about Noah and his ark, extremely funny. In fact, I hardly remember reading a funnier story in recent times! The latter (`The Dream’) a new view of
an old concept of heaven and hell, is well told. It is hardly the classical view of heaven and hell and is an interesting perspective on an age old concept. But other parts of the book really get tedious at times, especially when Julian decides to discuss a painting for seven pages or when he talks about nothing in particular (“parentheses” is the story, I think) for 25 pages.
The parenthesis, I hear, is the one meant to be a half chapter and each one of the stories is supposed to have been written in a different style. For me, it was all uniformly plodding, as I have mentioned.
Just because the first and the last stories lift it from the deep, dark hole it would otherwise sink into, I give this a “generous” 5/10.
— Krishna