Reviews

The book is basically what it says on the cover: Ten-and-a-half short chapters, which together cover a lot of ground. It is not, as you may be led to believe, a book about history, however.

Rather, it is one of those books that somewhat reminds me of those Official Soundtrack albums they keep releasing: “Music composed for, and inspired by, X”. The stories are, in fact, all fiction. But rather than being history, they cleverly become part of history. Or they will do – for anyone who reads the book. It is also obviously inspired by history, in a way that no other book I have ever read is.

10.5 chapters is a strange book by many accounts. It uses very distinct narrative structures from chapter to chapter, and each chapter can be read as a short story – as it stands very well on itself. The clever bit is how the stories actually intertwine and play off each other.

The first chapter is about Noah’s Ark, seen from the perspective of a creature that managed to sneak on board – a highly blasphemous, but also thought-provoking and profound tale of survival, and the idiocy of religion in general.

Then, in rapid succession, Barnes covers some seriously deep issues. There is a story about a women who loses her mind and sets sail for the open sea, an in-depth analysis of GŽricault’s 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa, a story about a group of jews trying to escape Germany just before the second world war, and a most profound philosophical work on the mechanics and philosophy of Love.

Throughout this eclectic mixture of profoundness, Julian Barnes manages to keep his readers on the edge of their chairs: Without getting overly pretentious and without ever getting heavy-handed, he illustrates several points: Proficiency in a handful of distinct styles, different narratives, inspiring and fresh thoughts on a handful of topics, a few giggles (both through content and through the cheekiness inherent in some of the writing styles).

All in all, A History of the world in 10.5 chapters has only one grievous flaw: The fact that it is not the history of the world in 99.5 chapters. I would have loved to read more stories. Follow the author through more explorations, and hear more of his ideas.

The only consolation is that Julian Barnes has written a handful of other novels, all of which have instantly been awarded a one-way ticket to the top of my “to read” list. And if you have any sense – move 10.5 chapters to near the top of yours as well. Trust me, it is worth it.

diana_skelton's review against another edition

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4.0

It's quite difficult to give this book one overall rating because my opinion of it changed drastically, twice. For the first two chapters, I wasn't sure I would finish it because the prose, although interesting, hadn't quite engaged me. By the third chapter, I was completely engaged and greatly appreciated most of the book--until the last chapter which I found undermined the rest of the book. The narrator, who is concerned with the meaning of life, ostensibly tries to look at questions of eternity from points of view other than his own. However, the fact that on such a critical question the narrator's view is severely truncated tarnishes my appreciation of the rest of the book. Nevertheless, here are some of my favorite excerpts:

"Spike Tiggler's home town was strong for the Democrats and even stronger for the Baptists. The Sunday after his trip to Kitty Hawk, Spike was heard displaying a rather too disrespectful sort of enthusiasm about the Wright Brothers outside the Church of the Holy Water, and old Jessie Wade opined to the thirteen-year-old that if God had intended us to fly, he'd have given us wings. 'But God intended us to drive, didn't he?' replied young Spike, a shade too quick for courtesy, and actually pointing at the freshly shined Packard in which his elderly detractor had ridden the two hundred yards to church; whereupon Spike's father reminded him that if it were not for the Sabbath, the Lord might very well have intended Spike to receive a whack upside the head."

"Among us there had always been, from the beginning, a sense of equality. Oh, to be sure, we ate one another, and so on; the weaker species knew all to well what to expect if they crossed the path of something that was both bigger and hungry. But we merely recognized this as being the way of things. The fact that one animal was capable of killing another did not make the first animal superior to the second; merely more dangerous. Perhaps this is a concept difficult for you to grasp, but there was a mutual respect amongst us. Eating another animal was not grounds for despising it; and being eaten did not instill in the victim--or the victim's family--any exaggerated admiration for the dining species. Noah--or Noah's God--changed all that. [...] He had decreed that there were two classes of beast: the clean and the unclean. Clean animals got into the Ark by sevens; the unclean by twos. [...] Among the species who took themselves seriously there arose all sorts of complicated jealousies. The pig did not mind, being of a socially unambitious nature; but some of the other animals regarded the notion of uncleanliness as a personal slight."

"The Santa Euphemia was an elderly but comfortable ship with a courtly Italian captain and an efficient Greek crew. These Aphrodite Tours brought a predictable clientele, disparate in nationality but homogeneous in taste. The sort of people who preferred reading to deck quoits; and sun-bathing to the disco. They followed the guest lecturer everywhere, took most of the supplementary trips and disdained straw monkeys in the the souvenir shops. [...] They took their turn at the captain's table, were inventive when it came to fancy-dress night, and dutifully read the ship's newspaper, which printed their daily route alongside the birthday messages and non-controversial events happening on the European continent. The atmosphere seems a little torpid, but it was a well organized torpor."

"If I said I was worried what America might do if Russia didn't back down or vice versa, or the Middle East or whatever, he said did I think it might be pre-menstrual tension. [...] Once I said maybe it was pre-menstrual tension, listen, maybe women are more in touch with the world. Everything's connected, isn't it, and women are more closely connected to all the cycles of nature and birth and rebirth on the planet than men, who are only impregnators after all when it comes down to it, and if women are in tune with the planet, then maybe women get to feel these things, like the way some people know earthquakes are coming, and perhaps that's what sets off PMT. He said silly cow, that's just why politics is men's business, and got another beer out of the fridge."

"How do you turn catastrophe into art? Nowadays the process is automatic. A nuclear plant explodes? We’ll have a play on the London stage within a year. A President is assassinated? You can have the book or the film or the filmed book or the booked film. War? Send in the novelists. We have to understand it, of course, this catastrophe; to understand it, we need the imaginative arts. But we also need to justify it and forgive it, this catastrophe, however minimally… Well, at least it produced art. Perhaps, in the end, that’s what catastrophe is for."