England, England
by Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape

IF I say that about half this novel is a light-hearted fantasy, the hearts of Julian Barnes's admirers may sink a little. He's not known for that sort of thing, is he? Lightness of touch, yes; fantasy, in Flaubert's Parrot and A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, true - but "light-hearted fantasy"? 

The book doesn't begin like that. The first 25 pages are more like young Jean in Barnes's Staring at the Sun. These pages present young Martha, piecing together childhood and childhood's memories, which may be exaggerations, or fictions; except that certainly she, and her mother, were abandoned by her father. What she has to say is lightly written, but it's serious too. 

Then, abruptly, we move somewhere into the next century. Martha, grown up, 40 in fact, is taken on by the powerful but grotesque Sir Jack Pitman as his Special Consultant. Sir Jack is a tycoon, cast in the mould of Robert Maxwell, with a few hints from Evelyn Waugh's Lord Copper: a man who has assembled his court of sycophants, jesters, advisers - from Dr Max (a tele-don, Sir Jack's Official Historian) to Martha, his Appointed Cynic. 

Sir Jack's great project is to take over the Isle of Wight and to make it into a "Top Dollar and High Yen" heritage centre, a simulacrum for England, in which the whole of English history is to be - selectively - displayed. Room must be found not only for the main characteristics, virtues and essences which the word "English" suggests (based on research in 25 countries) but also for the central characteristic: the Monarchy. 

This being somewhere into the next millennium, there is a King and a Queen (and the "three-in-a-bed sessions with high-price escort girls" cousin of the King, Prince Rick); there is the King's willingness "to convert the House of Windsor into a motorbicycling monarchy". As Sir Jack's grandiose plans proceed, he is convinced that he needs to get this institution fully on board: "We're strapped without Buck House." 

So far, about halfway into the novel, it's still light-hearted, with lots of jokes and comic lists (from Martha's childhood listing of the District Agricultural and Horticultural Society's Schedule of Prizes, to the Gastronomical Sub-Committee's choice of traditional English fare, and on to the items to be set up on the Isle of Wight). Then things change. 

Sir Jack's infantile sexual gratification is spied on by a gossip columnist; the King shoots down a marauding journalist's plane over Ventnor; Sir Jack, irritated by Martha's ventures beyond Appointed Cynicism into a relationship with another member of his Court, sacks her. But she knows about his nappy habits. She is out to destroy him, and he knows it. He keeps her on. 

I shan't attempt to give a synopsis of the rest of the book: it wouldn't be fair to hitherto admirers who want confirmation that it isn't a light-hearted fantasy, but something much more ferocious. It is the blackest of Julian Barnes's books, for all its typically clever, jaunty address: "Look what happened to England." 

The closing pages may, to some, suggest something hopeful. I don't believe them: at the heart of this novel is something much darker and more dreadful than Martha's post as Appointed Cynic. I'm not sure it all works.