From the best-selling, award-winning author of The Sense of an
Ending, a magnetic tale that centers on the presence of a vivid and
particular woman, whose loss becomes the occasion for a man's deeper
examination of love, friendship, and biography.
"I'll remember Elizabeth Finch when most other characters I've met this
year have faded." -John Self, The Times
This beautiful, spare novel of platonic unrequited love springs into
being around the singular character of the stoic, exacting Professor
Elizabeth Finch. Neil, the narrator, takes her class "Culture and
Civilisation," taught not for undergraduates but for adults of all ages;
we are drawn into his intellectual crush on this private, withholding,
yet commanding woman. While other personal relationships and even his
family drift from Neil's grasp, Elizabeth's application of her material
to the matter of daily living remains important to him, even after her
death, in a way that nothing else does.
In Elizabeth Finch, we are treated to everything we cherish in Barnes:
his eye for the unorthodox forms love can take between two people, a
compelling swerve into nonfictional material (this time, through Neil's
obsessive study of Julian the Apostate, following on notes Elizabeth
left for him to discover after her death), and the forcefully moving
undercurrent of history, and biography in particular, as nourishment and
guide in our current lives.
