Christopher and Toni found in each other the perfect companion for that universal adolescent pastime: smirking at the world as you find it. In between training as flaneurs and the grind of school they cast a cynical eye over their various dislikes: parents with their lives of spotless emptiness, Third Division (North) football teams, God, commuters and girls, and the inhabitants of Metroland, the strip of suburban dormitory Christopher calls home. Longing for real life to begin, we follow Christopher to Paris in time for les evenements of 1968, only to miss it all in a haze of sex, French theatre and first love, leading, to Toni's disappointment, back to Metroland.
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"If all works of fiction were as thoughtful, as subtle, as well constructed and as funny as Metroland there would be no more talk of the death of the novel" New Statesman "It's one of the best accounts of clever English schoolboyhood I've read" Times Educational Supplement "Irony and imagery are deployed with a finesse even Flaubert wouldn't wince at...consumately elegant" Sunday Times
Book Description
The adolescent Christopher and his soulmate Toni had sneered at the stifling ennui of Metroland, their cosy patch of suburbia on the Metropolitan line. They had longed for Life to begin- meaning Sex and Freedom- to travel and choose their own clothes. Then Chris, at thirty, starts to settle comfortably into bourgeois contentment himself. Luckily, Toni is still around to challenge such backsliding.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
For the adolescent Christopher, born of a middle class family in the middle class rural suburbs of the estate agents' and adman's conceptualised Metroland - defined after the First World War as the path travelled by the old Metropolitan railway line out from Baker Street to Watford, Chesham and Amersham - life is about big issues. He and his friend Toni are obsessed with the "purity of language, perfectibility of self, function of art" and Love, Truth and Authenticity. Always capitalised, and often according to the wisdom of such literary luminaries as Rimbaud and Flaubert.
Christopher's transition into adulthood is undertaken in a different Metroland - Paris in 1968. Whilst the student riots rage not far away, Christopher is too busy finding out about the realities of love, truth and authenticity to become involved. Such realities ultimately lead him back to his own childhood metroland again. But now he sees it and life through different eyes.
Barnes paints a rich picture in the reader's imagination, and his use of language is poetic, descriptive and colloquial in turn. To enjoy this, you first have to overcome a sneaking suspicion that you are not quite clever enough to read it. This was compounded (on my part anyway) by having only a smattering knowledge of French and a complete ignorance of most of the authors, playwrights, philosophers and artists dropped into the narrative like so many starlets at a Hello! party.
However, once you've determined not to let this deter you, the novel blossoms into a funny and realistic recollection of the ideals, presumptions and pretensions of one's teenage years, and the recognition that in the end life is often rather more straightforward and mundane than you thought it would be.
Having become engrossed in the novel, I personally found the ending a bit of an anticlimax, but arguably this could be one of the messages of the novel itself. It is not as sophisticated as 'England, England', the only other Barnes novel that I've read, but confirms his importance to modern British writing. Not bad for a first novel either!
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
By A. Peel
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Metroland is a very intimate and enchanting novel written in the first person. The reader is drawn into Chris, the narrator's, world at the very outset and from that point on, we are taken on a journey through life, time and age.
We start out in the mind of a 16 year old boy, feeling all his hopes and ideals alongside him, sharing his philosophies and questions with his closest friends in a haven of teenage, mutual, intellectual exchange.
Then comes Paris, May '68. Chris has matured. We sense that he has begun to live, and has become increasingly uncertain of how the realities of life fit in with his childhood ideals.
As the work draw slowly to a close the narrator is experiencing "real" life to the full; the marriage, the mortgage and the child, and yet the need to question seems to have been appeased. We now sense his readiness to live life day by day, without too much forward-thinking. With age, he no longer really asks why things happen, he merely accepts.
The ageing process we feel in the novel is fascinating, in particular when we consider the relationship between the two childhood "best friends", Chris and Toni. As children they seem to parralel so closely, with similar beliefs and concerns, yet as time passes their priorities and goals move in conflicting directions. Chris adapted his ideals to reality. Toni, on the other hand, tried to live by his childhood ideals as an adult, torturing himself in the process in the hopes of being true to his past self and his broken dreams.
Some of us mature and develop and some are children forever ....who is happier?
We start out in the mind of a 16 year old boy, feeling all his hopes and ideals alongside him, sharing his philosophies and questions with his closest friends in a haven of teenage, mutual, intellectual exchange.
Then comes Paris, May '68. Chris has matured. We sense that he has begun to live, and has become increasingly uncertain of how the realities of life fit in with his childhood ideals.
As the work draw slowly to a close the narrator is experiencing "real" life to the full; the marriage, the mortgage and the child, and yet the need to question seems to have been appeased. We now sense his readiness to live life day by day, without too much forward-thinking. With age, he no longer really asks why things happen, he merely accepts.
The ageing process we feel in the novel is fascinating, in particular when we consider the relationship between the two childhood "best friends", Chris and Toni. As children they seem to parralel so closely, with similar beliefs and concerns, yet as time passes their priorities and goals move in conflicting directions. Chris adapted his ideals to reality. Toni, on the other hand, tried to live by his childhood ideals as an adult, torturing himself in the process in the hopes of being true to his past self and his broken dreams.
Some of us mature and develop and some are children forever ....who is happier?
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The narrator of this unremarkable tale is that special kind of obnoxious, conceited, intellectual who has come to the conclusion that he has something witty and insightful to say about life but he's wrong. The protagonist has no redeeming features and the storytelling is smug, uneventful and dull. I hated this piece of self-glorification from the first page and it just got worse.
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3.9 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well written
Metroland is a beautifully written book but it is now dated. It is about a young man becoming an adult; his youthful arrogance and his first loves.
Published 12 days ago by EA Williams
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent thought provoking read
Barnes' book doesn't have great highs and lows, action or even much of a story, however it remains engaging and thought provoking throughout. Read more
Published 5 months ago by A. Grieve
1.0 out of 5 stars
I hated this book
I really disliked this book and found it very difficult to finish. I had to struggle through a few pages at a time because I found Chris, the subject of the book, self centred and... Read more
Published 5 months ago by C. Dawson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Slim volume
I love all Julian Barnes' books and this was no exception, I just wish there had been more of it
Published 5 months ago by Clare Bolitho
4.0 out of 5 stars
Smart and sassy
I loved this. The voices are so immediately clear, and the early chapters about schoolboy obsessions and the smart-alecky things they do and say are really very entertaining. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Sally
3.0 out of 5 stars
The road not taken
Like Julian Barnes' Booker prize winning novella, The Sense of an Ending, this story opens with bright, uppity and rather unpleasant teenagers flexing their intellectual muscles... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Clive A. H. Still
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beginners luck?
I didn't expect too much of this first born of Barnes. But it surprised me al the way through. A little gem.
Published 22 months ago by G. de Bruin
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good middle section, shame about the bits on either side
Years ago I watched the film version starring Christian Bale and Emily Watson. It was a standard issue, mediocre, low budget British film with the standard issue low ambitions and... Read more
Published 24 months ago by BS on parade
4.0 out of 5 stars
True, True, However, And True
True, the coming of age story has been written ad nauseum. It is also true that the coming of age angle in the 1960's will also cause a reader to contemplate the moment just prior... Read more
Published on 25 Nov 2002 by taking a rest
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