Arthur & George – Julian Barnes

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes is another book that I chose to read after seeing that it had been on the Nightingale House Book Group reading list.

The blurb that I found about the book at the time of buying simply suggested that Arthur and George were two individuals who lived in Britain in the late nineteenth-century. A series of events that made sensational headlines would then bring the two gentlemen together. That was all I knew at the start. A book about two gentlemen at a time in British history that I enjoy reading about. I didn’t think much more of it at the time and just looked forward to Amazon delivering the book. Once I had the book in my had I realised that it may be a little more interesting than I’d initially realised!

The Arthur is none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories. The George is George Edalji a half-Parsee solicitor from the West Midlands who gained notoriety for being defended in a case of horse slashing by Sir Arthur.

Until I had finished this book and completed some research on the Internet I had no idea at all this this book, whilst still being a work of fiction, is based on true events and real people. The novel itself starts off as quite an easy read with the narrative focus swapping backwards and forwards quite quickly between the two main characters. Once into the main body of the story of the Great Wyrley Outrages I did find that the focus stayed with one of the characters and when this happened I often found myself wondering what the other was doing at the time.

The book explores some of the racial issues surrounding Edalji’s convictions, especially the role of his father as a Parsee vicar in a small rural parish. Also covered is Conan Doyle’s interest in Spiritualism (again something that I was unaware of) and George’s questioning of this.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, although I have to admit that I thought that it dragged in some places and could have done with being slightly shorter (there version I have comes in at 505 pages). It has made me realise that, even as someone who loves detective fiction, I have yet to properly read any of Conan Doyle’s work! I am also intrigued to read a non-fiction book that was written about Conan Doyle and Edalji’s story in Conan Doyle and the Parson’s Son: The George Edalji Case to understand what was actually fact, and what was fiction.