In Julian Barnes’ London billiard room, the sky hangs in tatters. The plaster has come loose from the ceiling and has been painted in pastel blue with clouds: it looks nice, but apparently it was a long time ago. So now there’s a strip of sky hanging over the sofa where Julian Barnes is sitting talking about his new novel, Elizabeth Finch.
The central question, as Barnes himself explains, is whether we could have done something wrong. Not just now, with Brexit or the Crimean War in the 19th century, but much, much earlier. In the first four centuries after Christ, when Christianity prevailed and with it a worldview that still dominates today. (And which, among other things, has produced a heaven and above all a hell.) So by “we” Barnes doesn’t just mean his countrymen alone. In his British publishing house, however, the younger people who read the book would all have thought that “Elizabeth Finch” is about today. And that, says Barnes, “was very touching to me.”
