The first sight which I ever had of Mr George Edalji was enough in itself to both convince me of the extreme improbability of his being guilty of the crime for which he was condemned, and to suggest some at least of the reasons which had led to his being suspected.I went into reading Arthur & George knowing nothing about it – I picked it up because it was a Man Booker nominee in 2005 and I remember really enjoying author Julian Barnes' Man Booker winning title The Sense of an Ending from 2011 – and I would recommend my total ignorance to any other potential reader (and will attempt to be spoiler-free).
The book starts interestingly: with the first memories of two alternating little boys, and as they grow and go to school and then set out into the world, we learn that they are opposite sorts of characters. Arthur is adventurous and athletic, a popular student and beloved son, born into a good British family that has fallen into genteel poverty. George, the son of a vicar, is controlled and withdrawn, accustomed to loneliness and the bullying of his peers who repeatedly tell him, “You're not a right sort”, despite George having been raised as a proud and patriotic Englishman. It took me nearly the entire first section of this book to start realising that I had been misdirected a bit, that things weren't exactly as they seemed, and it was with wonder that I eventually discovered that this is actually a true story; that Arthur and George were historical figures whose story, told here, was huge news in Edwardian England.
And for a true story, this one is filled with irony: The lawyer who trusts the law completely and is utterly failed by it; indeed, George is an expert on railway law who finds himself railroaded. Whereas Arthur was a boy who grew up on tales of chivalry, but who initially declined a knighthood; he is a failed ophthalmologist who used his knowledge of the eye to attempt the reputational rehabilitation of an innocent man; he values a chaste passion and is unwittingly lectured on the psychocriminal effects of repressing sexual urges. For overall plot, is there anything more uncomfortable than watching a terrible injustice happen to an innocent man? Most especially when the story is true?
The writing in Arthur & George perfectly captures the formality of its era and I was often struck by the lovely effect of passages like the following:
The mystery of the victim: something was now changed in his way of thinking. He continued to shoot ducks from the snowy sky, and felt pride in his marksmanship; yet beyond this lay a feeling he could grasp at yet not contain. Every bird you downed bore pebbles in its gizzard from a land the maps ignored.And there were very many funny bits, as when Arthur was courting Touie, taking her around sight-seeing:
Miss Louisa Hawkins had not realised that courtship – if this was what it was – could be so strenuous, or so resemble tourism.The first two-thirds of this book blew me away, but then it sort of petered out. Once all the legal wrangles and detective work was finished, the energy was lost from the plot, and although I appreciate that life went on for these two characters, I don't know if it was necessary to follow them to the end of these lives. The amount of research that Barnes put into this project is incredible, but it was his own art that brought both Arthur and George to full and fleshy life. It's this art that elevates a trailing-off plot to a four star read.
