I had been sceptic. I read works by Julian Barnes before and had very mixed feelings about his storytelling. The first book I read was “A History of the World in 10½ Chapters” in German translation, which I loved but found quite verbose in some parts. The second was “The Sense of an Ending” which I absolutely didn’t like. The story was boring, the protagonists idiots. Maybe one can blame the story itself, it was simply not my cup of tea. And now “Arthur & George”. Like stated before I had been sceptic since “The Sense of an Ending” was (for me!) a little bit disappointing but Arthur & George is a great book! I grew quite fond of Mr Barnes’ writing and I really like it how he gave the two main protagonists their voices back (as well as the secondary characters). I think it must be a real challenge for an author to write a novel about historic personalities and the more famous the person was the higher the bar is raised. As far as I was able to tell his research and background knowledge about George Edalji’s and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s lives and whatabouts was absolutely neat and thorough. If he did leave something aside in his story it didn’t make itself conspicuous. He didn’t add what wasn’t to be proven by secondary sources and all in all his approach of a rather difficult topic and two very different and not less difficult personalities was tender and well thought of. Like ”A History of the World in 10½ Chapters” this book as well had some lengthy parts but the entirety of greatly drawn characters (the lot of them), interesting parts and an insight to two very different life careers whose paths crossed more or less by chance, completely made up for it. I was quite surprised and didn’t expect to enjoy this book so much.

Der Titel des Buches ist "Arthur", da sollte man doch meinen, dass es sich hauptsächlich um den kleinen Vierbeiner dreht. Das kam mir allerdings etwas zu kurz. Das Buch konzentriert sich sehr darauf, den Autor Mikael Lindnord zu feiern. Wenn man so liest, was er zu sagen hat, lautet die Botschaft: Ich, ich und nochmal ich. Er ist einer der besten Adventure Racer der Welt, kann am besten schwimmen, klettern, mit dem Kajak fahren. Er ist derjenige, der sein Team zusammenhält, der den richtigen Weg findet (und nicht Karen, die - typisch Frau - die Landkarte nicht richtig lesen konnte), der seinen verletzten Kumpel und den Hund durch den Dschungel bringt. Er kämpft bis zum Umfallen. Teilweise war mir das echt zu viel Selbstlob. Klang ein bisschen nach ner Mischung aus Olli Kahn und Bear Grylls. Hab auch irgendwann aufgehört zu zählen, wie oft er "koste es was es wolle" schreibt. Das ist offenbar seine Lieblingsredewendung. Ist aber irgendwann auch mal gut damit. Ja, wir haben alle gesehen/gelesen, dass du Arthur nach Schweden gebracht hast und wie viel mediale Aufmerksamkeit das verursacht hat - man muss es jetzt nicht auf jeder dritten Seite erwähnen. Aber Arthur geht's gut und das ist die Hauptsache. 🐶🥰