Metroland

Description

'I cannot remember when I enjoyed a first novel more' Daily Telegraph From the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction comes a magnificent portrait of youth and growing up. 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 him, to Toni's disappointment, back to Metroland.

Julian Barnes is the author of twelve novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. He has also written three books of short stories, Cross Channel, The Lemon Table and Pulse; four collections of essays; and two books of non-fiction, Nothing to be Frightened Of and the Sunday Times Number One bestseller Levels of Life. He lives in London.

I was captivated from the first page. I cannot remember when I enjoyed a first novel more -- Nina Bawden * Daily Telegraph * 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 * A rare and unusual first novel -- William Boyd * London Magazine * A very funny, touching first novel. It has a hard comic edge to it that is logical and at the same time extremely diverting * Spectator * One would have to look very hard to find a wryer, more lovingly detailed account of intellectual and sexual innocence abroad -- Jay Parini * New York Times *