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Metroland by Julian Barnes: book review





Metroland (1980, this edition 2009) is set in the suburbs of London in 1963 when the narrator is 16 years old; Paris in 1968 when he is 21; and London in 1977 when he is 30. The narrator is Christopher Lloyd, and this is his transition from schoolboy to university student to working man.

The novel starts and ends in Metroland – Christopher’s word for home – named after the Metroland railway line: ‘a thin corridor of land’ with ‘no geographical or ideological unity’ but with the billboard slogan urging people to ‘Live in Metroland.’ It symbolizes the beginning and the end. It symbolizes the boredom of suburbia.

The novel begins with two 16-year-old school boys, Christopher Lloyd and his best friend Toni Barbarowski. They love foreign words, especially Latin and French words. They conduct mini-studies, such as a pilot study on lying and plot a Mendacity Curve (the subjects are parents and adults). They spy on people and take notes. They, of course, know more than everyone else, and smirk at people’s suburban attitudes. But a lot of the time they are just two young bored school boys.

I love the description of Christopher’s mother’s coat: reversible, pillar-box red on one side, and black-and-white checks on the other, with very large pockets. All the better for hiding things.

At 21, Christopher travels to Paris while Toni goes to Morocco. May 1968 is the time of ‘the burning of the Bourse, the occupation of the Odeon, and the Billancourt lock-in’ … but he can’t remember any of those events because he is infatuated with his first girlfriend, the French Annick, and everything French. It is also a time spent in Paris with new-found art-lovers Dave, Mickey, and Marion from England.

At 30 in 1977, Christopher is back in London, older, wiser, less cynical – and married. He is in suburbia, living the suburban life he scoffed at when he was sixteen.

Sections 1 and 2 in this first novel by Julian Barnes are superbly witty and comical, insightful and honest, profound and thought-provoking. His popular novel, Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) continues the themes of Metroland – parents, religion, French theatre, girls, influences, loyalty, love, insecurity, and the fear of death. Some of his later novels are better, but this is an excellent account of cynical teenagers, first love, male angst, and an ordinary suburban life.





MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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