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Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes
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There’s no denying that Julian
Barnes’s Before She Met Me is an absorbing, even compelling,
account of one man’s descent from jealousy into obsession and
ultimately to insanity. Graham, happily and then unsatisfying
married, falls for Ann, for whom he leaves his wife and daughter.
With Ann, a sometime bit part actress seems to offer him the solace
and companionship which Graham has just discovered that he’s been
lacking all these years. By then, through the offices of his bitter
ex-wife, he happens to see a film featuring, albeit briefly, Ann.
He becomes obsessed with her past, convulsively gathering evidence
of her former liaisons and boyfriends and even passing
acquaintances. But he can’t leave it there: and what he imagines his
wife did before she met him becomes worse that what she actually
did. Sad, funny and disturbing, Barnes’ prose is as always,
well-measured and quite elegant. Yet there is something just a
little unsatisfying about this novel. Never quite convinced that
Graham’s descent is totally self-driven, the reader is left
wondering about the machinations of his friends and his ex-wife
particularly: the questions surrounding their role are never quite
resolved and yet too closely drawn to remain provocatively
ambiguous. Barnes has done a lot better.
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