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Title: sort of like having Baudrillard over for tea and wig-making
Review: Julian Barnes is one of the best literary stylists I've ever encountered. He has tremendous skill; and its been shown in most of his previous books, especially Flaubert's Parrot.This book, however, is not nearly as creative as 10 1/2 or Parrot. It's a weak soup of postmodernisms and soggy British pride. England is made again on the Isle of Wight; and during the course of this building it becomes chic to emigrate from the dying whale of the original island. Eventually, England returns to a kind of Eden like grace from which to rebuild itself anew.
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