"Arthur & George": A grand mystery based on history

"Arthur & George"
by Julian Barnes
Knopf, 388 pp., $24.95

Julian Barnes' fascinating ninth novel, "Arthur & George," reconstructs the historical novel as a biographical detective thriller based on real events that occurred in early 20th-century England.

The Great Wyrley Outrages of the early 1900s involved a series of animal mutilations in the small village in Staffordshire. One of the title characters is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the universally renowned writer of crime fiction, the creator of Sherlock Holmes who, in real life, felt it his chivalric duty to correct a wrong and restore the honor of the accused. The other is a Birmingham solicitor who was unjustly convicted of the crimes.

In alternating narrative sections, Barnes begins by re-creating the parallel childhoods of each character, slowly revealing that young Arthur is in fact Conan Doyle. In Edinburgh, Arthur, raised on romantic tales that value truth above all else, quickly discovers "the essential connection between narrative and reward" when schoolmates pay him in pastries for spinning stories. As an adolescent, his sense of justice is offended when he's denied an academic stipend for art students. Undaunted, he moves on to study medicine, which he applies to a moribund practice in ophthalmology.

His counterpart, George Edalji, is the son of an Indian father and a Scots mother. George is indoctrinated by his Parsee clergyman father to believe that the correct answer is always the truthful one. Young George, who has become "frightened of being stupid," eventually begins a career in law, making a name for himself by publishing a "guide for the traveling public on all points likely to arise in connection with the railways."

It seems unlikely that Arthur and George will ever cross paths. The events that draw them together begin with a series of anonymous and racially abusive letters sent to the Edalji family at the vicarage, a series of hoaxes involving a stolen key from a school, and, most importantly, violent acts against several horses at a nearby farm. A lengthy section of the novel details George's trial, which results in a seven-year sentence served at several prisons.

Arthur knows little to nothing about the charges against George until the end of George's incarceration, when he receives a package from George soliciting help in clearing his name. In the meantime, although Arthur has created a fictional detective who gives him more fame than his medical career, he feels unfulfilled and without a life purpose. He is married to a terminally ill wife and is attempting to sustain a tortuous platonic relationship with a younger woman.

The novel becomes an accomplished duet when the two lives unite. Arthur and George are both confronting social constraints. George is trying to clear himself so that he can return to a law career. Arthur is trying to move from physical to psychical research. He becomes a "consulting detective" when he decides to investigate the truths behind George's case, in hopes of righting the wrongs he believes have been done to George, whom he considers his equal and an "unofficial Englishman."

Barnes' previous accomplishments include some of the most imaginatively conceived novels of the past several years: "Metroland," "Before She Met Me," "Flaubert's Parrot," "A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters" and "England, England." "Arthur & George" was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. Had it won, it would have been a well-deserved accolade. What appears to have been a "footnote in legal history" is the source for a stunning literary achievement.