Before She Met Me

A look at the heart of jealousy - how it can rise from improbable circumstances to become a gripping nightmare world. One of Barnes' better books, nice balance of the comic and horrific.

No, really. I've read most of his books, and, of course, "The History" rocks, and "Talking It Over" has loads of sentimental value for me - I was musing about translating it - but there is nothing that compares with the brutal force of "Before She Met Me".Graham is crazy? Come on. He is a little weird, but who isn't? His sexuality is repressed to say the very least, but all until he embarks on his crusade - he's a perfectly normal citizen. It's just that the power of love works in subtle ways - including this gruesome one. It could happen to you. No, really.

I more or less disagree with the other reviewers here. The protagonist, a candidate for obsessive-compulsive disorder if ever there was one, is easily pegged as eccentric from the very start, but we're lulled into believing, just as his second wife, that he's basically sensible. The book is overflowing with subtle clues until we're smacked in the face with it at the end that indeed this is someone completely off his rocker. It is a test of the reader's compassion to see whether she can still feel sympathy for the miserable creature. True, there is no character I would wish to identify with, but it's not all about me, and besides, the wonderful thing about exploring the extreme kookiness that love inspires is that we all come close to this sort of thing at some point. I never had a dream about four guys banging my lover in the carwash though...I agree in part with the reviewer who is unhappy with the women in the novel. Ann is just a little too passive -- her most significant thought, to the overall structure, occurs in the middle, where she observers with certainty that Graham is not an alcoholic or a potential suicide. Well, I won't ruin the book for you. Ann is pretty well fleshed out, though... but yes there could be more.I loved the book.

Before She Met Me is a book filled with the great British humor of Julian Barnes. It has its flaws, to be sure, but they are minor ones. One of the characters is truly reprehensible, but his appearances are so few and far between that I think his horrid behavior can easily be overlooked.What bothered me more, with this book, were the female characters. One of them seems quite true to life but the other one did not. She seemed wooden, a cardboard cutout. Barnes is a terrific writer, but in my opinion, he has yet to create a believable, good, female character. The writing in this book is really first rate British humor (I expect it may be too British for some). It is an escapist book but I don't think that should lessen its importance. After all, don't we all need to escape now and then?If you want to laugh and have a little fun, if you want to forget your troubles for awhile, then try Before She Met Me. It might do you a world of good. It did me.

On one level, we have the timeless story of man dealing with woman's past. Barnes magnificently captures a man falling into oblivion. I don't want to go too much into plot because I would be doing it an injustice. More impotrtantly, the book speaks on the blurred line between art and reality. The main character descends into that mentality where he cannot discern the real from the false. The book is a criticism on the emphasis put on art in the actual world. The language Barnes uses is terrific and I recommend it highly