In 'Elizabeth Finch,' Julian Barnes addresses collective vs. personal memory
Barnes' 25th novel is about the power of influence and obsessions, wrong turns, and the difficulty of pinning down another's life, whether someone you knew or someone who predated you by centuries.
"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation," Julian Barnes wrote memorably in his 2011 Booker Prize-winner, The Sense of an Ending.
His latest novel, isa dual-pronged exploration of both personal and ancient history which asks, "Why should we expect our collective memory — which we call history — to be any less fallible than our personal memory?" Barnes' title character, a teacher, drums into her adult students that history "is for
