In Elizabeth Finch, we are treated to everything we cherish in Barnes: his eye for the unorthodox forms love can take between two people, a compelling swerve into nonfictional material (this time, through Neil's obsessive study of Julian the Apostate, following on notes Elizabeth left for him to discover after her death), and the forcefully moving undercurrent of history, and biography in particular, as nourishment and guide in our current lives.

While other personal relationships and even his family drift from Neil's grasp, Elizabeth's application of her material to daily living remains vital to him, even after her death, in a way that nothing else does. Barely characterized beyond his preoccupation with Finchs ideas, which Barnes shares in lengthy quotations from her lectures and notebooks, Neil, though, is. Tasked with unpacking her notebooks after her death, Neil encounters once again Elizabeths astonishing ideas on the past and on how to make sense of the present. Neil is just one of many who fell under her spell during his time in her class. One might characterise it as a psychological novel, as a thinly disguised academic essay or even a quest. Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration. Neil, the narrator, takes her class on Culture and Civilization, taught not for undergraduates but for adults of all ages we are drawn into his intellectual crush on this private, withholding yet a commanding woman. Elizabeth Finch is not a traditional narrative. With measured empathy, she guided her students to develop meaningful ideas and to discover their centres of seriousness.

This beautiful, spare novel of platonic unrequited love springs into being around the singular character of the stoic, exacting Professor Elizabeth Finch. Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration - always rigorous, always thoughtful.

Elizabeth finch book review