Items related to Metroland
A special edition of Julian Barnes’s first novel with an introduction from the author and previously unseen archive material.
Christopher and Toni found in each other the perfect companion for that universal adolescent pastime: smirking at the world as you find it. In between training as flaneurs and the grind of school, they cast a cynical eye over their various dislikes: parents with their lives of spotless emptiness, Third Division (North) football teams, God, commuters and girls, and the inhabitants of Metroland: the strip of suburban dormitory Christopher calls home.
Longing for real life to begin, Christopher makes for Paris in time for les événements of 1968, only to miss it all in a haze of sex, French theatre and first love. And before long he finds himself drawn inevitably back to Metroland and the very life he was trying to escape...
This special edition contains unseen archive material including letters from early fans such as Philip Larkin and Dodie Smith, contemporary reviews, a deleted scene from the original manuscript as well as an introduction from the author.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Sixteen-year-old suburbanite Chris Lloyd and his mate Toni spend their free time wishing they were French, making up stories about strangers, and pretending to be flâneurs. When they grow up they'd like to be "artists-in-residence at a nudist colony." If youthful voyeurism figures heavily in their everyday lives, so, too, do the pleasures of analogy, metaphor, and deliberate misprision. Sauntering into one store that dares to call itself MAN SHOP, Toni demands: "One man and two small boys, please."
From the Inside Flap:
Julian Barnes could probably fill several books with these boys' clever misadventures, but in his first novel he attempts something more daring--the curve from youthful scorn to adult contentment. In 1968, when Chris goes off to Paris, he misses the May événements but manages, more importantly, to fall in love and learn the pleasures of openness: "The key to Annick's candour was that there was no key. It was like the atom bomb: the secret is that there is no secret." The final section finds Chris back in suburbia, married, with children and a mortgage, and slowly accepting the surprise that happiness isn't boring. "It's certainly ironic to be back in Metroland. As a boy, what would I have called it: le syphilis de l'âme, or something like that, I dare say. But isn't part of growing up being able to ride irony without being thrown?" Far from renouncing the joys of language, this novel wittily celebrates honest communication. --Kerry Fried
Only the author of Flaubert's Parrot could give us a novel that is at once a note-perfect rendition of the angsts and attitudes of English adolescence, a giddy comedy of sexual awakening in the 1960s, and a portrait of the accommodations that some of us call "growing up" and others "selling out."
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherSt Martins Press
- Publication date1980
- ISBN 10 0312531699
- ISBN 13 9780312531690
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages176
- Rating
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Metroland
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ISBN 10: 0312531699
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. 1st printing. $10.95 publisher's price present on the dust jacket or book. Visually checked for defects and deviations -- Found: general edge-wear ~ library discard ~ pocket removed ~ tape ghosts on the boards. Seller Inventory # QC4745
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Dust jacket missing. First edition THUS. Shelf and handling wear to cover and binding, with general signs of previous use. Boards slightly bowed, betray fading and nicks and other signs of wear and imperfection commensurate with age. Binding is tight and structurally sound. Stamps on both endpapers and title page; interior pages with text without any extraneous marks. Sealed in plastic for shipping. Secure packaging for safe delivery. 1.01. Seller Inventory # 1555086641
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METROLAND
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Book Description Hardcover. Dust Jacket Included. F. NY PUBLISHED IN 1980 .THE BOOK IS FINE BUT HAS THE LETTER B AT THE THE TOP RIGHT HAND CORNER OF THE FFEP WHICH MUST HAVE SOME SIGNIFICANCE AS OTHER SELLERS HAVE NOTED IT .THERE IS ALSO A STYLISH SYGNATURE ON THE SAME PAGE. THE WRAPPER IS FINE. Seller Inventory # metroland
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First American Edition. A couple of pages have small faint smudges, small "B" stamp to front endpaper, small chip at head of jacket spine. Award-winning author's first book. Seller Inventory # 000027
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Metroland
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Like New. Publisher: St. Martin's Press, NYC., 1980. First Edition, First Printing. FINE hardcover book in FINE dust-jacket. As new. Unread. NOT remainder marked. NOT price-clipped. NOT faded. NOT a book club edition. NOT an ex-library copy. All of our books with dust-jackets are shipped in fresh, archival-safe mylar protective sleeves. Seller Inventory # SKU1013574
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. First American edition. Fine in fine, unrubbed black dustwrapper with a touch of the usual flaking to the silver lettering. The author's first book, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award and basis for the film with Emily Watson. The American edition is surprisingly scarce, more so than the British. Seller Inventory # 33857
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