England, their England

The problem with attempting clever fiction is that the result may be not very clever at all. Such is the case with Julian Barnes's disappointing and surprisingly silly new novel, England, England (Cape, £15.99 in UK). Barnes is one of the generation of English writers that includes Peter Ackroyd, Ian McEwan, Graham Swift, A.N. Wilson and Martin Amis, and his literary reputation was established more through his undoubted cleverness than any claims to artistry. This fact reveals as much about the weary condition of English fiction in general as it does about Julian Barnes.

Author of seven previous novels, including the highly original Flaubert's Parrot (1984) and the wartime elegy Staring at the Sun (1986), Barnes is probably the best literary journalist-cum-commentator among his contemporaries, and certainly possesses an extremely sophisticated European critical intelligence. What relevance does that have for British fiction? Paradoxically, not much - and a great deal.

More than any international group of writers, English novelists have allowed their preoccupations with the shaky-state-of-the-nation and the forthcoming end of the century to result in cliched fiction which at best produces either disconnected journalistic narratives of jumbled ideas or average satire, and at worst reads like second-rate situation comedy. Therein lies its dilemma. Convincing dialogue and characterisation elude most English novelists. Nowhere is this more graphically illustrated than in Barnes's new novel. Throughout England, England he leaves the reader feeling that this barbed jaunt would have fared far better as a television spoof about England as a victim of its past, its culture and its present, than as prose fiction. Imagine the most strained television comedy and you have this book. Its limited value as a novel lies in its being yet another example of the strait-jacket English fiction finds itself in.

At a time in which the modern Indian novel is rivalling the best American fiction in energy, imagination, scale and linguistic verve, there seem to be three standard variants of the English novel currently on offer: the Hampstead adultery saga which is invariably brisk, knowing, far from compelling and always set in the arts/ media world; the creaking but worthy first-person "here is the century told through the eyes of one man as I lived it", typified by Adam Thorpe's recent epic Pieces of Light (to be reviewed next week); and the limp, world-weary state-of-the-nation satire. England, England belongs to this third category. In it Barnes merely juggles as many cliches as he can summon to evoke the many faces of his tired old country.

Crazed tycoon Jack Pitman decides to create the ultimate theme park, the complete England, from Robin Hood to the Royal Family, all contained on the Isle of Wight. Pitman's England is going to be so good that no one will want to bother visiting the real one. As he sets about creating his Disney World version of the country, so begins the decline of "Old" England. Very quickly the joke wears thin, very thin. Barnes merely offers lists of the things which make England . . . well, England: think of any grouping - Shakespeare, ale, Manchester United, Stonehenge, Boadicea, the White Cliffs of Dover, cricket stumps, village greens, red double decker buses, Beefeaters, and so on.

In order to create his mad dream, Pitman recruits a boring set of sidekicks. The main character is Martha Cochrane. As has previously been the case in Barnes's work, the opening of this novel prepares one for the end. What happens in between merely leaves one wondering.

Initially, Cochrane appears as a figure embodying loss. She is the victim of her childhood and it is the vivid memories of childhood rather than any happy experience of it which prepare and sustain her for a life marked by emotional caution. Or so it seems.

A central motif instantly emerges. It is a child's jigsaw, the pieces of which are individual English counties. History and geography are frequently called upon by Barnes. He clearly enjoys amassing facts, as was evident in his A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (1989). The early memory of England being presented to her as coloured bits of a jigsaw, and the significance of her father leaving home and taking a piece, and therefore a county, with him, remains in Martha's mind. The years pass and a tougher, harder Martha, complete with history degree and a rack of professional suits, applies for a job which leads her to an audience with the demented Sir Jack.

She gets the job. Naturally, all of this is interlaced with sexist innuendo. In time she begins a relationship with a younger, weaker man. As expected, she soon falls out of favour with her employer. In Sir Jack Pitman, Barnes has created a caricature madman who would fit well in a Bond movie. Naturally, old Pitman is also a pervert and just when you feel like slinging the novel across the room, Barnes introduces an utterly tacky, D.M. Thomas-like interlude featuring Pitman's favourite recreational pursuit, visiting a specialist brothel in which the clients pretend they are babies and dress down to diapers. Among the services on offer is breast feeding.

Enter the tabloid press and with it the chance that the nasty Sir Jack will be exposed. Meanwhile, back at his Merry England theme park, the struggle for power never really takes place at all. Martha and her consort fall out of love and eventually she is forced to resign. Ultimately she returns to the real England, where she spends her time recalling the old life she knew as a child. Interestingly, the tone shifts here, echoing the elegiac quality of Staring at the Sun.

Late in the novel, far too late, Barnes attempts to salvage a stagey, unfunny and ramshackle narrative by addressing serious issues of time and loss, history, memory and identity; his rescue bid fails. Far inferior to Christopher Hope's inventive In Darkest England (1996), this limp satire again raises the question of how far the British literary establishment is prepared to indulge mediocre fiction. English reviewers are shamefully soft on their own writers, which might explain why a novel as poor as this would be published, never mind feted. Ironically, a book which sets out to lament England's cultural decline turns out to personify it.