RaveReadings (AU)The novel is bookended by two finely cut portraits of Elizabeth Finch ... The middle section of the novel is, suitably, an essay about Rome’s last pagan emperor Julian the Apostate, written to honour Neil’s late teacher. While this section’s theological musings might sound obtuse, Barnes via Neil coolly weaves the contradictions of the ancient world into the anxieties of our own. Reflections on stoicism and romanticism, monotheism and pluralism, chastity and the erotic are at play here. All the while Barnes makes a sly show of what fiction can do, taking the reader on a journey of big ideas and shaded feelings without ever being didactic: his irony and wit are sandpaper dry. There is even the odd schoolboy joke. Perceptive and tender, playful and paradoxical, Elizabeth Finch is so much more than the sum of its parts.