Julian Barnes “A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters”

This book left me decidedly underwhelmed. In fact, so much so that I didn’t even bother to finish it. It is not really a novel as such, but consists of several separate stories (my guess would be 11, but I didn’t really check) that are only very tenuously connected by the mention of woodworm and/or Noah’s Ark - don’t ask me why, I didn’t get it either.

The first story, which tells about what went “really” on on board Noah’s Ark, told from the standpoint of one little passenger, was quite funny. If you’re an atheist that is. It doesn’t leave a good hair on any aspect of the nonsensical story as told by the Bible, and as such I obviously enjoyed it a lot.

I really wanted to like the book based on that first story, but sadly it all went downhill from there. The following chapters ranged from the downright silly (as in “stupid” and not funny at all) to the plain boring. I couldn’t muster any interest in any of them, except maybe “The Survivor”, but even that one got too confusing and pointless in the end.

In fact, most of the stories seemed kind of pointless to me. Probably I just didn’t get the point, but they all left me wondering why the hell I should be interested in those people. Very, very dissatisfying.

The most puzzling aspect of the whole book, though, was the to my eyes absolutely exaggerated praise for it on the back cover. All those reviewers praising it as a masterpiece, as funny and moving and whatnot - they all must have read a totally different book and I want to know which one.