SOURCE: “Cynicism and Its Discontents,” in Hudson Review, Vol. 52, No. 4, Winter, 2000, pp. 657–64.

In the following excerpt, Flower complains that Barnes's England, England “does not live up to the searching questions with which it begins.”

Being judgmental must surely be one of the most joyful activities known to the species and it is cruel that other animals are denied this pleasure.

—Eddie Harnovey

Are women more cynical than men? Martha Cochrane, the protagonist of Julian Barnes's latest novel,¹ [England, England] answers her interrogator (male) in a characteristically acerbic fashion:

“You put us on a pedestal in order to look up our skirts. When you wanted models of purity and spiritual value, something to idealize while you were away tilling the soil or killing the enemy, we accommodated ourselves. If you now want us to be cynical and disillusioned I dare say we can accommodate ourselves to that as well...