This short novel by Julian Barnes highlights what is best about the author: his impeccable prose style. It is a style that is neither fussy, nor showoffy, nor needlessly obscurantist, but rather flowing and calm (like a river with some shallows and a few depths). The title refers to an instructor the narrator, Neil, encountered in an adult education class on culture and civilization and who left an indelible mark on him. As in his novel about Shostakovich, I find Barnes does better with obscure and specific storylines – here it is Julian the Apostate at center – than he does with "love stories," which tend to fall into that English trap of being hopelessly trite.
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