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| | England, England - Julian Barnes |
 | | England is become -- not just in Barnes's world but in reality -- a country that is brand-name and basically lives off of tourism (yes, yes, there is some industry somewhere in the country, and there is the City, but it is tourism that props ye olde country up and keeps it going). |
 | | England has, naturally, already been reduced to theme park status, but it is a spread out, hard to navigate theme park, with too many irrelevancies and too much distance between sights. |
 | | England is also an ideal subject -- always insular, Empire lost, even now at a distance from its European Union neighbors (as Barnes explored, less successfully, in his collection, Cross Channel). |
| www.complete-review.com /reviews/barnesj/england.htm (1349 words) |
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