Metroland was published by Jonathan Cape in 1980, winning the Somerset Maugham Award and announcing Barnes as a writer of exceptional intelligence and control. The novel is structured in three parts, each set in a different period: “Metroland” (1963, adolescence in London’s suburbs), “Paris” (1968, sexual and intellectual awakening in France), and “Metroland II” (1977, married life back in the suburbs).
Christopher Lloyd and his school friend Toni spend their adolescence in the London suburbs served by the Metropolitan Line — “Metroland” — cultivating intellectual contempt for the bourgeois world around them. They compose manifestos, worship French culture, and plan to escape the trap of English suburban respectability. In part two, Christopher is in Paris during 1968, has his first serious relationship with a French woman, and appears to be fulfilling the bohemian promise of his youth. In part three, he is married, living in a suburb indistinguishable from the one he grew up in, working a conventional job, and must account for the gap between who he planned to become and who he is.
The novel’s power lies in its refusal to sentimentalize either rebellion or conformity. Christopher’s adolescent contempt for suburbia was genuine but also performative; his Parisian adventures were real but also temporary; and his suburban adulthood is not defeat but chosen comfort — the accommodation that an intelligent person makes when they discover that art requires sacrifice they are not willing to make.
Collecting Metroland
First edition (Jonathan Cape, London, 1980): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $100–$350
- Signed first edition: $200–$600
- US first (St. Martin’s Press, 1980): $40–$100
- Without jacket: $20–$40