[In the following review, Gosswiller asserts that the style of Barnes's The Porcupine is different from his earlier novels due to its subject matter.]

A truly powerful short novel is a rare event. Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground, with its confessions of a social misfit, and Thomas Mann's “Death in Venice,” the story of a pederast, come immediately to mind. Both characters, reprehensible in society, were new to literature. Julian Barnes's The Porcupine, focusing upon a type of individual as much scorned today as the protagonists of Dostoyevsky and Mann were then, is a work of similar power.

Stoyo Petkanov is an old-school communist hardened by prison in the 1930s, a crafty, ruthless politician with an enormous ego. With the fall of communism, he was deposed as president of his former Iron Curtain country, which bears some resemblance to Bulgaria.

Because evidence of criminal activity is lacking, Petkanov is waiting to be tried on the only charge the new regime believes it can make stick: mismanagement of the country. Why is he being tried? Possibly, Barnes hints, because the trial will help to divert attention from food shortages. The novel begins with a great chorus of sound as women demonstrating at the parliament building bang their spoons rhythmically on empty pots and pans.

The novel's other principal character is the prosecuting attorney, Peter Solinsky, a professor of law and former communist. Despite his hatred of Petkanov, he has no love for his mission. He has been charged by his people to find a way not only to justify the preordained guilty verdict but also to make the charge appear grossly inadequate.

In telling this story, Barnes has woven a rich tapestry of life in a post-communist country, with its shortages, its cynicism, its demand for vengeance and its minority who, like Petkanov, persist in believing in the rightness of their revolution and the folly of those who exalt liberty over bread.

We meet the young, cynical witnesses who watch the trial on television, the single-minded officer who keeps feeding the prosecuting attorney “evidence,” and the attorney's wife, the daughter of a communist hero, who becomes increasingly disenchanted with her husband as the trial progresses. But what intrigues us most is the story of the struggle between Solinsky, unsure of his ground, and Petkanov (the Porcupine), whose belief in communism itself and the rightness of his rule has never wavered.

In their ongoing debate over which society is best, Petkanov almost always wins—and his arguments are imposing. Observing that the new government is unable to give people sausage, he asks Solinsky what it does give them. “Freedom and truth,” Solinsky responds. Whereupon Petkanov observes:

“You know, the priest in my village … used to say, ‘You don't get to Heaven in the first jump.’”

“Exactly.”

“No, Peter, you misunderstand me. Actually I am not talking about you. You and your sort have had many jumps already. Many centuries and many jumps. … I am talking about us. We have had only one jump so far.’”

Of course, it is in the nature of politics that Solinsky gets the last word, in the same way the communists had the last word when they were in power. But the way he gets it provides a shock befitting a master storyteller and irony worthy of a philosopher.

The Porcupine does not read like other Julian Barnes novels. Readers recalling the author's verbal virtuosity in Talking it Over may be surprised at the plainness of its prose. And those familiar with the episodic format of History of the World in 10[frac12] Chapters will find here plot devices reminiscent of 19th Century novels.

But Barnes obviously has not forgotten what he wrote in Flaubert's Parrot, paraphrasing Flaubert: “Style is a function of theme. Style is not imposed on subject-matter, but arises from it.” In The Porcupine, Barnes tells a story that requires the traditional techniques of foreshadowing and flashback for its impact, and he uses language appropriate to people of the working classes and a society mired in poverty and discontent.

It is also possible that Barnes has taken seriously another idea of Flaubert: “The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to a level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoisie.” Whether or not that is the case, The Porcupine gives us reason to think about a subject on which, one suspects, many contemporary minds are closed.