Brambilla

Brambilla is a short story in the collection Cross Channel by Julian Barnes, which was published in 1996. All the stories in this collection focus on the connection between England and France.

At the very beginning, we meet Andy, who’s a rider and his friend and coach. They’re both on the top of Mount Moran and are going to descend from the mountain. They don’t use breaks, but rush as fast as possible down the mountain.
We also get to know Chreesteen, who is Andy’s girlfriend; she ran away from home together with Andy and went to France where Andy is going to participate in Tour De France. Another guy we get to know in the story is Sean Kelly, who’s probably Andy’s idol. Andy doesn’t feel like the Tour is something exciting, but rather boring, because they don’t do anything else, but biking all day and seeing the same boring view, and he’s a bit scared of the hills too. Chreesteen has got a job as a stripper at a bar, and she enjoys it, because the atmosphere at her job is good, and her boss is great.
Andy tells several stories in the text for instance where a rider is going to get drug tested and the rider is using a woman’s urine, which leads to the conclusion that the rider is clean, but pregnant, and another Story about Sean Kelly and Linda’s marriage and so on.
At the end we get to know who Brambilla was. He was an Italian rider, who lost Tour De France on the last day. He used to slap himself if he was bad. At the end of Brambillas career he buried his own bike in the back of his garden, because he didn’t believe he was worthy any longer to ride it.

The story takes place around the late 80’s or early 90’s, because drugs were still a huge issue in the Tour De France, which we can read in the text. At the start of the text we’re in England, then Andy and Chreesteen takes the boat to Calais, and then to France to the Tour De France.

Andy is a rider, who’s practicing to the Tour. His idol is Sean Kelly, and he does almost everything the same as Sean Kelly, such as going to bed at nine, to eat dinner at seven and so on. His girlfriend is Chreesten, which he doesn’t mention at all in the text.

Chreesten used to be a ballet dancer, but when she ran away with Andy, she got a job as a stripper in France, which I believe she likes. Her parents dislikes Andy, they don’t know what they have in common. She does also mention Andy a lot in the text, which shows us, she loves him.

The minor characters in the text are:
Mr Douglas, who is Andy’s coach, and knows how to “descend” and teaches Andy it.
Sean Kelly, who is Andy’s idol. He’s a rider and married to Linda.
Brambilla is shortly described at the end. As already mentioned above in the summary, he’s a famous Italian rider who lost Tour De France, and is now to old to ride his bike and therefore buried it in his garden.

I think the theme is about love and work, because as we can see in the text, Andy is very focused on his job, and not at all focused on Chreesteen and their relationship. Chreesteen on the other hand is all about the relationship, and keeps mentioning Andy, who shows us how much she loves him, but probably isn’t returned by Andy.
So I think the message in the text is for love to true, it has to be returned by both of the partners, and that you should not let anything come between it, such as a job or a hobby, because then you shouldn’t have found a girl/boyfriend in the first place, or maybe wait till you would have the time and effort to take care of the relationship. This is the case in Brambilla, where Andy – at least not shown in the text, doesn’t return the love to Chreesteen and yet she still works her arse off to pay rent etc., just for Andy to be able to continue his dream as a rider.