- Another great book from celebrated English novelist Julian Barnes. It's not a novel but a biography with some minor fictional elements. Mostly it's fascinating and wise. He's ageing, now on the verge of turning eighty, and he's saying goodbye. So it's part story of the people in his life and part reflections on the richness of it.
- It's thoroughly enjoyable and well worth reading. I've loved his novels over the years so his honesty and wisdom in this bio are stimulating. Especially if you’re an old man like me! (We're the same age).
- Each chapter addresses a different perspective. The first on involuntary autobiographical memory (IAM) is unfortunately somewhat boring. He indulges in his love of Marcel Proust and other classic French writers. It's literary name dropping and there's heaps of that throughout the book.
- The second chapter introduces two central characters, Stephen and Jean (with names changed to protect them). They met at Oxford as students in the mid-sixties, had a relationship but split. As Barnes did with his girlfriend at the time, Priscilla.
- In Chapter 3 he focuses on his blood cancer, manageable by daily medication, his numerous times in hospital, his relationships with his doctors, his treatments, and his reflections in his diaries.
- In Chapter 4, after four decades he meets up with Stephen again who wants him to find and tell Jean he’d like to see her. They do meet up, and rather surprisingly, they marry.
- They separately confide in him and are honest about how the relationship is going. And the sex. His reflections and literary references here are glorious.
- But really, Stephen and Jean’s love life is rather problematic. She thinks he’s ‘too much’ in love with her: 'would you kindly love me a little less and it’ll all be fine'. 'Love, in reality, Mr Novelist, isn’t how you and your breed depict it’. Julian disagrees. 'But I think the great novelists understand love, and most aspects of human behaviour, better than, say, psychiatrists, or scientists, or philosophers or priests or lonely-hearts columnists'.
- Unfortunately, Stephen and Jean separate for a second time.
- In Chapter 5 Barnes indulges in total name-dropping once again. The French poets Mallarme, Baudelaire, Proust, Rimbaud, Flaubert, George Sand. And Philip Larkin: ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing China if I could come back the same day’. Updike, Kerouac, Gautier, T.S.Eliot. It's all enriching and stimulating though. And there are plenty of quotes about ageing: 'From my wife Pat, who was six years my senior: 'As you get older, you get hardened in your least acceptable characteristics...From my partner R, who is eighteen years younger than me: 'You're allowed to be old, but you're not allowed to behave like an old person'.
- He often thinks about Stephen and Jean now, the ‘rekindlers’. Jean got cancer and died. ‘I’m only interested in living, not in merely existing’ she'd said. His reflections on death are rich and meaningful. He tells the stories of friends and writers like Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens.
- And of cause he is now forgetting things, mainly names. 'It's just the body wearing out...And you can hardly blame it, given that humanity's increasing longevity is now forcing it to work overtime - and for no extra pay'.
- So it's a delightful book, full of richness and wisdom. But there is one dimension missing: he has no kids or grandkids. Therefore no reflections on these blessings.
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