JULIAN BARNES NOVELS’ INFO

Pulse

Rachel Cusk praises the compassion and truth of Julian Barnes's painstaking short
stories

Ashort story, with its somewhat clandestine relationship to the concept of fiction, is
not a marriage. Julian Barnes's choice of the form is significant: in Pulse, the nature
of long-term partnership is a predominant theme. This is a volume that works hard
to overcome its own fragmented condition, as though in fear that variety might
become disarray. At this point Barnes is certainly the master of his own style: what
preoccupies him here are the novelistic qualities of endurance, unity, cohesiveness,
qualities for which the short story is made to act as an anti-metaphor. It is an
interesting textual game, though the voice of artistic self-consciousness has
expressed itself before in Barnes's fictions, by means of an overt awareness of
artifice or form that often acts as the interface with the actual, so that it isn't always
clear where the force of limitation lies. Is it in the factitiousness of art? Or is it in the
value and sufficiency of the life being represented?

There is a slight doggedness to Barnes's interest in middle-class concerns and

modes of being, as though he expects to be called an apologist for them; and in
these stories he makes himself somewhat vulnerable by straying into territories, of
memoir and autobiography, in which that interest becomes a concrete fact. Yet it is
perhaps only that his gift is essentially parochial and home-loving. He cherishes
familiarity, and so rather than use art as a means of obtaining objectivity he
conscripts it to his own subjective world; he adorns the local with the universal,
instead of the other way around. As a result one feels, reading him, both certain that
there is a constituency whose concerns and outlook he reflects exactly, and
uncertain that one belongs to it oneself.

In Pulse these different strands are quite deliberately, meditatively and sometimes

provocatively exposed. The provocation comes in the form of four stories, in which
the dinner-party conversation of a group of old friends ("'That lamb, by the way . . .'
'Thanks. It's six hours. Best way to do it. And star anise'") is unrepentantly noted
down in all its smug and insufferable detail. The Barnes of these stories is neither
objective nor remotely apologetic; indeed, in their glorification of middle-class
values they are close to an act of aggression. What is being glorified is happiness,
the happiness of well-off, well-fed, well-educated people in late middle age whose
good fortune and good character have earned them stability, success and the
security of love and friendship. Like the newsreader tired of giving out the bad
news, Barnes is telling us the good instead – but why? The story identifies no
particular threat to the contentment of these people, and neither is it even faintly
satirical: we are obliged to recognise their (and Barnes's) notions of happiness as
our own, to provide our own counterpoint of loss. This is writing so open to
criticism that criticism becomes pointless. Instead one is broken down, forced to
feel something, to learn something, about the author, forced to internalise his
experiences. One is asked, in these stories about friendship, to be his friend – or
else.

And having submitted to that requirement there are rewards, for Barnes's partiality
and subjectivism are at least painstaking. More to the point, they are consistent:
everything that falls within the circle of his interests is treated with great care. These
interests run much deeper than they do wide, so that the same themes are
persistently sought through different forms. The essential elusiveness and mystery
of women, the factualism of (English) men that is both impediment and virtue, the
nature of the force that brings them together or drives them apart: Barnes draws the
same pattern again and again, translates the same phrases into memoir, historical
fiction, personal recollection and scenes of contemporary life. It is as though, more
even than being a personal book, he wishes this to be a book of personality, whose
influence has the power to integrate what is by nature distinct.

Yet fiction doesn't really work like that: the fact remains that certain stories are far
more significant than others. "East Wind", about an estate agent's relationship with a
Polish waitress in a Norfolk seaside town, is a work of great compassion and truth.
Here the elusiveness of woman is more than merely the boyish construction of
bewildered men: it is actual, political, just as the uses and limitations of male
practicality are actualised by the estate agent's job. In this story, as in others,
practicality irresistibly seeks out elusiveness in order to understand and hence end
it. The result is the destruction of trust and the loss of relationship. In the last story,
"Pulse", this formula is reversed: a long-married couple preserve one another's
polarities with a diligence that mystifies the narrator, their son, whose own attempt
at marriage is failing. Here female mystery becomes terminal illness, in the face of
which the husband keeps up appearances, washing and ironing his own shirts
assiduously while the wife lies in a hospice. "'It's very important,' he said, 'that she
sees me looking neat and tidy. If I started getting scruffy she'd notice, and she'd
think I couldn't manage.'"

Of the different personae, the different levels of writerly self articulated here, it is in
the Barnes who chronicles small-scale lives that the genuine artistic impulse resides;
the Barnes of suburban love and unfashionable hobbies and metaphysical modesty.
As for Barnes the personality, the friend and husband, the raconteur, he is in the
end more evanescent. His exposure of these selves feels like the momentary
exposure of his own roots, his workings, all somewhat raw. But his fiction is used to
the light, and thrives in it.

The Lemon Table

In stories brimming with life and our desire to hang on to it one way or another,
Julian Barnes proves himself by turns wise, funny, clever, and profound, creating
characters whose passions and longings are made all the stronger by their
knowledge of the final certainty that awaits each and every one of them.

The characters in The Lemon Table are growing old and facing the end of their lives
—some with bitter regret, others with resignation, and others still with defiant rage.
And their circumstances are just as varied as their responses—from nineteenth-
century Sweden and Russia to a barbershop in contemporary England. In "The
Silence," a famous composer, deserted by his muse, counts the days he manages
without a drink. In "Knowing French," a fiercely independent eighty-one-year-old
begins a correspondence with an author that enriches both either lives. A woman
reads elaborate recipes to her sick husband in "Appetite," and in "Hygiene" a retired
soldier, while making his annual trip to a regimental dinner, runs errands in the city
for his wife but mostly looks forward to spending the afternoon with a professional
lady called Babs.

The Sense of an Ending is a 2011 novel by British author Julian Barnes. Narrated by a
retired man named Tony Webster, the book centers around his friendship with a
young man named Adrian Finn back when he was in school, and the events that
eventually tore them apart. When the past catches up with Tony, he is forced to
confront the paths that he and his friends have taken in life. Exploring themes such
as death, regret, and reminiscence, The Sense of an Ending is noted for its
unconventional narration: both parts are narrated by Tony, but they skip back and
forth between Tony’s teen years with Adrian and the arrival of a mysterious
document during his twilight years. The Sense of an Ending was critically acclaimed
by the majority of reviewers, although some found its bleak tone off-putting. It was
short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2011 and nominated for the Costa Book
Awards that same year. The Sense of an Ending has been adapted into a 2017 movie
directed by Ritesh Batra and starring Michelle Dockery, Jim Broadbent, and Charlotte
Rampling.

The Sense of an Ending begins as Tony Webster reminisces, revealing certain images

that have stuck with him over his long life. They are all themed around water,
including steam, a drain, a river, and a bathtub. The actual story begins with his
childhood in a British prep school. He describes his group of friends but focuses
especially on the newest boy in their group, Adrian Finn. Adrian is a smart, clever
boy who is good friends with the exacting Professor Hunt, and that makes him an
asset to the other boys in Tony’s group. They befriend him hoping to get an
advantage with the professor, but Tony soon strikes up a genuine friendship with
Adrian. Adrian is a kind, idealistic boy, which is a contrast to the more cynical way
Tony and his friends view the world. As Tony discusses this period of his life, it
becomes clear that while all the other boys have troubled relationships with their
parents, Adrian is close with his separated parents. Adrian believes in living a
principled life, while the others believe that their society is fatally flawed.

During their school years, a student named Robson commits suicide. Rumors circle
that he did this after his girlfriend became pregnant, and the boy’s suicide becomes
a topic of discussion among the friends. Tony and his two friends fear living a non-
spectacular life more than anything else, but Adrian is content to simply be happy
and live a good life, not caring whether he is remembered in stories. The boys
eventually graduate and go their own ways. Adrian earns a scholarship to
Cambridge, while Tony starts dating a girl named Veronica Ford. Although he and
Veronica are happy for a time, they argue over his taste in music and he gets a bad
impression of her family. When he visits Veronica’s house at one point, her mother
vaguely warns him about her daughter. When Veronica comes to London to meet
Tony’s friends, she hits it off with Adrian immediately, and the two form a close
connection. Tony resents this, and it leads to a breakup. Soon afterwards, he and
Veronica have casual sex, but she becomes enraged when he doesn’t want to get
back together. He later receives a letter from Adrian asking for permission to date
Veronica. Tony writes a harsh letter in reply, condemning Veronica’s personality and
accusing her of being dangerous. He never hears back from either of them after
that, and his friendship with Adrian seems to be over.

Tony travels to the US, where he meets a young woman named Annie and falls for
her. When he returns to London, he learns that Adrian has committed suicide. He
finds out from his friends that Adrian seemed happy with Veronica, but apparently
rejected the gift of life. He mourns Adrian with his friends, and the group separates
again. He soon meets a woman named Margaret, marries her, has a daughter, and
gets divorced. This is when the book shifts to the present day. Tony is now a retired
hospital library assistant when he receives a letter from the estate of Veronica’s
mother, who has left him 500 pounds and two documents. The first is a letter
explaining the money, and the second document wills Adrian’s diary to Tony. The
diary is still with Veronica, but when he emails her to try to get the diary, she
responds with the words “blood money.” She eventually sends him a page of the
diary in which Adrian had been trying to turn relationships into mathematical
formulas. Tony and Veronica eventually agree to a meeting.

The meeting is contentious, and Veronica gives Tony the letter he had sent them.
He’s shocked in hindsight at how harsh it is, and begins to blame himself for
Adrian’s death. They set up another meeting at a subway station, and Veronica
shows Tony a mentally ill man who seems to know Veronica by her middle name.
Tony believes that this man is Adrian and Veronica’s son; it confuses him that
Adrian would commit suicide knowing he had a son. Tony emails Veronica to
apologize, and Veronica tells him that he has misunderstood. He follows the young,
mentally ill man to the pub, and learns that while Adrian is indeed the father, the
mother was actually Veronica’s mother, and that her advanced age led to Adrian’s
son’s mental illness. Tony ends the book, unnerved, and states that life is full of
responsibility, but even more full of unrest.

The Only Story is a 2018 novel by British author Julian Barnes. Set in Surrey,
England, the novel begins in the early 1960s, when nineteen-year-old student Paul
Roberts meets Susan Macleod, the forty-eight-year-old wife of a violent alcoholic.
The two begin a passionate love affair, which ends when Susan develops an alcohol
dependency of her own and declines into dementia. The Only Story is the thirteenth
novel by Barnes, a much-decorated author who won the 2011 Man Booker Prize
for The Sense of an Ending.

The story opens in a leafy town situated among the well-to-do suburbs south of
London. It is the 1960s, and references to contemporary political events set the
scene: the up-and-coming baby boomer generation is beginning to shunt aside the
rigid class order and deferential manners of the older generation. Paul Roberts is
nineteen, an undergraduate at Sussex University, returning to his parents’ home for
the summer. Paul has learned to look down on the comfortable suburban conformity
of his parents and their neighbors: the last thing he wants is a “tennis wife.”

Nevertheless, starved of social contact, Paul joins the local tennis club and signs up
for mixed doubles. He is paired with forty-eight-year-old Susan Macleod, attractive
but shy, troubled, and married. Paul quickly becomes infatuated with her and they
begin a sexual relationship. Paul learns that Susan has not had sex with her
husband, Gordon, in two decades. He is abusive, pushing her face into a doorframe
in a drunken rage. Paul meets him, and although he is outwardly civil to Gordon, he
despises the older man intensely. Paul meets their children, Martha and Clara (whom
he refers to as “Miss G” and “Miss N. G.” for “Miss Grumpy” and “Miss Not-So-
Grumpy).

Paul is also introduced to Susan’s former tennis partner, Joan, another housewife of
the leafy suburbs. Joan is hard-drinking and cynical, admitting that her ambitions
have shrunk to nothing more than finding cheaper bottles of gin, but Paul takes a
liking to her.

Paul and Susan pursue their relationship in secret, while Paul’s infatuation grows.
When their affair is discovered, they are expelled from the tennis club. Paul’s
parents are outraged. He returns to university, but Susan has become the center of
his life. Their relationship undermines his studies and his social life, but although
Paul realizes that his love for Susan is taking a toll on his life, perhaps changing its
course forever, he cannot relinquish her.

When Paul graduates, Susan leaves Gordon, and the couple moves together to
London, where Susan buys them a house. Paul leaves his disapproving parents a
note.

Paul begins studying law. He wants Susan to divorce Gordon legally, but she is
unwilling to discuss his abuse of her in court—more fundamentally, she is unwilling
to think about the many years she allowed herself to live in fear of her husband.

Paul notices that Susan is drinking a lot, more than before. He tries to curb her
drinking but it worsens, gradually developing into full-blown alcoholism. When Paul
tries to help her, she either relapses or keeps drinking and tries (unsuccessfully) to
hide it from him.

As the drinking gets worse, it causes Susan to suffer dementia-like symptoms of

paranoia, mood swings, and forgetfulness. Paul takes her to a psychiatrist and then
checks her into a clinic, but neither intervention halts Susan’s decline. Soon she is
delusional and unable to care for herself.

Paul moves out of their house. A friend of theirs takes care of Susan. Paul dates
Anna, a woman of his own age, but the relationship never satisfies Paul. He moves
back in with Susan and takes on the work of caring for her. After some years,
Susan’s daughter Martha agrees to take over Susan’s care.
Forced to abandon law, Paul has become an office manager. He never has another
serious relationship or children. He eventually settles in a rural village, where he
runs the “Frogworth Valley Artisanal Cheese Company” and bakes. Still enraged by
the memory of Gordon, he distrusts and despises men.

Describing himself as an “absolutist for love,” Paul devotes himself to the memory of
his relationship with Susan. Yet, gradually he forgets the body he once fetishized:
“Things, once gone can’t be put back; he knew that now. A punch, once delivered,
can’t be withdrawn. Words, once spoken, can’t be unsaid. We may go on as if
nothing has been lost, nothing done, nothing said; we claim to forget it all; but our
innermost core doesn’t forget, because we have been changed forever.”

The Only Story explores themes of first love, loss, and self-delusion. It also paints a
portrait of a generation—Barnes’s own—whose ideals have floundered over the
course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Staring at the Sun  (1986), a novel by British author Julian Barnes, narrates the life of
Jean Serjeant, from her 1920s childhood to her 100th birthday in the year 2021.
Jean’s life is unremarkable, but her ability to maintain a sense of imaginative wonder
and inquiry invigorates everything she does, from her dull marriage to her
sightseeing abroad. Reviewers found Staring at the Sun,  Barnes’s fourth novel,
“wonderfully imagined” (Publishers’ Weekly), although some noted that its brevity
and discursive digressions make it “[n]ot truly a novel, then—nor satisfying as one”
(Kirkus Reviews).

The novel opens during the Battle of Britain, as RAF pilot Sgt. Thomas Prosser
descends to his base in England. As he does so, the sun appears to set and then rise
again, “the same sun coming up from the same place across the same sea.”

When he reports this, Prosser—a brave pilot who has flown a number of dangerous
combat missions—is declared to have cracked under stress and is grounded. He also
earns the nickname “Sun-up.” He is sent to stay with a near-by family, the Serjeants,
where he enraptures 20-year-old Jean Serjeant with stories of flying and combat. He
tells her about the “ordinary miracle” of the sun rising twice, and she asks him how
he could look at the sun. “Sun-Up” shows her how to look at the sun through her
narrowly parted fingers.

Sun-Up reminds Jean of her beloved Uncle Leslie, who fled to America at the
outbreak of the war. Uncle Leslie used to take her golfing and amuse her with
riddling questions and tricks. One of these—“Why is the mink so tenacious of life?”—
recurs to Jean throughout the novel.
Jean and Sun-Up share the same kind of imaginative intimacy as Jean shared with
her uncle, and Jean hopes they might marry, but Sun-Up returns to combat and is
killed as he flies into the sun. Before the War is over, Jean is married to the village
policeman, Michael, a naive and childlike man. By the end of her honeymoon and
her disappointing first sexual experience, Jean is thoroughly disenchanted with him.
Although Michael consults doctors and purchases a manual, sex remains a chore for
Jean, “just part of running the house.” The whole of life becomes one endless chore.

The narrative skips forward to Jean’s fortieth year, when she becomes pregnant for
the first time and gives birth to her son, Gregory. While he is still a baby, Jean
decides to declare herself and him an “autonomous republic,” and she leaves
Michael. Seeking re-enchantment, Jean decides to travel to each of the Seven
Wonders of the World, and for a while, the novel becomes a travel narrative, as naive
and provincial Jean observes the remarkable customs of the Chinese, the Egyptians,
and other foreign cultures. The wonder of flying remains a constant motif. At the
Grand Canyon, she sees an airplane “flying beneath the surface of the earth.”

On her return to England, Jean strikes up a friendship with Rachel, a radical feminist
activist who shows Jean that her disastrous marriage to Michael was shaped by
oppressive “male truths.” Their relationship borders on becoming a lesbian affair,
before Rachel finally gives up, deciding that Jean is incapable of lesbianism.

Jean visits Sun-Up Prosser’s widow and realizes that she never entered into her
husband’s imaginative life, just as Michael never entered into hers. She tracks down
Uncle Leslie, only to find that the now very old man has become foolish, and not a
little seedy. The middle section of the novel closes with his death.

The novel’s final section jumps ahead to the year 2021. Jean is about to turn 100.
The world has been transformed by computer technology that allows people to seek
answers to all their questions. Jean’s son, Gregory, now in his forties and
dissatisfied with his career as a life insurance agent, spends much of his time
interrogating his computer about the meaning of life. We recognize that he seems to
be seeking justification for suicide, as he jousts with the computer about topics
such as the existence or otherwise of God. Meanwhile, Jean feeds the computer the
riddles she inherited from Uncle Leslie, to which the computer replies: “NOT REAL
QUESTION.”

Ultimately, Jean is able to give Gregory the answers he is looking for, as Barnes sets
out the faith-position toward which the whole novel has been tending. Death is
“absolute,” religion “nonsense,” and suicide “not permissible.” The world is all there
is, and it deserves to be wondered at.
On Jean’s 100th birthday, she and Gregory board a plane to fly towards the sun.
Jean teaches Gregory the method for looking directly at the sun taught to her by the
long-dead pilot Sun-Up Prosser.

Love, Etc.

Twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Julian Barnes continues to reinvigorate the
novel with his pyrotechnic verbal skill and playful manipulation of plot and
character. In Love, etc. he uses all the surprising, sophisticated ingredients of a
delightful farce to create a tragicomedy of human frailties and needs.

After spending a decade in America as a successful businessman, Stuart returns to

London and decides to look up his ex-wife Gillian. Their relationship had ended
years before when Stuart’s witty, feckless, former best friend Oliver stole her away.
But now Stuart finds that the intervening years have left Oliver’s artistic ambitions in
ruins and his relationship with Gillian on less than solid footing. When Stuart begins
to suspect that he may be able to undo the results of their betrayal, he resolves to
act. Written as an intimate series of crosscutting monologues that allow each
character to whisper their secrets and interpretations directly to the reader, Love,
etc. is an unsettling examination of confessional culture and a profound refection
on the power of perspective.

Love, etc., Julian Barnes’s ninth novel, is a sequel to Talking It Over, published in
1991. The first novel explored the variations and transformations of a triangular
relationship involving three bright professionals in their early thirties. Stuart Hughes
was a solid, well-meaning but reticent and stodgy banker who married Gillian, a
reserved, sensible restorer of paintings. His best friend was Oliver Russell, a public
school English teacher fired for having forced himself on one or more of his female
students.

Soon after Stuart and Gillian’s marriage, the emotionally needy Oliver decided to
seduce Gillian. He rented a room across the street from the Hughes home and
phoned her his declarations of love. Although the marriage was less than a year old,
Gillian found herself sexually aroused by Oliver, who was agile and witty with words,
yet unable to look after himself properly. She allowed Oliver into her studio, where
he aroused her sexually by combing her hair while she was working. They informed
Stuart that they were in love; Gillian obtained a divorce, and married Oliver. After the
remarriage, the shattered Stuart, unable to let go, followed Oliver and Gillian to a
French village where they were vacationing. They knew he was spying on them
through the curtains of his hotel window, so Gillian decided to liberate Stuart from
his obsession with her by staging a public quarrel with Oliver in the village square
with Stuart watching. The quarrel climaxed with Gillian deliberately goading Oliver
into striking her hard in the face, drawing blood. The idea was to make Stuart
believe that Gillian was worse off without him, while he was better off without her.
Did the tactic work? Yes and no. The reader is informed, early in the pages of Love,
etc., that Stuart moved to the United States for most of a decade, yet he never
stopped loving Gillian and kept in touch with her mother.

Barnes’s narrative strategy in both novels is to have his characters directly address
the reader as “you,” confiding in this anonymous interlocutor as they seek to justify
themselves, or accuse themselves and others, or dispute each others’ versions of
events. The readers are invited to draw their own conclusions from evidence that
ranges from sketchy to overwhelming, from farcical to suspect to pathetic. However,
if readers are psychologically astute, they will seek far deeper explorations of the
main characters’ motives than Barnes has chosen to give them.

Here, for example, is Gillian’s attempt, early in Love, etc., to explain her past
conduct: she tells the reader that she genuinely loved Stuart, and that everything
was working well in their marriage, including sexual harmony. Yet, soon after their
marriage, she fell in love with Oliver “against my instincts and my reason.” Even
though Oliver intensely excited her sexually, she refused to have an affair with him
before her remarriage. Then, when Oliver and she finally did have sex, she found
him “much more insecure” in that terrain than Stuart.

The point is, you can love two people, one after the other, one interrupting the
other, like I did. You can love them in different ways. And it doesn’t mean one love
is true and the other is false. That’s what I wish I could have convinced Stuart. I
loved each of them truly. You don’t believe me? Well, it doesn’t matter, I no longer
argue the case. I just say: It didn’t happen to you, did it? It happened to me.

In the United States, Stuart worked for a bank for two years, then successfully
switched to restaurant ownership and thereafter to wholesale organic food
distribution. When he noticed no such enterprise in England, he decided to set one
up in London, six years after having left the city. He formed a successful chain of
organic food shops called the Green Grocer. When in the United States, he was
married to Terri for five years, although the marriage unraveled when she realized
he was still obsessing about Gillian and refusing to take her photos out of his wallet.
The only joint therapy session they attended lasted eighteen minutes, ending when
he walked out.

In the early pages of Love, etc., the reader finds out that Stuart is now wealthy, well-
dressed, self-confident, and forty-two. Gillian and Oliver have two little girls but a
pinched income, with no money except for Gillian’s earnings. They live in a
dilapidated section of London with bad schools. Oliver has turned into a disgruntled
househusband who cooks badly and turns increasingly morose. The only
explanation he supplies for his behavior is that his father used to beat him severely
with a hockey stick when he was quite young, and that his mother died when he was
only six. The father has also recently died, leaving his money to the granddaughters,
Sophie and Marie, with explicit instructions that his son should get none of it. The
closest he comes to explaining his failure to seek employment is that “the spirit of
nine-to-five was never very resilient in Oliver.” At the end of the day, with Gillian
fatigued from working in her office and tending the daughters at home, the caustic
Oliver will suggest, “Let’s just fall into bed and not have sex”—so they usually do
not.

Stuart now seizes his opportunity to be the Great Rescuer. He lends the couple
money, pays the bill when he and Oliver go out drinking or all three dine out, and
persuades them to move into the comfortable, large house in a good area he once
shared with Gillian and still owns. Gillian’s scruples rise: Stuart seems to be making
amends when it is she and Oliver who betrayed him. Oliver only turns increasingly
surly. What can they do to repay Stuart, who is even doing the house-fixing chores
Oliver disdains? They introduce him to Ellie, Gillian’s lusty twenty-three-year-old
office assistant. Ellie mildly likes Stuart, he mildly likes Ellie, and they have a mild
affair until Ellie becomes convinced that Gillian has conned her into having Stuart
until Gillian has decided to take him back. Stuart gives Oliver a job as “Transport
Coordinator” (truck driver) for his firm; Oliver insists on being paid in cash by Stuart,
then insults him when he receives it; he soon quits, deteriorates into a deep
depression, becomes totally impotent, and sleeps most of the day and night. One
evening, with Oliver asleep upstairs, Stuart tells Gillian of his continued love and
aggressively has sex with her; in Gillian’s words: “two hot kids in a kitchen, half-
dressed, whispering, urgent.” Their unprotected sex results in Gillian’s pregnancy,
but Barnes decides to end the novel avoiding any closure. Will Gillian return to
Stuart? Will she stay with Oliver? Will she leave both men? Will she have an abortion?
Presumably, Barnes is preparing the reader for another sequel, in another decade or
so, since the three principals finish the novel by directly addressing the reader,
soliciting advice on what to do.

For a while, Barnes seems to be establishing a clever, old, oracular character in the
person of Mme Wyatt, Gillian’s French mother who had married but been deserted
by her now-dead English husband. She accurately diagnoses Oliver’s self-hatred as
stemming from an unloved childhood, and draws such incisive observations as that
“we French” marry for such rational reasons as family and property, and make sure
that love exists only outside matrimony. She herself no longer desires to desire, and
tells herself she is the happier for her renunciation. However, toward the end of the
book she reverses course and exclaims, “I still want everything I said I wanted. And I
know I shall get none of it.” She is the one who has the novel’s last and inconclusive
words, “So as for me, I will wait. For something to happen. Or for nothing to
happen.”

Julian Barnes is a gifted writer. His Flaubert’s Parrot (1985) is a brilliant amalgam of

biography, fiction and literary criticism, generally considered one of England’s best
novels of the past generation. He is clever with aphorisms, convincing with dialogue,
consistently humorous, engaging, and easy to read. However, his characters are
thinly and often unconvincingly developed, flat rather than round, usually lacking
complexity and sometimes plausibility.

Gillian is a perfect example of this weakness. She is pictured as an attractive,

intelligent, sensible, stable woman. Why, then, should she have turned on Stuart,
who was, and remains, excellent husband material, and exchanged him for Oliver,
who is intelligent but morally bankrupt and not even a satisfying sexual partner?
Why did she make the crucial decision to manipulate Oliver into striking her brutally
while Stuart was looking on? Why should a self-reliant professional woman arrange
to have herself beaten for “bad” behavior? Why should she believe that this scene
will free her spurned lover from his affections, rather than motivate him to rescue
her from her vicious mate? Finally, why does she stay for years—and may, for all the
reader knows, decide to remain—with the worthless Oliver?

Some readers may suspect that Barnes accords Oliver a prominent place in both
novels so the author can display his virtuosity with word play. Oliver can be amusing
with such observations as his comments that every marriage contains “one moderate
and one militant;” “Do you take the view that virtue is its own reward? Always a
rather masturbatory implication to that, I feel;” and “All I pump is irony;” he salutes
Stuart as the “Patron and protector of the unmodified vegetable.” Self-ironically,
Oliver contrasts himself to the fabled Oliver, the noble and trusted friend of the
peerless knight Roland, hero of the great medieval chanson de geste, The Song of
Roland (c. 1100). Whereas the valiant Oliver tries to persuade Roland to call their
lord Charlemagne to the rescue when their troops are badly outnumbered by
Saracens, this Oliver behaves in an increasingly backbiting, treacherous, insulting
manner toward Stuart.

Barnes’s narrative pace is sluggish and often dull as his main characters repeat their
points and largely avoid decisive actions. His refusal to resolve the Oliver-Gillian-
Stuart triangle becomes annoying, so that some readers may well conclude that
Barnes, struggling for fictive subjects, may have decided to thin out this novel so he
can employ the same cast for yet another thin and hollow novel.

Talking It Over

       Talking it Over is the story of a love triangle. Stuart and Oliver are best friends.
Stuart marries Gillian. Oliver falls in love with Gillian. And then, of course, things get
quite complicated.
       The most obvious twist Barnes adds to the story is in how he chooses to tell it:
he has the characters address the reader (or at least some "you") directly. Stuart,
Oliver, and Gillian each tell their own story (with a few other voices also making
themselves heard), each offering a different point of view, a different spin, and,
occasionally, an entirely different account of what happened. It is an interesting
literary device, and Barnes -- a very fine stylist -- manages a great deal with the
voices he employs.
       Stuart is a young banker, careful, a bit unsure of himself, without a university
education. Oliver is a pedantic, unfulfilled soul, a wilder, artsy type who travelled,
studied, and finally wound up as teaching at the tacky Shakespeare School of
English (and eventually actually even manages to get himself sacked from this
institution). Gillian trained in social work for while, but then became an art restorer.
       "I met Stuart", Gillian states. "I fell in love. I married. What's the story ?" There is,
of course, more to it than that -- including how Gillian and Stuart met ("Gill and I
agreed we wouldn't tell anyone how we met", Stuart says, though he does reveal it to
the reader.) And though Barnes fills in backgrounds the meat of the tale begins with
Stuart and Gillian's marriage.
       Barnes tells the story of the three interrelated relationships -- the unlikely but
lasting (at least through the beginning of the book) friendship between Stuart and
Oliver, and the changing relationships between Gillian and the two men. Much of the
fun is in the details: the different ways of seeing events, the different justifications
or explanations for what the characters do (or don't do), though clever Oliver is
perhaps too dominant (and Gillian, for much of the novel, not strong enough).
       It is a neatly constructed novel -- and also an obviously constructed one, which
is both a strength and weakness. Barnes writes very well, and there are many fine
moments, thoughts, and asides. This is not too deep a meditation on friendship,
and relationships, but it does chart an interesting threesome, a shifting (and
ultimately very misshapen) triangle.
       An odd, and not entirely satisfying novel, but an interesting one.

Flaubert’s Parrot is a novel by Julian Barnes, published in 1984. The book is a

collection of biographical research, literary criticism, and philosophical
considerations on the relationship between writers and their works, told from
the perspective of Geoffrey Braithwaite, a 60-year-old retired doctor and widower.
Having become something of an amateur expert on celebrated author Gustave
Flaubert, Geoffrey searches for the truth about the French writer’s life. His quest for
information revolves around determining which of two stuffed parrots once sat on
Flaubert’s desk.
The novel begins with Geoffrey’s trip to Rouen. He tours locations important to
Gustave Flaubert, providing a running commentary of the writer’s life. While visiting
a Flaubert museum, he encounters the stuffed parrot which may have inspired a
similar ornament in Flaubert’s book, Un Coeur Simple. The next day, Geoffrey
encounters another stuffed parrot while visiting another museum. Both claim to be
Flaubert’s parrot. Geoffrey decides to find out the truth about which one is real.

Geoffrey recounts Flaubert’s life from three different perspectives. He begins with a
detailed traditional biography, charting Flaubert’s life from his birth to his death.
This entry suggests that Flaubert died a happy man. The second biography focuses
on the tragedies in the writer’s life, beginning with the deaths of his older siblings,
before Flaubert was even born. This entry suggests that Flaubert’s life was little
more than a string of tragedies, punctuated by occasional literary success and
controversy. The third entry uses Flaubert’s own journals to chart the writer’s
regrets from a first-person perspective.

Observing the difficulty of finding a single, objective truth, Geoffrey acknowledges

that the role of the biographer is almost impossible. He describes meeting Ed
Winterton, an American academic. Ed reveals to Geoffrey that he has obtained
Flaubert’s letters to Juliet Herbert. The letters have the potential to redefine the
common perception of Flaubert’s romantic life but Ed has burned them, in
accordance with Flaubert’s wishes. Geoffrey is annoyed with Ed and they part ways.

Chapter 4 explores Flaubert’s life via the animals he encountered. Titled “The
Flaubert Bestiary,” the first section explores Flaubert’s comparisons between himself
and a bear. In the second section, Flaubert compares himself to a camel. The next
section describes an encounter between Flaubert and a sheep. There is a section
titled “The Parrot” detailing the etymology of the French word “perroquet.” Geoffrey
returns to the idea of the competing stuffed parrots. The final section lists the dogs
in Flaubert’s life.

Geoffrey doesn’t “much care for coincidences” (61) but believes irony can help to
legitimize coincidences. He details a number of the ironies which affected Flaubert’s
life. One anecdote tells of a trip taken by Flaubert and Du Camp to Egypt. Another
tells how, at the funerals of both Flaubert and his sister, their coffins would not fit
into the graves. Geoffrey ponders whether these coincidences carry a deeper
meaning.

Geoffrey disparages critics who find minor errors in novels. These critics include Dr.
Enid Starkie, who points out that Emma Bovary’s eye color changes throughout
Madame Bovary. Geoffrey dismisses these internal mistakes as being meaningless in
the grander scheme of literature. Critics such as Starkie do not truly understand or
research Flaubert and this greatly annoys Geoffrey.
Geoffrey rides the ferry between England and France, comparing the two countries
and thinking about the customs barrier. He has three stories to tell, but is hesitant
to tell the story of his wife, Ellen. While drinking whisky, he reflects on Flaubert’s
legacy. He thinks about the mistakes made frequently by Flaubert’s biographers and
gives his rules for the future of literature. Thinking about Flaubert’s sex life, he
reflects on how academic opinion has changed over the years. He considers how
much can possibly be confidently known about the past and complains about
modern political correctness. Geoffrey provides a short description of himself in
the style of a personal ad but feels uncomfortable doing so.

The next chapter, described as the train-spotter’s guide to Flaubert, details the way
in which the author’s life intersected with the rise of the railway system in France.
Geoffrey travels by train in France and points out all of the places where Flaubert’s
life was affected by trains. Some buildings associated with Flaubert are being
demolished, including his old home which has been knocked down and replaced
with a paper mill. Geoffrey visits the paper mill.

Next, Geoffrey explores the books which Flaubert did not write: the unfinished or
abandoned projects which he might have added to his bibliography. This
“apocrypha” (108) includes an autobiography which Flaubert had planned to write
but gave up. As well as the books which Flaubert did not write, Geoffrey thinks
about Flaubert unrealized plans. He suggests that the writer was able to indulge
many of his wilder fantasies through his writing.

While the novel generally praises Flaubert, Chapter 10 explores the negative
accusations levied against the writer. Geoffrey, an admitted fan, defends Flaubert on
many of these points, though admits that he wants “to know the worst” (117) about
those he loves (including his wife, Ellen). People accuse Flaubert of hating humanity,
hating democracy, of being against the Commune, being unpatriotic, and many
other charges. Geoffrey defends Flaubert against most of the accusations, acting out
his role as the lawyer for the defense.

Next, Geoffrey attempts to explore the life of Flaubert through the perspective of
Louise Colet. Louise was a friend and occasional lover of Flaubert, even though she
was married. Her portrayal of Flaubert is not entirely favorable. She likes Flaubert—
loves him, even—but has no trouble listing his flaws. She says Flaubert treated her
quite badly during their affair. Though she was older and a famous poet, he was
contemptuous of her work. She knows that once Gustave is dead, public opinion will
take his side and she is “resigned” (142) to this fact.

The next chapter, “Braithwaite’s Dictionary of Accepted Ideas,” contains an

alphabetized list of facts about Flaubert’s life. The format is based on a dictionary
Flaubert wrote himself. It contains entries about Flaubert’s friends and associates,
as well as medical conditions and romances which he experienced.
Geoffrey begins to describe Ellen’s death, which he describes as a “pure story” (149).
Ellen cheated on Geoffrey on numerous occasions but he could never bring himself
to be angry at her. Though she lied to him, he enjoyed the companionship of their
marriage. Ellen committed suicide, taking an exact number of pills and putting
herself into a coma. Geoffrey himself turns off the life support machine. He feels as
though he understood Ellen less than he does Flaubert.

The next chapter is framed as an examination paper. It asks students to read and
answer a series of questions. These questions are all focused on Flaubert, but
themed around different aspects of his life (economics, geography, psychology,
etc.).

In the final chapter, Geoffrey returns again to the question of which of Flaubert’s
two parrots is authentic. He returns to France, visits both birds again, and is then
put in touch with a French academic named M. Lucien Andrieu. Andrieu informs
Geoffrey that both stuffed parrots were taken from the natural history museum in
the town. At one time, the museum had over fifty stuffed parrots. Both of the
stuffed parrots Geoffrey has already seen could be authentic, or neither. Geoffrey
visits the museum and sees their last few stuffed parrots, accepting that the answer
of which one sat on Flaubert’s desk is meaningless.

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