"Julian Barnes tells us that this is his final book, so that's one departure accounted for the last instalment of a writing career spanning 45 years, encompassing novels and short stories, memoirs and essays, biography, travel writing, translation and even a little pseudonymous detective fiction."
"But so are most novels. What makes them his is their tone and his extreme control of its variations: the voice is rational but also romantic and rueful, aware that self-assertion can shade into bullish solipsism, that the pursuit of freedom can lead quickly to delusion, of the self or others. The line that brought me closest to appalled tears is a description of an elderly jack russell: His feet hurt'"
A final novel frames departures in two senses: the end of a long creative career and the irrevocable departure of death. The work collects echoes of many prior forms—novels, short stories, memoir, biography, travel writing, translation, and detective fiction—manifesting as recurring motifs and Easter-egg references. Slips, accidents, failed love, memory gaps, and sudden events punctuate narrative life. Tone shifts between rationality, romance, and rueful observation, exposing self-assertion’s drift toward solipsism and freedom’s slide into delusion, while juxtaposing querulous complaint and stoic endurance in the face of mortality.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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