'I don't believe in God, but I miss Him.' Julian Barnes' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his philosopher brother, a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the French writer Jules Renard. Though he warns us that 'this is not my autobiography', the result is a tour of the mind of one of our most brilliant writers.
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Imprint: Vintage Digital
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Published: 04/09/2008
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ISBN: 9781407015460
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Length: 256 Pages
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RRP: £10.99
Reviews
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Both fun and funny. It is sharp too, in the sense of painful as well as witty... Barnes dissects with tremendous verve and insight this awesome inevitability of death and its impact on the human psyche. He also tears at your heart
New Statesman
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A maverick form of family memoir that is mainly an extended reflection on the fear of death and on that great consolation, religious belief... It is entertaining, intriguing, absorbing...an inventive and invigorating slant on what is nowadays called 'life writing'. It took me hours to write this review because each reference to my notes set me off rereading; that is a reviewer's ultimate accolade
Penelope Lively, Financial Times
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A brilliant bible of elegant despair...that most urgent kind of self-help manual: the one you must read before you die
Tim Adams, Vogue
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Intensely fascinating
The Times
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An elegant memoir and meditation. A deep seismic tremor of a book that keeps rumbling and grumbling in the mind for weeks thereafter
Garrison Keillor
