**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**
Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.
First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn’t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he’s proud of the fact his relationship flies in the face of social convention.
As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.
Tender and wise, The Only Story is a deeply moving novel by one of Britain's greatest mappers of the human heart.
Imprint: Vintage Digital
Published: 01/02/2018
ISBN: 9781473554795
Length: 224 Pages
RRP: £8.99
A novelist at the height of his powers ... Quietly devastating.
Exquisite.
Emotionally acute, profoundly beautiful, as droll as it is deep... this has to be one of the smartest novels that 2018 has to offer.
A gentle, bleak, and brilliant novel.
Immensely powerful.
This intense, taut, sad and often beautiful tale may well be Barnes’ best novel for years.
A tender and heartbreaking novel.
As quiet and aching and intimate as a James Blake ballad.
A sensitive look at what makes lovers tick.
A vivid dramatization of the narcissism of obsessive love.