Love, Etc.

This is now the fourth novel I've read from Julian Barnes, shortly after I had decided that three was enough. There is no doubt about it, Barnes is quite exceptionally gifted, as a novelist, as a writer and as a virtuoso with the English language. What tends to get up my nose is the self-admiring sense that I get from him. He is a bit of a smartyboots not to say a cleverclogs, and there is always a distinct feeling of exhibitionism about his manner. This book is a sequel to his Talking It Over. The main characters are the same, and the formula is the same. The story is entirely told by the characters in their own personae. In particular the ineffectual Oliver is still at it as before, chattering his gilded futile chatter, and I can't escape the impression that Mr Barnes was unable to resist the temptation to show us again just how adept he is in capturing the idiom. As well as an acute ear, Barnes has an acute and observant eye for how people behave and how they think and feel, and I find the characterisation extremely convincing, both within this story just taken by itself and in how the actors have changed and developed over the ten years that have intervened since Talking It Over. The blurb on the back cover describes Love, etc as `darker and deeper than its predecessor', but I don't think I really agree. Certainly some of the motivations and the some of the incidents in Love, Etc are not very pretty or nice, but the same could have been said about Talking It Over, and the author's preening self-preoccupation actually does a great deal to lighten any darkness in the story here. It is very readable and involving, I found, and if anything even better than the story that provides its starting-off point. In particular the ending, with Stuart and Gillian each wondering whether the other `loves' them has a great ring of truth about it for me. What exactly might it be, this `loving', and how exactly would they tell? The heir to the British throne famously distressed his young bride many years ago by talking in public about `falling in love, whatever that is'. That may have been crass, it may have been inept, but surely it made sense. To get the best out of Love, Etc I'd say that you really need to have read Talking It Over first. That will introduce the characters to you and explain in proper depth what happened ten years and more earlier and where they are all coming from in this new episode. Neither book is long, and this particular edition makes this book look bigger than it is with its large print. What fills me with mixed feelings is the ending here, with some distinctly important and dangerous issues left unresolved, and the main characters in different ways in peril of the ruination of their lives. It is all crying out for a further sequel, and I'm not sure how I look forward to the prospect of that, although foreboding is definitely a strong element in what I feel. I hope he doesn't do it, because something tells me strongly that if he doe

In this inventive and unconventional narrative, Barnes turns the old fiction-writing maxim, "Don't tell about something, recreate it," on its head, choosing not to recreate anything at all. Instead, his three main characters address the reader in soliloquies, each telling his version of events that have happened in the past and leaving it up to the reader to decide what really happened. Stuart, stodgy and predictable, was briefly married to Gillian before dashing Oliver stole her away. Ten years have passed, Stuart has remarried, divorced, become financially successful in the U.S., and returned to England. Oliver and Gillian are still married, the parents of two daughters. As their lives once again intertwine, many of the old tensions revive, along with some new tensions, the result of the characters' changes in ten years. Barnes's characters are vivid, and their speeches to the audience are both dramatic and real. One can easily see how the various characters would interpret events differently, and that aspect of the book is fun to read. There are numerous disadvantages to Barnes's approach, however. The characters are independent of the reader, isolated not only from the reader but from each other, and they feel like actors on a stage who have not invited anyone in to share their lives. The reader's role becomes that of an observer or a judge, deciding not only what happened but what will happen in the future. Readers looking for an unusual narrative will find this book fascinating and carefully constructed, though perhaps a bit slow. Mary Whipple

Stuart is trying to seduce his ex-wife Gillian, now married to his ex-best friend Oliver. It's a sequel to "Talking It Over"(which I haven't read) but Oliver might well be the son of the protagonists of "Flaubert's Parrot." It's told in the voices of multiple first person narrators. (This seems to be fashionable but could be a throwback to 18th and 19th century novels such as Collins's "The Moonstone.") It's fully of dazzling witty insights about love and friendship and life. These are clever enough to keep you reading for their own sake, as well as carrying the plot along for the first half of the book. As the plot thickens, and as Oliver gets depressed, and Stuart becomes a more sinister figure, they clog the narrative more

This is a rather unique situation: ten years passed since "Talking It Over", ten years passed in the author's life, in our lives, in the lives of Gillian, Oliver and Stuart. It is not often that we see a sequel developing at normal real-time pace. Imagine "Star Wars, Episode II" being filmed (with the same actors) not just a couple of years after Episode I, but after, how many was that, I'm not really a fan, let's say twelve years.And it looks awful. Really awful. I identified myself with Oliver pretty much while reading the first book; after all, he's smart, quick-witted, and loves long words such as "crepuscular" (I've noticed that Barnes is personally extremely fond of this word himself; there's rarely a novel which goes without this word). But look what life has done to him. And how Stuart matured and vintaged, if this is a valid word.And worst of all, it is so bloody realistic. Can't any of us count several Olivers, bright and brilliant, with high hopes (both their own and imposed on them by others), and utterly devastated and reduced to near-nothingness by the age when one should be in one's creative prime?This does not spur me into going for ecological trade, or banking, or whatever it is what Stuart is or was doing. But this novel is an earnest warning to all us Olivers out there.

I have read and enjoyed all of the work that Mr. Barnes has published. There are works that stand out and distinguish themselves better than another, but overall he writes at a skill level that most contemporary writers only dream about. Based on, "Love, etc", a book written 10 years after, "Talking It Over", with events taking place 10 years later as well, is one of the best of his works I have read.Mr. Barnes could have taken the road already successfully traveled and just recycled the same primary characters of the first book. They were all very well done, and the resulting second work would have been good as well. However 10 years is a long time, and just as his characters have changed and become more complex through experience, I believe Mr. Barnes probably spent a good deal of time bringing not just the next installment of these lives to us, but raising the level of his writing, and greatly expanding the number of players. Some new voices are only cameos, others as integral to the plot as the original trio of Stuart, Gillian, and Oliver.I may be in the minority, but I did not see the original work as being unfinished. Many books could have additional chapters or sequels, and the first was not any type of cliffhanger. That said this continuation is excellent, and I hope he does not wait another decade to expand this to a triptych.Without spoiling anything, Stuart has progressed, Oliver has become too clever for even himself, and Gillian is Gillian albeit a bit more of an enigma that serial marrier as in the first book. This piece is certainly darker than the first; some may even find it violent. However as with the first work the events that unwind are shared with the reader by those involved, so the accounts must be weighed. It is probably a bit like being a juror, who do you believe?I enjoyed the first book, I loved this one, and I believe the Author will be hard pressed not to continue the saga. He has now established that the end is not that at all, and further, that he can take material that appears complete, expand it, and give it new life. Extremely well done, and worth the time to read.On a final note Mr. Barnes added children to this book, and they added immeasurably to the work.