DEPARTURE(S): REVIEW

 

Easy to read, thought-provoking and immensely pleasurable. (Book review by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)

 

According to the blurb, “Departure(s) is a work of fiction – but that doesn’t mean it’s not true”.

It is certainly a book that is almost impossible to classify. It’s not exactly a novel, though there is a novel-ish story inside it. It is not quite a memoir either. It has elements of both, along with meditations on memory, ageing and the prospect of death. And, famously, it is the author’s farewell. Julian Barnes has said publicly as well as in the text that this is his last book, and that, for his many fans, is a great sadness.

Barnes has long been a leading light in his generation of writers. And he has always played with his readers to a certain extent, blurring boundaries, so perhaps the structure of Departure(s) should come as no surprise. The book opens with his musings on memory – what it is, how it works, and what are the possibilities of it changing. He tells us that somewhere in here there will be a story, but it will be a story with a beginning and end, but no middle.

When we get to this story, Barnes is the narrator, and the two characters – who may or may not be fictional – are his friends, Stephen and Jean. Thus the story comes from the narrator’s memory which we have already come to understand may be unreliable.

The trio were friends at university, and, introduced by Barnes, Stephen and Jean became at item, but not one which survived their university days. Then, again through the narrator’s agency, they meet once more, much later in their lives. We read about their subsequent relationship, and the narrator’s role in it, along with many digressions into his own life and his health, his future and his past. And a third major character emerges – Jimmy the Jack Russell dog.

If Stephen and Jean are real people and not a pure fiction - and reading the book it felt to me as if they are, though Barnes could be playing with us again – we are told how they asked him to promise that he would never write about them. He promised, but that is exactly what he does, reporting their conversations with him, Jean about Stephen and Stephen about Jean. I have to admit that this made me slightly uneasy, but then again, what is true?

One of the greatest charms of Barnes as a writer is his dry, often ironic humour, which is on full display here, not least in his digressions into memory as revealed by the writings of Proust and his famous madeleine moment – described by Barnes as a “morsel of soggy cake”. Departure(s) is a short book, only 150 or so pages long, and to this reader at least, it was pure delight. Easy to read, thought-provoking and immensely pleasurable. – Margaret von Klemperer

Julian Barnes’ novel Departure(s) is published by Jonathan Cape - ISBN 978-1-787-33572-1