Julian Barnes' A History of the World in Ten and a Half Chapters


Just as I wrote about Haruki Murakami without having read '1Q84,' I will write about Julian Barnes without having read 'The Sense of an Ending' today.


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Having said that, I read Barnes' most recent collection of short stories, 'Pulse,' as well as his debut novel, 'Metroland,' which was published thirty years ago. 'Metroland,' a coming-of-age story set in London and Paris in the 1960s and 1970s, has some nice touches of subtle irony and acute observations about youth and relationships, even if the plot's meandering resulted in somewhat less developed characters.

This is probably why I preferred 'Pulse,' as his astute wit appears to be more effective in the form of a short story. The stories, which are divided into two parts, are all linked in some way to larger themes of love and loss, while the stories in Part Two each explore one of the five senses. The first and last stories in the collection, 'East Wind' and 'Pulse,' were the most touching, while 'Sleeping with John Updike' was his most successful comic work. The sequence of dinner-party conversations written entirely in dialogue, on the other hand, would have worked far better as scripts than short stories. 'Pulse,' on the other hand, is an impressive collection that demonstrates Barnes' elegant flexibility and perceptiveness.












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