Review of DEPARTURE(S) by Julian Barnes (New Release)

 4 Stars

Julian Barnes turned 80 on January 19, the day before this book was published. And it is so very much a Julian Barnes book, one difficult to categorize as either fiction or non-fiction, which the narrator’s friend would undoubtedly dismiss as “’This hybrid stuff you do.’”

The narrator is a writer named Julian Barnes who states that what we are reading will be his last book. He begins with a lengthy discussion of memory, how it works and its fallibility. Promising that there will be a story, or a story within the story, he eventually tells the story of two friends, Jean and Stephen, for whom he played matchmaker, once in the 1960s and again 40 years later. This narrative feels less of a plot and more a device for examining love. The latter part of the book is a reflection of the narrator’s life (his writing career, the deaths of his wife and friends, his diagnosis with blood cancer, the ravishes of aging, and his eventual death). The book closes with a farewell to his readers.

I’ve really liked several of Barnes’ novels and this one was no exception. I enjoyed reading his thoughts about memory, love, grief, and death. Perhaps because I am only a decade away from his age, his reflections resonated with me. I especially liked his way of accepting life’s vicissitudes and one’s inevitable death: it’s just the universe doing its stuff.

At the end, the narrator addresses the reader directly and imagines the writer and reader sitting side by side at a cafe, watching and musing at the lives passing by. Throughout, the narrator speaks in a relaxed voice as if indeed the reader and writer are having a conversation – though he admits to seldom catching the reader’s mutterings since he imagines the reader sitting on his deaf side. As such conversations between companions do, this one meanders with digressions touching on both serious and trivial topics.

The serious topics outnumber the inconsequential, but there are definite touches of humour. The discussions about Jimmy, a Jack Russell, are often hilarious. I chuckled at Julian’s description of his triage fantasy: imagining that during Covid, he’d be dismissed as an old geezer relegated to end-of-life care until someone notices his lapel badge announcing his winning of the Booker Prize. And I loved his jabs at Trump, commenting it would be appropriate if he’d sworn on a copy of the Wicked Bible which commands “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

The title is perfect. The narrator has experienced the departure of memories, has had some people in his life leave temporarily and some die, and he gives more than passing thought to his own departure from life. And is he saying goodbye to his writing career? The narrator emphasizes how writers lie and don’t keep promises, like the one he made to Jean and Stephen to never write about them. So should we take Barnes’s statement, about this being his last book, at face value?

I hope this is not his last book, but if it is, it is a good one to mark the end of his career. And though I won’t stop looking at “the many and varied expressions of life,” I’ll miss his “sturdy presence” and “conversational mutterings.”

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.