Nothing to be Frightened Of
-
-
3.0 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- £6.99
-
- £6.99
Publisher Description
'I don't believe in God, but I miss Him.' Julian Barnes' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his philosopher brother, a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the French writer Jules Renard. Though he warns us that 'this is not my autobiography', the result is a tour of the mind of one of our most brilliant writers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this virtuosic memoir, Barnes (Arthur & George) makes little mention of his personal or professional life, allowing his audience very limited ingress into his philosophical musings on mortality. But like Alice tumbling through the rabbit hole, readers will find themselves granted access to an unexpectedly large world, populated with Barnes's "daily companions" and his chosen "ancestors" ("most of them dead, and quite a few of them French," like Jules Renard, Flaubert, Zola). "This is not 'my autobiography,' " Barnes emphasizes in this hilariously unsentimental portrait of his family and childhood. "Part of what I'm doing which may seem unnecessary is trying to work out how dead they are." And in this exploration of what remains, the author sifts through unreliable memory to summon up how his ancestors real and assumed contemplated death and grappled with the perils and pleasures of "pit-gazing." If Barnes's self-professed "amateur" philosophical rambling feels occasionally self-indulgent, his vivid description delights.
