I'm a Julian Barnes fan and as soon as I heard it was coming, I took a punt on his latest novel and 'pre-ordered' it (what's wrong with 'ordered'?). And I'm so glad I did. It's a fabulous book, which I devoured in a couple of days. I'm not surprised it went on to win the 2011 Booker Prize.Beautifully written, thought-provoking, moving and very readable it has added resonance for someone of my age, soon to be retiring. The central character is Tony. He's led an unremarkable life - a career, marriage, a daughter, an amicable divorce, and now retirement and plenty of time to look back and remember.
And memory is what the book is all about.
Tony remembers how he and his clique first met Adrian at their single-sex school. They were bright, cocky, poseurish, middle-class kids, with their in-jokes, and what they thought was fantastic wit. Adrian may have been a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life, and promptly drifted apart.
As he tries to make sense of his past and fills in the gaps in his memory, those-fillings-in take on the stature of fact for Tony. When he gets a lawyer's letter telling him he's inherited Adrian's diary and the family refuses to give it to him he trawls his memory to understand why, and it almost becomes a thriller, as he acts on his beliefs and finally discovers the truth.
Read it.
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