Product Description

There used to be two sides to every story. Now there are three....

In Talking It Over Gillian and Stuart were married until Oliver - witty, feckless Oliver - stole Gillian away. In Love, etc Jillian Barnes revisits the three of them, using the same intimate technique of allowing the characters to speak directly to the reader, to whisper their secrets, to argue for their version of the truth. Darker and deeper than its predecessor, Love, etc is a compelling exploration of contemporary love and its betrayals.

'The triange of deeply believable characters and the story of betrayal and revenge are so engrossing that you almost fail to notice the usual Barnesian fusillade of wit and brilliance' John Carey, Sunday Times

'The real wonder of this book is its apparent simplicity, its apparent slowness, the exactness and delicacy of its observations, the absolute fitness of the form for the story. Of its kind - and i still dont dare to say what kind that might be - it's perfect' Susannah Herbert, Daily Telegraph

'This wonderfully entertaining novel... A work as skilled and satisfying as this can be nothing other than affirming: Barnes' delicate balance between laughter and despair lifts his entertainment into art' Erica Wagner, The Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69199 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Oliver, Stuart and Gillian have been friends and lovers. It's ten years since they last met, and a lot has changed. For a start, Oliver has married Gillian, and Stuart, his erstwhile best friend, hates him for it. Not just because Stuart was once married to Gillian but because he still loves her. His last memory of Gillian was of seeing her, covered in blood, after a vicious row with Oliver, and he has never relinquished his vow to rescue her. Under the guise of repairing old friendships--"all blood under the bridge"--mild-mannered Stuart insinuates himself into their life, offering advice, support, even giving Oliver a job. As Oliver is manoeuvred into a crippling depression, Stuart unveils his deadly masterplan.

In Love, etc., the sequel to Talking It Over, Barnes adopts the same technique he used previously, allowing his characters to speak their innermost thoughts and secrets directly to the reader. The result is a bewitchingly intimate excursion into a taut triangle of betrayal and jealousy. With painstaking detail, he creates a vibrant portrait of modern love--as funny as it is cruel, as absurd as it is deep. Few contemporary writers can portray Middle England, with all its temptations, so darkly.-- Matthew Baylis

Review
"'Of its kind - and I still don't dare to say what kind that might be - it is perfect' Daily Telegraph; 'Complex, clever and compassionate, Love, etc is Barnes on top form' Time Out; 'This is a wonderfully entertaining novel... A work as skilled and satisfying as this can be nothing other than affirming: Barnes' delicate balance between laughter and despair lifts his entertainment into art' The Times."

About the Author
Julian Barnes' first book was published 21 years ago. He is the author of eight novels, including Metroland, Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters and England, England, and of a collection of stories, Cross Channel. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Julian Barnes's incisive study of a love triangle
In Talking It Over, published in 1991, Julian Barnes introduced us to Gillian, Stuart and Oliver, and then put his characters in front of us one at a time. Not just to narrate events as they occurred, but to speak directly to us. In Love, etc. we revisit the trio. Ten years has passed for them as well, and although they're older and at least two of them have gained weight, their emotional relationships remain as complicated as ever.

The book retains the technique of out-to-camera narration, lending an intimacy to the story that makes us relate it to our real lives. Gillian doesn't just complain about her unsatisfactory sex life, she asks us how it compares to our own. Each event generates multiple points of view; not just from the central three characters, but peripheral figures like Gillian's daughter Sophie, or Mrs Dyer, the old woman across the road. There is no objective record of events; Barnes's message is that we shape our history according to how we see ourselves, even as those around us are forming radically different perceptions.

Overall the book feels a lot darker than Talking It Over. The characters, now in their forties, show no sign of having learnt from the upheavals of ten years ago. There are more rough edges than the last time round. Julian Barnes shows once again that he is a fine novelist with a great talent for dissecting complicated emotions.

Creatively daring.
In this inventive and unconventional narrative, Barnes turns the old fiction-writing maxim, "Don't tell about something, recreate it," on its head, choosing not to recreate anything at all. Instead, his three main characters address the reader in soliloquies, each telling his version of events that have happened in the past and leaving it up to the reader to decide what really happened.

Stuart, stodgy and predictable, was briefly married to Gillian before dashing Oliver stole her away. Ten years have passed, Stuart has remarried, divorced, become financially successful in the U.S., and returned to England. Oliver and Gillian are still married, the parents of two daughters. As their lives once again intertwine, many of the old tensions revive, along with some new tensions, the result of the characters' changes in ten years.

Barnes's characters are vivid, and their speeches to the audience are both dramatic and real. One can easily see how the various characters would interpret events differently, and that aspect of the book is fun to read. There are numerous disadvantages to Barnes's approach, however. The characters are independent of the reader, isolated not only from the reader but from each other, and they feel like actors on a stage who have not invited anyone in to share their lives. The reader's role becomes that of an observer or a judge, deciding not only what happened but what will happen in the future. Readers looking for an unusual narrative will find this book fascinating and carefully constructed, though perhaps a bit slow. Mary Whipple

Different voices, different love stories.
Since the publication of *Flaubert's Parrot* in 1984, when he was first recognised widely as a major contemporary English author, Julian Barnes has had a reputation as an author of 'novels of ideas.' This was reinforced by his meditation on history, *A History of The World in 10 ½ Chapters.* His latest novel is primarily about the ideas we have about love.

In *Love, Etc.*, the sequel to *Talking It Over* (1991), three characters involved in a love triangle take turns, uninterrupted by a narrator, to tell their versions of events. New readers will find it no handicap not to have read *Talking It Over*; others will be pleased to catch up with the characters.

We find Stuart making contact again with his former best friend Oliver, the man who married Stuart's former wife, Gillian, months after falling in love with her on Stuart and Gillian's wedding day. 'Well, I've changed', announces Stuart. A successful businessman now, he sets about 'rescuing' the couple by employing Oliver and renting the couple and their daughters his and Gillian's old marital home. Gillian, now a 'coper' ('quality time - there's always another load of washing up'), reluctantly accepts Stuart's ostensible kindness. A picture restorer, she is the breadwinner, and looks after not only her two children but also Oliver, who suffers a hopeless depression after beginning to doubt her loyalty.

Oliver, despising the seriousness of the novel's other voices, takes pleasure in alluding to Shakespeare, Byron and The Song of Roland (amongst other texts). He delights in favourite phrases ('Une etre sans raisonable raison d'etre) and favourite words('picayune', 'sempiternal'). 'Someone round here must represent the ludic and the abstract,' he says. Clever, pretentious, amusing and finally pathetic, he is brilliantly drawn and Barnes clearly has more interest in him than the rather pedestrian Gillian.

Despite Oliver's thought that Stuart might support one of his unfulfilled artistic 'projects' the plot moves towards Stuart's revenge on the 'wife-stealer' and his attempt to regain Gillian. Stuart presents himself as strident, reliable and realistic. At first he might seem the dullard that Oliver claims he is, but he is as difficult to pin down as his former best friend.

As events move towards disaster, the characters views of love change. Oliver, having long believed that love comes first, everything else in life being an 'Etc.', comes to see 'The sad truth' that relationships 'are about power.' For Stuart, 'First love is the only love', but after having taken his revenge he begins to doubt his love for Gillian. For Gillian, love is largely about managing a gone-stale marriage; yet after Stuart has taken his revenge she sees whether or not he still loves her as 'the key question'.

The final chapter is entitled 'What Do You Think?' Despite the reader's desire for certainty and the characters' attempts to charm and cajole him into accepting partial versions of events, one can only conclude that the truth simply doesn't exist. We are left just with different people's different stories.

As with *A History*, it is likely that readers will differ widely in their interpretations of what Barnes is up to. This is a book to read and enjoy, to lend to others and to argue about. Barnes has written something that will simultaneously delight readers and prompt them to consider anew the nature of love and the importance of stories in the construction of reality.