Abschied(e)

by Julian Barnes, Gertraude Krueger (Translator)

Frank Arnold wurde 2014 mit dem Deutschen Hörbuchpreis ausgezeichnet. Er schätzt das Werk von Julian Barnes sehr und wird auch Abschied(e) zu einem Hörbuch machen, das lange nachwirkt und beschäftigt.

Julian Barnes wird im Januar 2026 achtzig Jahre alt. Er weiß, dass die längste Zeit seines Lebens hinter ihm liegt, und er möchte die Kontrolle darüber behalten, wie man auf dieses Leben blicken wird.

Als Julian Barnes erfährt, dass er eine Krankheit hat, die für ihn tödlich sein kann, aber nicht sein muss, heißt das für ihn, die Dinge zu ordnen. Was zählt im Leben, welche Lebensphase war wichtig, oder trügt die Erinnerung? Er nimmt Abschied, indem er den Anfang und das vermeintliche Ende dieses außergewöhnlichen Schriftstellerlebens erzählt – und eine fiktive Geschichte, in der auch ganz viel Julian Barnes steckt.

Eine literarische, ehrliche Bilanz, ein Blick zurück und nach vorn von Julian Barnes, dem großen englischen Romancier, der sich vielleicht mit diesem Buch vom Schreiben verabschiedet. Schließlich weiß man nie, wann genau das eigene Leben endet.

Genres: Fiction, British Literature, Literary Fiction, Novels, Adult Fiction

228 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication January 20, 2026

About the author

Julian Patrick Barnes is an English writer. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 with The Sense of an Ending, having been shortlisted three times previously with Flaubert's Parrot, England, England, and Arthur & George. Barnes has also written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh (having married Pat Kavanagh). In addition to novels, Barnes has published collections of essays and short stories.
In 2004 he became a Commandeur of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His honours also include the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was awarded the 2021 Jerusalem Prize.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julian Barnes mentions two things at the beginning of his latest book: there will be a story – or a story within a story – but not just yet; and this will be his last book.

As promised, there is indeed a story that might be fiction, or may be autobiographical, but most certainly is metafiction. There is a beginning to the story and an ending, but there is no middle. It is flawed story, fleshed out by three overlapping memories – the author’s (or the character named Julian Barnes who stands in for the author) and the man and woman whose relationship he narrates – two individuals he met at university in the 1960s. And in the middle, there is a black gaping hole where none of them had contact with the other two.

Although Julian Barnes had promised his friends – Jean and Steven – that he would never appropriate their story, he does. He waits until they die and assuages his conscience by doing so. But Departures isn’t about them – not really. Memories shift and deceive with time. It forces writers to reinvent and rework.

As he nears 80 years old, a loyal reader of his works can almost feel him questioning his legacy. A song from the Broadway play Hamilton popped into my mind: “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” Barnes would no doubt answer, “Because I am.” He does not flinch in writing about his manageable but incurable blood cancer, his increasing frustration with age-related memory lapses. There are ghosts of his other extraordinary books: Tony Webster in The Sense of an Ending revising his estimation of his place in the world; Levels of Life, a discourse on love and sorrow on the loss of his wife Pat Kavanaugh; or The Lemon Table and his mediations on growing old.

Now it’s real, and this may (or may not) be this great author’s endgame and his farewell. I will say this: for those of us who are more than casual readers of an author, an invisible bond begins to grow between us and them, even though we have never met them or spoken to them. We don’t know if this is truly Julian Barnes last book, but when he says, “I shall miss you,” it feels real. And corny though it sounds, I cried as if I had lost a friend. My thanks to Alfred A. Knopf for enabling me to be an early reader and reviewer of an all-time favorite author in exchange for an honest review.

[Liz Hein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need people to read this; I am SOBBING and need to know if that is normal.

[Jaclyn]

A beautiful final farewell from Barnes. He is saying goodbye to storytelling, reading, remembering and living here. I wept at the end of this book. Barnes’s work has meant a lot to me over the years and as much as I wish this wasn’t goodbye, it’s a perfect departure.

[A Dreaming Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for providing me with an eARC.

This was a very interesting book. It's mostly in a stream of consciousness/rambling thoughts format but in this case I think it worked well, given the author's situation. The title worked out quite well too -- to me it signified the departures in memory the author was trying to come to terms with given his impending departure from the world. It was sad and thoughtful all at once. This was a well written book and toed the line between fiction and non fiction. There were too many tangents for me to comfortably absorb the entire book but whatever I did, I enjoyed. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a book about last thoughts and coming to terms with one's life towards the end.

[A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for the ARC of Departure(s).

After about 10 pages of reading this book, I had to quickly look back at the title page to assure myself that I was reading a novel. I even went online and looked up the title just to make sure. “Departure(s): A Novel” the browser said in bold text. I did so because the book was reading surprisingly like a memoir, which I didn’t mind at all. I had enjoyed Barnes’s Nothing to be Frightened Of very much when I read it years ago, and Departure(s) was starting to feel like a companion book to NTBFO, a continuation or update of that memoir. But the book in hand clearly stated itself as a novel, so as a novel I read it.

Departure(s) is an enjoyable, marvelous reading experience. The novel is narrated by Julian, a near octogenarian who resembles the novelist Julian Barnes a great deal. Julian is also a novelist suffering from many ailments, conditions, and disease who relates the story of how he came to be the person who brought together (to life?) two people into a relationship not once but twice. In relating their story, Julian examines love and its meaning, its power to bring people together, and its pain when it fails. This is where Departure(s) reads like a novel. There is dialogue and exposition, scenes in different locations. But always with Julian’s insight to help us along. It is a melancholy rumination on what love is, on the individual and personal definition of love and how two people can say they love one another and mean two completely different things.

The story of this couple is told in between sections of Julian writing about memory and identity, his illness, his preoccupation with death, aging, writing, death, friendship, love, Jimmy the dog, death, legacy, and goodbyes. Some dark stuff. But since this is Julian Barnes writing about these subjects, I was nodding my head and laughing most of the time. There is no doubt that people of a certain age (ahem) will find the preoccupation with aging and death more relevant(?) or poignant, but Barnes’s wit and insight will definitely enlighten and lighten the existential load. It’s not an easy subject to read about, but Barnes’s conversational tone keeps the reader engaged intellectually and emotionally. It’s like having a good friend sitting at a table just riffing on life, sharing experience and insight. You might not agree with everything he says, but it’s a wonderful way to spend an evening.

We’re not supposed to quote from ARCs because the text might change before publication, and that is a shame because there are many lines in Departure(s) that I highlighted for their insight or humor, usually both. There are memorable lines one can almost use as mantras when a bit of the existential darkness blackens the day. There is no surrender to the inevitable, just a clear-eyed, grudging acceptance of it. And if this is Barnes’s farewell to his readers, it is a marvelous way to bid adieu. Thank you, Julian.

[Elisha Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Departure(s) begins by delving into the many theorists behind IAM’s and HSAM - both of these things being conditions believed to provide people with the ability to recall things beyond ‘normal’ ability. Julian Barnes questions, would you if you had the choice want to know absolutely everything about yourself?

As the next couple of chapters begin, we are introduced to Stephen and Jean - although their names may be fictional, their story is anything but. Stephen and Jean were in a relationship in their younger days but split up only to years later ‘coincidentally’ bump into eachother again. It is that of three perspectives - Stephen, Jean and Julian himself. This is where memory becomes a crucial factor, Julian did not see Stephen nor Jean for 40 years, so can only rely on their recollection to fill in any blanks and as he says himself, with an ageing mind, what he recalls now could potentially be how he chooses to remember it but not actually what happened.

Following on from this, we see Julian receive his blood cancer diagnosis during COVID lockdown in 2020 and he goes into detail of his opinions on death and how you become familiar with it as you grow older. He covers reuniting with Stephen and Jean and shows many things from all three perspectives.

There’s so much more that occurs within this book but I’ll refrain from saying much more so that you can read it for yourselves and love the novel as much as I do! It’s a book that you truly need to experience for yourself to feel the full effect of it.

This story, although it is short, really and truly tells a compelling story and I’m so glad I’ve read it.

Thank you Vintage Books for very kindly gifting this to me!

5⭐️

[Erica Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julian Barnes shares his final novel with us as he wraps his illustrious writing career. More auto/non fiction than novel, it’s a somber treat to read his reflections on death, aging and “here we go again”-ism. I’m a sucker for reflective musings on aging and death. So this slim volume lands smack dab in the center of my wheelhouse. The story within a story just adds to the rumination as we get to follow along as two of his university friends romantically reconnect 40 years later. I think this interlude works well with the subject matter. As we age, aren’t we constantly thinking about the one who got away? Imagining the life we’d have lived had we made different decisions. What if we could spin the block again a lifetime later?

How terrifying, how thrilling, how lucky to grapple with your inevitable, impending departure with stunning wit, unexpected humor and a sobering clarity.

Thanks for one last gift, Mr. Barnes.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for the advance reading copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Baz · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

This is a novel. Or: it’s literary nonfiction. On the spectrum from fiction to nonfiction, it definitely leans toward literary nonfiction—for me. But I still view it as a novel. Do you feel me?

The narrator is Barnes himself, reflecting on his cancer diagnosis, death, coming to the end of life, and memory. He also meditates on the relationship between two of his friends, who first meet as students at Oxford and reconnect decades later, exploring their complicated love story and conflicting personalities in both eras of their lives.

The book is also deeply metafictional—or is it, if it’s basically nonfiction despite being christened as fiction?—and Barnes examines fiction’s strengths and limitations, simultaneously admiring great works that came before, while gently picking certain ideas apart and highlighting their fallacies.

I loved it. What a beautiful book, both funny and sad. It will be Barnes’s last—and it has the depth and pathos you’d hope for in the final novel of someone who has been writing for over forty years.

•

(Longer review coming, but it won’t appear here.)

[Helen Haythornthwaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I’ve read by Julian Barnes, and the last one he will write. Julian won the Booker Prize in 2011 with ‘The Sense of an Ending’, and has many novels, short stories, essays and memoirs to his name.

This book has been classed as ‘biographical fiction’ but it’s more like a collection of Julian’s thoughts and musings. It’s a philosophical look at memory, love and death, including Julian’s own memories and references to people he has known or read himself.

The initial section about memories does begin quite scientifically, mentioning Proust and neuropsychology, of which my knowledge is limited. However, this recurring theme of memories runs throughout the whole book and the science behind it all became much clearer as I read on. There were some fascinating facts of which I was completely unaware and now feel all the richer for knowing them.

The love story, in this book, is based on a true story and tells of two people who fell in love when they were young, and when they were older. Julian uses this story to ponder on their relationship, and his role as ‘agony uncle’ within it.

Julian is very aware of his own mortality, and contemplates people he has lost and how they are remembered. He talks about death as if it is an old friend and he is preparing to meet it. It’s a poignant moment when he explains about this being his final book.

You might have noticed a more serious tone to my review today and it’s because this is a serious read. It’s very intellectual at times so I had to slow my reading pace down and really think about what I was I reading, but there were some lighter, more humorous pages interwoven within these. I enjoyed reading it and found it very thought-provoking. I liked Julian’s wit and writing style and would definitely like to read more of his work now.



I was sent a proof copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

[Louisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been lucky enough to get my hands on this before it is released, and as such i am going to have to wait until its release date (end of Jan) to do my full review, as I can’t do it justice without a quote or two

[Bruce Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.”
(King Lear, 5:2:10-12)

Julian Barnes quotes these lines in his new book, “Departure(s).” It makes perfect sense: the book I am holding in my hands was written by and about an old (which is to say my age) writer who has been diagnosed with cancer and is thinking about his life and his creations and what he remembers. His publisher says the book is fiction, a novel. This may be true: the term has become, let us say, unstable in recent years. Barnes asserts that it will be his last book. This also may be true. It’s almost certainly true, in fact. As I said, Barnes was diagnosed a few years ago with a rare kind of blood cancer. “It isn’t curable,” his doctor told him, "but it is manageable.” (“Incurable yet manageable,” he reflects shortly after learning the diagnosis. “That sounds like… life, doesn’t it?”)

Much of the book -- especially at the beginning -- focuses memory. It begins with Barnes conjuring Marcel Proust’s story in “Swann’s Way” of eating a Madeleine and suddenly being inundated by long-forgotten memories. (No prior knowledge of Proust is necessary.)

(I have to pause here and acknowledge that I’m taking some liberty with the truth. The book actually opens not with Proust but with this: “The other day, I discovered an alarming possibility. No, worse: an alarming fact. I have an old friend, a consultant radiologist, who for years has been sending me clippings from the British Medical Journal. She knows that my interest tends towards the ghoulish and the extreme.” No need to speculate: Barnes gives us a pretty good idea of what he’s talking about.)

But back to Proust. The allusion to “Swann’s Way” sets Barnes off on a lively and eccentric contemplation of memory (“that place where degradation and embellishment overlap.”) Suppose, he posits, you could call to mind everything you’ve done, every thought you've had. “Would you want to know absolutely everything about yourself? Is that a good idea, or a bad one?” An interesting question, particularly (I have to believe) for a writer: “How would you face the record –the chronological record – of all your lies, hypocrisies, cruelties both avoidable and (seemingly) unavoidable, your harsh forgettings, your dissimulations, your broken promises, your infidelities of word and deed? Not just the actual failings but the imagined and desired ones.

“Memory is identity,” he observes more than once in “Departure(s).” Barnes fleshes out the many complexities inherent in the statement. Novelists are story-tellers, and memories the stuff of which their stories are made. But aren't the memories themselves essentially stories themselves? Fabrications “mutating a little with each retelling until it congeals finally into a version which we convince ourselves the truth”? What is fiction in “Departure(s),” and what… well, not fiction? Another good question, but one best left unanswered because it doesn't matter: reading the book is like being in the company of a truly interesting and amusing stranger you’ve just met. Maybe you're sharing a bottle of wine as you listen to him talk about this or that.

That parenthetical addition to the title — “Departure(s) — conveys some sense of what Barnes is up to. He interrupts his discourse on memory to give the reader notice: “Two things to mention at this stage: There will be a story — or a story within the story — but not just yet; and This will be my last book.”

About that story: It involves two people — Stephen and Jean — Barnes met back in college when they were in their 20s. He was instrumental in bringing them together as a couple. In time they broke up but then reentered his life some 40 years later (he is again instrumental in bringing them together). While the story is true, he tells us (though I’m not 100% sure I believe him), Stephen and Jean are not their real names. He promised them “separately” that he would never write about them. (He lied.) Plus, in order to tell a story — “any story” — he has to give “a certain amount of background.” (He breaks the fourth wall and directly speaks to the reader: “Actually, just writing this makes me feel a bit weary. And I wouldn’t blame you if you did too. So I’ll keep most of that stuff to a minimum. You may thank me, or you may not. But as writers get older, either they grow egotistically expansive or they think: contain yourself and cut to the chase.”)

And so he goes in and out of the story of Stephen and Jean (and Jean’s very excitable dog) as they come together, grow apart, come together again, and… so on. Reporting on what they tell him (again separately), what he says in response. They’re difficult people, very different from one another. “I had treated Stephen and Jean as if they were characters in one of my novels, believing I could gently direct them towards the ends which I desired. I’d been confusing life with fiction. I’ll tell you the rest another time.”

Understandably, he keeps coming back to his own situation. His own uncertainly imminent departure. He was writing much of the book during Covid. He penetrates the wall again: “The writer, quarantined in his own home, suddenly victim of blood cancer, while all around a plague is spreading exponentially. It sounds like a bad, or at least derivative, novel.”

He’s careful to stay away from other people as much as he can because he’d “rather die of his own disease, thank you very much, not everybody else’s.’

I imagined myself being rushed to hospital, breathless, speechless, perhaps even unconscious. They see this old geezer and are coming down on the side of straight to ‘end of life care’ when one of them notices that I am wearing a lapel badge. It reads: BUT I WON THE BOOKER PRIZE. And I am reprieved. Unless the gesture looks like an attempt to pull rank, in which case . . . well, I would never find out.

Elsewhere he envisions himself as an old-er man and losing his memory and friends/caretakers, trying to be helpful, suggest that he read his own early books to see if he might recapture who he was (“memory is identity”). They put the headphones on, and you listen to an actor – or perhaps, even, yourself – reading words you had written decades previously. And then what? Does it feel half-familiar? Do you think this must be some book you had read in earlier years? Or might it trigger a genuine memory of writing the words?

So: life, death, writing, fame, love, dreams… (“Departure habitually leads to arrival. Not always, of course… We go, we arrive, we set o in return, and reach home again: we live with this momentum.” Until in the end there is “The Departure which will be followed by no Arrival.”

Barnes reassures the reader that he’s not (or not often) afraid of dying. As an atheist — and support of a group called Dignity in Dying — he doesn’t expect any Thereafter. He shares a story from when catalytic converters were being stolen all the time from cars:

”An old friend and neighbour of mine, disturbed by a noise from the street, opened his bedroom curtains and saw a man half-underneath his car. He rushed down to the front door and shouted ‘What are you up to?’ The man stood up and pointed at him. ‘This has nothing to do with you,’ he said in a threatening manner, ‘Now fuck off back inside.’ Which my friend obediently – and wisely – did. I sometimes think of this incident when I’m musing on illness and decrepitude. It’s just the universe doing its stuff, it has nothing to do with you, so just fuck off back inside, OK? Do you see what I mean?

“…the universe doing its stuff…” Or as Kurt Vonnegut put it many many decades back: “So it goes.”

Do I make the book sound terribly dark and depressing? I hope not because it’s neither of these things, not in the least. It’s touching, profound, playful, tender… Which is not to say the reader won’t finally put the book down with a feeling of sadness of the kind one feels after saying farewell to a beloved friend they may never see again. If “Departure(s)” is in fact to be Barnes’ last novel, it’s a hell of a way to go out.

My thanks to Knopf for a digital ARC of "Departure(S)" in return for an honest review.

[Hayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Julian Barnes approaches his 80th birthday, this lovely, wry, and fluid book looks at memory, love, and the approach of death in what he claims will be his last book.

Is this a novel as the cover claims? Its protagonist, Julian Barnes, has a great deal in common with Julian Barnes the author. As one of the other characters challenges him: ”The hybrid stuff you do - I think it’s a mistake. You should do one thing or the other.” Julian replies, rather tartly, “you are mistaken if you think I don’t know exactly what I’m up to when I write them.”

The book opens with some extended thoughts about memory and its future possibilities. It’s a topic that also preoccupied his fellow grand old man of English literature, Ian McEwan, in the recent What We Can Know, though approached from a more intellectual perspective. Just when I was wondering where all this was going, Julian pops up to assure me “There will be a story - or a story within the story.”

And there is: Jean and Stephen were friends of Julian at Oxford but their relationship did not work out. 40 years later, Julian contrives, with Stephen’s prompting, to bring them back together. They get married but once again, it doesn’t stick. This gives the author the opportunity to reflect on what love is to individuals and to himself. Despite having promised both parties, when they were alive, that he wouldn’t write about them, he repeats conversations he had separately with both of them as their marriage disintegrates, having recorded much of what they said in his diary.

The final section concerns the “Departure which will be followed by no Arrival.” Julian has a rare blood cancer, though one which he will die with rather than of. His wife had died of a brain tumor. “There is memory, and then there is death, which erases all memory.” As Julian ponders if he’s raging against the proverbial dying of the light, he acknowledges that he’s become more accepting as he grows older and decays.

As a person a little, but not much, behind Julian on the road to the end, I found his graceful musings both comforting and attractive. I hope I can be that sanguine as the light fades.

Thanks to Knopf and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

[Julie Stielstra · Rating 4 out of 5]

One more - and very sadly, the last - of Julian Barnes's reflective, discursive stories. It's called "a novel," but maybe more what is being called "autofiction" these days - a true tale (or a version of it) told as if it's a novel, with memory and history interwoven with imagination, fiction, and "liberties."

Similar to the tripartite structure of Barnes's previous novel "Elizabeth Finch," it begins with an author named Julian Barnes reflecting on memories of his university days, and his friendship with two other students, Stephen and Jean. They begin a relationship, with Barnes's assistance and encouragement, reach the point of "marry or split," and at that time opt for split. Many years go by, during which Barnes is diagnosed with a "manageable but not curable blood disorder" (a particular kind of leukemia). He muses on the effects of disease, age, widowhood, loss, and the changing form of relationships over years. He has promised Stephen and Jean that he will not write about them. But - of course - he eventually does, with names changed. After decades of sporadic contact with both of them separately, he helps engineer an "accidental" reunion. This time, they marry. Yet, it's an uneven, mercurial relationship, and Barnes is the old friend on whom they unload. Jean dies; Barnes inherits her dog. Other friends die. And for Barnes, approaching 80, his inevitable end is coming into focus. He doesn't seem to mind so much, but he'd like to go out with grace, with kindness, with a friend at hand to bid farewell and slip away.

A dry, wry, thoughtful voice, exploring, inquiring, remembering; sometimes wistful, sometimes rueful, looking the human experience of love, time, mortality, memory, and joy straight in the face. I would wish him godspeed, but for his positive atheism (which I share). I will miss him when he goes.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a free advance digital review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Anyone who reads Julian Barnes’s books knows he has a bit of a preoccupation with death. But since he’s been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer that can be treated but not cured, that’s not too surprising. He claims, at the start of this short book, that “[t]his will be my last book.” Actually, I should clarify that this is billed as a novel, and just because the first-person narrator is named Julian, that doesn’t mean this is autobiographical. Um, right? Well, I know I’ve concluded this is absolutely autobiographical, but I suppose some may differ.

Barnes has often also pondered on the meaning of being an artist or a writer. In this book, he critiques the tendency of novel writers to embellish and to co-opt the lives of their friends and family members. Though he has himself promised not to write about his old friends Stephen and Jean, for whom he served as matchmaker back in their Oxford college days and, again, decades later, he breaks that promise by writing extensively about the meaning of their relationship and of all cases of rekindled love.

Short as this book is, it takes a leisurely—some may say meandering—stroll through its story, though with a constant consciousness of the approach of the end—of life and of writing. There is a great deal about Barnes’s diagnosis and treatment, and about the illnesses and deaths of numerous friends and acquaintances, many from the literary world. Most touching is his writing about how he sees his relationship with readers. I think it is this bit, at the end, that convinces me that this is, indeed, Barnes’s last book.

As always, Barnes writes a memorable tale that is emotionally moving, though expressed with Barnes’s usual British reserve and cool wit.

[Barb Novak · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley, Vintage, and Julian Barnes for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Departure(s), which may be 80-year-old Julian Barnes’ last book, was my first exposure to Barnes. Departure(s) is a bit memoir. In 2020, Barnes was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer; he describes his diagnosis and the early stages of treatment (during the first months of the Covid pandemic). Departure(s) is a bit philosophical about personal and professional departures (big surprise there) related to aging. Barnes also muses about memory, wondering about the relationship between truth and memory. Finally, Departure(s) has a story within a story. Barnes writes about friends who were lovers in college and reunited, with Barnes pulling the puppet strings, later in life.

Press for Departure(s) suggests that it is a hybrid of fact and fiction. That’s really Barnes’ premise in Departure(s): our memories are departures from reality which change over time. I did feel a little fucked with, though, thinking about which parts of Departure(s) were fact and which were fiction, especially in the story of his friends’ love. Throughout the 176 pages, I never set aside thoughts of fact versus fiction. Also, Barnes was difficult to feel empathy toward. His use of allusions to Proust, Woolf, Baudelaire, Gautier, and Flaubert to support his philosophizing were not meaningful for me, and his status as a canonized, elder, white, male, British writer automatically made me skeptical about his views of the world.

One last thought, the US cover for Departure(s) contributed to my lack of connection with the book. The British cover, an illustration featuring a man and a dog, portrays Barnes in a more favorable light.

[Ruben]

I was fully absorbed in, and entirely entertained by, Julian Barnes latest (and unfortunately last) novel. It is vintage Barnes, interested in memory and its unreliability, in stories and the gaps in them.

It struck me that he asks many of the same questions as Ian McEwan in his latest novel: what if we could know everything? What if we could remember everything? Wouldn't it be too much? Where McEwan looks at it from a technological perspective, Barnes takes a neurological view (and a literary view drawing as usual on a range of French authors). But both reach the same conclusion.

Departure(s) consists of five parts: a theoretical start about 'involuntary autobiographical memories (IAM)', then the highly entertaining story of two lovers who reunite after 40 years with Julian acting as a matchmaker, and finally a coda that manages to be both light and deeply emotional.

I also had an IAM while reading Departure(s), as I vividly remembered reading the Sense of an Ending on a long train journey in 2012 and rediscovering the pleasure of reading.

Goodreads tells me I've read 8 of his books since (Barnes says in the novel that he wrote 44 so there are enough left).

Although part of me doesn't exclude there may be another Barnes in the future - after all he is nothing if not unreliable (and this one felt particularly fresh and sharp), I am grateful for the fabulous reading experiences he's given me - surprising, elegant, playful, precise and smart.

[Kimberly Gupta · Rating 2 out of 5]

First, thank you very much to Knopf for providing me with a ARC of this book!

I will start off by saying, while I didn’t particularly enjoy or get a lot out of this book, I do think other people will, especially if you are a Julian Barnes fan and have read other works of his.

I think it is a very interesting feat to write a book that is mixed fact and fiction. I also think it is wonderful for the author to want to write “one last book” on his own terms, and have it largely contain reflections about life and death.

However, for me, I had trouble connecting with this book in a meaningful way. The stories the author told, particularly about his two friends (who he promised he’d never write about! and broke that promise! and I still don’t understand why they made him promise that! and I don’t entirely comprehend why he would ever want to write about them!), didn’t really fit the overall messaging of the book, in my opinion. And many of the “real life” observations and philosophies the author opined about felt disjointed and random at points, while I was expecting to feel emotional and moved.

Like I said earlier, I do think this book will have a receptive audience, it just is not me.

[Daniel Sevitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to the team at Vintage for sending me a proof copy of this to read and review.

I have a spotty history with the author having long ago placed him in the tier below Amis, McEwan, and Ishiguro from that original 1983 Granta class of "Young British Novelists." I loved all his pseudonymously published Duffy books but other than Arthur & George, I haven't loved the bits of his fiction that I encountered. This is a different animal. Departure(s) is a work of autofiction and may be Barnes's last ever book. At least that's what its narrator, a novelist called Julian Barnes, tells the reader. Dealing with memory and facing his mortality head on, the book sits alongside the work of his contemporaries like Mortality by Christopher Hitchens, Inside Story by Martin Amis, and even Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie as an old man's reflection on his end. Beautifully written, unsentimentally told, and moving in its acceptance of the inevitable. When asked whether he is raging against the dying of the light, Barnes takes the length of this excellent short book to conclude, "No, not so much."

[Sonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Happy pub day eve to Departure(s) by Julian Barnes. Thank you Knopf for an early copy of this book! This is a small but mighty one. Barnes reflects on memory, aging and authorship through a story that blends personal recollection with the lives of two friends he met at Oxford in the 1960s. This is less of a traditional narrative and more a meditation of sorts on how memory shifts over time and how gaps and absences shape the stories we tell.

Barnes writes about aging and illness in a practical way, focusing on what it feels like to live with uncertainty rather than trying to draw big conclusions, which is something I related to and found some peace reading his perspective on. If this really is his last piece of work this felt like a goodbye with a wink. What better way to close. I find this work so admirable and something I will claw towards in pursuit of being a published writer.

Anyways, (moved) tears were shed and this book is a great way to set intentions for 2026 based on the wisdom of an amazing storyteller. Departure is available from Knopf and other major booksellers to pre order today or purchase tomorrow!

⭐️ 4.5/5

[GONZA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eine Reflexion über das Leben, den Tod und vor allem über das „dritte Lebensalter“, das ihm normalerweise vorausgeht. Ein Exkurs sowohl aus literarischer als auch aus biografischer und autobiografischer Sicht (vielleicht), in dem er das Leben zweier Freunde und parallel dazu auch einen Teil seines eigenen Lebens nachzeichnet.

A reflection on life, death, and above all that “third age” that usually precedes it. An excursus from both a literary and a biographical and autobiographical (perhaps) point of view, in which he retraces the lives of two of his friends and, in parallel, part of his own.

Una riflessione sulla vita, la morte e soprattutto quella "terza etá" che di solito la precede. Un excursus sia dal punto di vista letterario che da quello biografico e autobiografico (forse), nel quale ripercorre la vita di sue due amici e, parallelamente, anche parte della sua.

Ich habe vom Verlag ein kostenloses digitales Vorab-Exemplar des Buches im Austausch für eine ehrliche Rezension erhalten.

[Katzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein wortgewaltiger (im besten Sinn) Abschied. Wie ein letztes langes, persönliches Gespräch mit dem Autor.
Julian Barnes blickt auf das Leben zurück und sinniert über Erinnerungen. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Liebesgeschichte zweier seiner Freunde. Von dieser ausgehend erfahren wir sehr viel über den Autor selbst.
Das Buch enthält Literatur, Medizin, Gedankensplitter, Autobiografisches und zum Teil sicher auch so Ausgeschmücktes, dass man nicht weiß ob wahr oder der Fantasie entsprungen.
Freundschaften. Leben. Abschiede. All das verpackt Julian Barnes in einen ungezwungenen - wenn auch teils sehr philosophischen - Rahmen und man will gar nicht, dass das Gespräch endet.
Das Buch hat sehr viel in mir angesprochen. Die Angst vorm Sterben. Die Dankbarkeit für das Leben und seine Momente.

Ein Genuss und Privileg, dieses wohl wirklich letzte Buch des Autors, lesen zu dürfen.

Danke Kiwi-Verlag und Netgalley für das Rezensionsexemplar

[Kelsey Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, hats off to Julian for this final goodbye to us readers- as he writes this will be his last book. This memoir/musings explores autobiographical memories of Barnes in his past and present. He explores themes of memory, what ifs, "arriving" and "departing", what life is, what death is, etc. It seems at first these are just strands of unrelated thoughts, but Barnes does a brilliant job at weaving each thread together.

5 stars- because with anything autobiographical, I feel like I cannot rate it. How could I rate the words of the heart? I would strongly recommend for those who are familiar with Barnes. For those who are not? I don't know if this would land as strong if you weren't familiar.

Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for my ARC!

[Allison Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Departure (s) is a semi autobiographical novel by Julian Barnes, a prolific writer and Booker prize winner in his 80s. Topics range from friendship and his career, to life and his mortality (he is living with leukemia that although non fatal affects his health).

I enjoyed his ruminations on Proust, memories and how they are formed and the Ima theory of a person’s memories spilling out all at once. My favorite character was his dog Jimmy, who he inherited after his friend (his owner) died.

If you like autobiographical novels by older famous authors, or if you are a fan of his writing, you will enjoy this. Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and NetGalley for the eARC.

[vince weldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure what to expect from this one...I picked it up expecting a novel, I put it down having read a fascinating assessment of what it is to grow older, to enter the final phase; wrapped around a very unnovel like love story that wasn't ... being in my seventieth year the piece resonated, being in the first year of a relationship 20 years after a divorce and over a decade from my partner being widowed the love story gave me cause to think.

Will the subject matter impact the potential readership? I think that it might...if I were a younger man then I think I'd have put it down within a few pages...Barnes makes clear that this is going to be his final novel, and I suspect that this allows him to take liberties with what we expect a novel to be...but let's be honest as one of our best authors of the last forty five years hasn't he earned the right to play around with the format in what amounts to his personal assessment of where he is and where he's going?

The Times review quote on the cover reads "Barnes is always clever, often original and unusually funny"...on reflection they're spot on as "Departure(s)" is atypically Barnes

I do have one bugbear which relates to the time it's taken the book to be finalised...it'll be released in 2026, but was started a couple of years ago...in that time Martin Amiss passed yet here he's referenced as being in the present, it's either an easy edit to correct or I've missed a significant point in all the discussion about ageing and the passing of time ...


I was provided with an advance copy of the novel by Jonathan Cape, all I have been asked to provide is an honest review of the work which I am happy to provide...

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Incurable yet manageable,’ that sounds like….life, doesn’t it? from Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

Such a strange novel. The narrator is Julian Barnes, a writer in his mid-seventies with a rare cancer which is treatable but not curable. He writes about his thoughts on memory, life, aging, and death. And, he tells the story of two friends. He introduced them to each other as young adults. They married and divorced, and forty years later he reintroduced them, resulting in their remarrying.

The pair made him swear he would never write about them. But in this novel, he writes about them.

The border between what is real and what is imagined is nebulous. The book has little plot, and limited characters. In addition to the forementioned friends, the narrator’s wife has died, leaving him with her aging dog.

What engages us are the narrator’s rambling thoughts and digressions. Especially, if you are, like me, in your seventh decade. The reader feels they know this narrator, and there is a sense of loss when the book ends. we are told it is his last book.

This is the start of the ending. from Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

We must depart from this world, not knowing where we will arrive afterward. There is some relief in knowing we will not have to live into what may come, considering the trajectory we are on in regards to destroying the planet and democracy and ourselves.

But our narrator has gained an acceptance. “Ripeness is all,” he quotes Edgar in King Lear. Like our narrator, I read the play first in my teens. Inevitable decay of the body and mind, he notes, helps his acceptance.

The novel ends with acknowledgement of the years of delight his readers have brought. And try to stay clear eyed, reading it. Have a hanky at the ready.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

[Julie Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Penguin Random House for the advanced reading copy.

I had only read one book previously by Julian Barnes, the Booker prize winning A Sense of an Ending but the writing style is familiar - clever, punchy and thought provoking.

This book is non-fiction loosely dressed as fiction and is the author's reflections of memory, illness and death. It is said that this is his last book and it is indeed a suitable finale.

[quim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Iba a decir que es un milagro que este libro exista, pero tal vez es todo lo contrario: si algo es Barnes, precisamente, es coherente, ¿cómo va a ser un milagro que se despida con el libro con el que se quiere despedir? Nos has enseñado tanto, amigo, sin quererlo...

[JJ Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review at www.NerdyNerdyBookBook.com

[Fatguyreading · Rating 5 out of 5]

Departure(s) is a thoughtful, thought-provoking read that's sad, poignant and although the main theme is coming to terms with one's own mortality, somehow found the story to also be life affirming.

The writing style is in the main, somewhat digressive and rambling, in the form of streams of thought, musings, contemplations and ponderings. For me, this worked incredibly well, given the main theme is coming to terms with a life lived while being close to the end of said life.

It's a story that manages to convince you that it could be fiction, or it could be autobiographical. So it's a curious, interesting mix, that's absolutely heartbreaking, deeply personal, extremely human and throughly beautiful.

My first read of 2026 and a such a great start.

5 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 's from me.

[Rohan · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you have read other works of Barnes, then I think you would enjoy this format/style and the insights into Barnes’ life. I personally haven’t read anything else by him and so it just didn’t work for me. I wanted to hear about the story of his friend’s relationship and that actually is a minor storyline in this book.