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Departure
On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, one of our great novelists delivers a playful and profound work about memory, love and the writer's endgame.
Shortly after our narrator, a writer named Julian, begins this compact book by discussing the workings of involuntary memory, he interrupts himself with a bulletin to the "There will be a story—or a story within the story—but not just yet.”
Of course, whether Departure(s) is mostly a fictional story or not, there is a lot of its author in it, including Barnes's reckoning with the blood disorder he has been living with since he was diagnosed in 2020, his long preoccupation with dying and grief and his mordant sense of the indignities and lost opportunities we're prey to in love. The story he promises to deliver is a love story, that of two friends he met at university in the 1960s, that time of touted but rarely experienced sexual freedom. Julian played matchmaker to Stephen (tall, gangling, uncertain) and Jean (tart and attractive); as the third wheel, he was deeply invested in the success of their love and insulted when they broke up. Time is swift, and forty years later, he tries again, watching as their rekindled affair produces joys, betrayals and disappointments of a different order.
Barnes uses both his novelistic memory and his (real?) personal diary entries to examine not just the quixotic relationship of Jean and Stephen but his writer's eye upon it, and how his efforts on their behalf add up in the end. Despite promising them he'd never write about them, he breaks that promise to fulfill another one, amply, to his readers, in this delightful and poignant novelist’s game that only Julian Barnes knows how to play.
Shortly after our narrator, a writer named Julian, begins this compact book by discussing the workings of involuntary memory, he interrupts himself with a bulletin to the "There will be a story—or a story within the story—but not just yet.”
Of course, whether Departure(s) is mostly a fictional story or not, there is a lot of its author in it, including Barnes's reckoning with the blood disorder he has been living with since he was diagnosed in 2020, his long preoccupation with dying and grief and his mordant sense of the indignities and lost opportunities we're prey to in love. The story he promises to deliver is a love story, that of two friends he met at university in the 1960s, that time of touted but rarely experienced sexual freedom. Julian played matchmaker to Stephen (tall, gangling, uncertain) and Jean (tart and attractive); as the third wheel, he was deeply invested in the success of their love and insulted when they broke up. Time is swift, and forty years later, he tries again, watching as their rekindled affair produces joys, betrayals and disappointments of a different order.
Barnes uses both his novelistic memory and his (real?) personal diary entries to examine not just the quixotic relationship of Jean and Stephen but his writer's eye upon it, and how his efforts on their behalf add up in the end. Despite promising them he'd never write about them, he breaks that promise to fulfill another one, amply, to his readers, in this delightful and poignant novelist’s game that only Julian Barnes knows how to play.
6 pages, Audiobook
First published January 17, 2026
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About the author
Julian Barnes
150 books6,938 followersJulian 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.
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.
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November 24, 2025
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.
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.
January 27, 2026
I sat, looking long into the setting night, as I turned the last page of this book. Something numb had climbed onto my throat and I sat massaging it gently, pressing this book against my chest for support.
On a day I was sick, this book came to me, like a pre-ordained meeting, and left me feeling many things.
Yes, this is Julian Barnes’ last book where he announces his diagnosis of blood cancer, along with all that which preceded and succeeded in its wake. One might hazard a guess that a news like this might have been handled with a fair share of maturity with a septuagenarian, who not only has an enviable oeuvre of literary achievements and wide array of knowledge sources but has also been witness to the departure of his beloved wife over a decade and a half ago to a similar cancer. And may be it did.
May be the maturity did play its part. In his anecdotal, engaging tone, Barnes journeys to-and-fro the years and recounts some of his choicest memories - the one where he was instrumental in bringing together his two closest friends, also ex-lovers from college, post forty years; also, the one where he forges a thick friendship with a Jack Russell and rocks his head until he falls into his last sleep.
And then there was gratitude. Gratitude for the love his books have received across the world; for finding true love despite the harsh mendacities of today’s world; for kind (and occasionally, funny) hospital staff that recognizes him and takes good care of him; for great writers he has had the privilege to read and learn from.
Finally, there was sadness. Not the kind that pulls one down but one that makes one stand up, alert, and exercise extra caution in doing the important things because now, it is almost time to say goodbye.
Goodbyes. They are like no other. Because when they enter a scene, they exit with a void that doesn’t get filled. Instead, in the void they form, memories start to fill in; with some force even the most-advanced dynamometers cannot measure. And all at once, the person departed is there, their identity re-constructed by memories, and yet, and yet, they are not there.
So, before Barnes waves his final goodbye, here he is – sharing with us his fears of failure, his apprehensions of second loves, his losses in his friends’ deaths, his dreams of travelling on a frail body, his inability to conquer cancer and his plea for us to keep going.
On a day I was sick, this book came to me, like a pre-ordained meeting, and left me feeling many things.
Yes, this is Julian Barnes’ last book where he announces his diagnosis of blood cancer, along with all that which preceded and succeeded in its wake. One might hazard a guess that a news like this might have been handled with a fair share of maturity with a septuagenarian, who not only has an enviable oeuvre of literary achievements and wide array of knowledge sources but has also been witness to the departure of his beloved wife over a decade and a half ago to a similar cancer. And may be it did.
May be the maturity did play its part. In his anecdotal, engaging tone, Barnes journeys to-and-fro the years and recounts some of his choicest memories - the one where he was instrumental in bringing together his two closest friends, also ex-lovers from college, post forty years; also, the one where he forges a thick friendship with a Jack Russell and rocks his head until he falls into his last sleep.
And then there was gratitude. Gratitude for the love his books have received across the world; for finding true love despite the harsh mendacities of today’s world; for kind (and occasionally, funny) hospital staff that recognizes him and takes good care of him; for great writers he has had the privilege to read and learn from.
Finally, there was sadness. Not the kind that pulls one down but one that makes one stand up, alert, and exercise extra caution in doing the important things because now, it is almost time to say goodbye.
Goodbyes. They are like no other. Because when they enter a scene, they exit with a void that doesn’t get filled. Instead, in the void they form, memories start to fill in; with some force even the most-advanced dynamometers cannot measure. And all at once, the person departed is there, their identity re-constructed by memories, and yet, and yet, they are not there.
So, before Barnes waves his final goodbye, here he is – sharing with us his fears of failure, his apprehensions of second loves, his losses in his friends’ deaths, his dreams of travelling on a frail body, his inability to conquer cancer and his plea for us to keep going.
“But I rarely catch your replies – you’re sitting on my deaf side, I’m afraid.I won’t stop looking, I promise.
Still, I hope you’ve enjoyed our relationship over the years. I certainly have. Your presence has delighted me – indeed, I would be nothing without you. So, I’ll just rest my hand briefly on your forearm – no, don’t stop looking – and then slip away. No, don’t stop looking.”
February 22, 2026
Mir war gar nicht so klar, warum ich das lesen wollte, warum ich es so schnell nach Erscheinen haben wollte und warum ich, kaum hatte ich es, gleich loslegen wollte.
Eigentlich ist es gar nicht mein Ding, Romane über Krankheiten oder das Sterben, Trostbücher meide ich sonst eher. Ich bin auch weit entfernt davon, Julian Barnes erfahren zu sein, das einzige was ich von ihm kenne ist Sense of an Ending (was mir sehr gut gefallen hat).
Also, es war reine Neugier. Ein bedeutender Schriftsteller lässt verlautbaren, dass dies sein letztes Buch sein wird, weil er an einer tödlichen Krankheit leidet. Und dann gab es ja verschiedene Berichte, es gebe noch eine Geschichte in der Geschichte und das ganze Buch sei ganz anders, als man sich erwarten würde.
Und das stimmt und macht den Reiz aus.
Erstens ist es überhaupt nicht traurig. Im Gegenteil, es ist humorvoll, musste manchmal herzhaft lachen; und es hat interessante Reflexionen über die Themen Erinnern, Gedächtnis, Liebe, Sexualität und natürlich Krankheit. Vor allem aber ist das Buch ganz nahbar, sehr persönlich und dadurch irgendwie liebenswert.
Die Geschichte in der Geschichte handelt von Steven und Jean, einem Paar, das sich über Vermittlung des Autors kennengelernt hat, sich dann getrennt und nach mehreren Jahrzehnten wieder gefunden hat. Das war der Part der mir am besten gefallen hat, der Rest war ok. Insgesamt sehe ich es bei 3,5*, und es hat mir Lust gemacht, vielleicht doch noch etwas von Barnes zu lesen.
Eigentlich ist es gar nicht mein Ding, Romane über Krankheiten oder das Sterben, Trostbücher meide ich sonst eher. Ich bin auch weit entfernt davon, Julian Barnes erfahren zu sein, das einzige was ich von ihm kenne ist Sense of an Ending (was mir sehr gut gefallen hat).
Also, es war reine Neugier. Ein bedeutender Schriftsteller lässt verlautbaren, dass dies sein letztes Buch sein wird, weil er an einer tödlichen Krankheit leidet. Und dann gab es ja verschiedene Berichte, es gebe noch eine Geschichte in der Geschichte und das ganze Buch sei ganz anders, als man sich erwarten würde.
Und das stimmt und macht den Reiz aus.
Erstens ist es überhaupt nicht traurig. Im Gegenteil, es ist humorvoll, musste manchmal herzhaft lachen; und es hat interessante Reflexionen über die Themen Erinnern, Gedächtnis, Liebe, Sexualität und natürlich Krankheit. Vor allem aber ist das Buch ganz nahbar, sehr persönlich und dadurch irgendwie liebenswert.
Die Geschichte in der Geschichte handelt von Steven und Jean, einem Paar, das sich über Vermittlung des Autors kennengelernt hat, sich dann getrennt und nach mehreren Jahrzehnten wieder gefunden hat. Das war der Part der mir am besten gefallen hat, der Rest war ok. Insgesamt sehe ich es bei 3,5*, und es hat mir Lust gemacht, vielleicht doch noch etwas von Barnes zu lesen.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
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.
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.
Read
February 18, 2026Esta coisa híbrida que tu fazes... Acho que é um erro.
Devias escolher entre uma coisa e outra. É nestes termos que Jean, parte do trio que compõe Partida, se dirige, a dada altura, ao narrador. A resposta é-lhe dada por "Julian Barnes", o narrador desta metanarrativa a roçar a autoficção: Não me importo que não gostes dos meus livros, mas estás enganada se pensas que não sei exatamente o que estou a fazer quando os escrevo.
Fruto da confiança que a idade, o estudo aturado e o talento lhe permitem, Barnes ensaia neste livro uma despedida de cerca de quatro décadas de escrita. Naquele que é, assim defende o autor, o livro da partida oficial,(...) o meu último livro, a minha última conversa convosco, Barnes elabora, nos seus próprios termos, uma longa dissertação sobre vida, morte e amor, uma espécie de panegírico do escritor e do que tem sido a sua relação com o leitor.
Recuando à odisseia que foram os anos da pandemia de COVID, quando foi diagnosticado com neoplasia do sangue (que é bem mais comum do que o autor possa sentir, e que, efetivamente, não será suficiente para lhe assinar a sentença de morte), Partida constrói-se como um romance encaixado em memórias, encaixado em ensaio, e, a ser, efetivamente, a última obra do autor, é uma despedida melancólica para ser lida num destes dias modorrentos de um inverno longo que mimica o bom velho clima inglês.
«Incurável mas tratável» soa como... a vida, não é? Embora haja inevitavelmente alguns sonhadores que tentam escapar a esta equação existencial.
Num registo que brinca com a fiabilidade da memória e o poder da ficção, Barnes cria uma espécie de tríptico autoficcional e metanarrativo onde o autor se confunde com o narrador, e as personagens se apresentam como figuras de carne e osso.
Preocupado com a forma do legado do escritor e do homem, Barnes (o narrador) decide oferecer ao leitor uma história dentro de outra história: uma formulação atípica de auto e homodiegese literária que recorre de igual maneira à experiência e à ficção sobre o lento esmorecer do corpo, da cognição e das faculdades do homem, enquanto o artista ainda sente o ímpeto de criar e de partilhar com o leitor parte da sua energia:
Estou consciente de que em breve existirei apenas como uma prateleira cheia de livros mais um conjunto de Episódios Biográficos. E a vida não é uma tragédia com um final feliz, apesar do que a religião promete; é, antes, uma farsa com um final trágico ou, no seu melhor, uma comédia ligeira com um final triste..
Numa forma fluída entre o recorte, a diarística e a confissão, Barnes reescreve-se, denunciando o modo como a necessidade de autocorreção aparece com a idade, como o hábito da repetição, encaminhando o leitor para o fulcro da sua partida:
Nunca acreditei na serenidade da velhice — sempre me pareceu uma fábula concebida para a tornar mais admirável, e a nós, mais complacentes.
Barnes não é um narrador dócil, feito à ideia de finitude e disposto a aceitar o corte do fio da vida (e da obra) simplesmente porque já teve a sua parte. Não são de abnegação e arrependimento as suas últimas palavras. O Barnes de Partida recusa negociar com a vida (ou com a morte?); sabe que já vivemos milénios suficientes neste planeta para ter percebido que a vida não é justa nem séria, e que coisas más acontecem muitas vezes a pessoas boas, e coisas boas às vezes acontecem a pessoas más, e que o caos repentino espreita constantemente sob cada superfície plácida, e não está exatamente em paz com isso. E se os leitores forem como eu, sentirão essa rebelião como dolorosa, porque desfaz a ideia que Barnes tenta encenar com esta obra.
Partida pretende ser um canto de cisne, mas como o seu autor sabe demasiado bem, não há assuntos terminados: «Quero que pelo menos esta questão fique esclarecida», dizemos. Como se isso fizesse muita diferença, na altura, ou mais tarde. A ser assim, não será esta despedida um gesto literário ambíguo? E se acaso se tornar qualquer outra coisa que não a última obra da sua carreira, onde é que isso deixa este Partida? Aceitá-lo como ato performativo seria uma hipótese, mas estaria isso de acordo com a elegância por que pugna o autor?
Há coisa de umas semanas, Barnes participou numa conversa com Ian McEwan onde, uma vez mais, refletiu — agora a par com alguém que estima e que lhe é próximo de várias formas —, sobre as manifestações da memória, do amor e da mortalidade. O resultado é uma conversa amigável, claramente íntima, com vários acenos, dicas e palavras que remetem para um passado comum a ambos. E então, a dada altura, McEwan interpela Barnes, com um sorriso matreiro: mesmo que não volte a publicar nem a escrever nada, o escritor não deixa de ser um romancista. Não deixa de observar...
Fazendo ecoar Saramago: Se podes olhar, vê. Se podes ver, repara, McEwan deita uma piscadela de olho à sua própria história. Em 2022, havia prometido que Lições seria o seu último livro, e entretanto, vimos surgir nos escaparates a novidade O que podemos saber. Lições foi, efetivamente, o último livro de McEwan, até o escritor escrever outro.
À sua insinuação, Barnes responde de forma desprendida: pergunta-me isso de dentro de um ano ou dois.. Vindo de quem, outrora, já tinha dado a sua última entrevista, não serão os rumores desta despedida, como a morte de Twain, um exagero literário? Pela minha parte, espero que sim. Se assim não for, Partida é uma despedida (ou despedidas, no original) emotiva e barneana, refinada e clássica, repleta de respeito pelo ofício do escritor e pelo seu público:
Quando me perguntam sobre o modo como vejo o nosso relacionamento, respondo que não sou um escritor didático. Não digo como devem pensar ou viver. Não escrevo ex cathedra: os romancistas não devem falar com os leitores partindo do princípio de que são mais sábios. Em vez disso, prefiro uma imagem do escritor e do leitor na esplanada de um café numa cidade não identificada de um país não identificado. O tempo está agradável e temos uma bebida gelada à nossa frente. Lado a lado, olhamos para as muitas e variadas expressões de vida que passam diante de nós. Observamos e trocamos impressões. (...)Murmúrios normais numa conversa, um (ou nenhum) dos quais pode acabar por metastizar numa história. Pelo canto do olho, vejo que partilha a minha atenção. Mas raramente apanho as suas respostas acho que está sentado do lado do meu ouvido surdo.
No entanto, espero que tenha gostado do nosso convívio ao longo dos anos. Eu gostei, sem dúvida..
Terminar assim esta conversa, senhor Barnes, é malevolamente enternecedor.
Devias escolher entre uma coisa e outra. É nestes termos que Jean, parte do trio que compõe Partida, se dirige, a dada altura, ao narrador. A resposta é-lhe dada por "Julian Barnes", o narrador desta metanarrativa a roçar a autoficção: Não me importo que não gostes dos meus livros, mas estás enganada se pensas que não sei exatamente o que estou a fazer quando os escrevo.
Fruto da confiança que a idade, o estudo aturado e o talento lhe permitem, Barnes ensaia neste livro uma despedida de cerca de quatro décadas de escrita. Naquele que é, assim defende o autor, o livro da partida oficial,(...) o meu último livro, a minha última conversa convosco, Barnes elabora, nos seus próprios termos, uma longa dissertação sobre vida, morte e amor, uma espécie de panegírico do escritor e do que tem sido a sua relação com o leitor.
Recuando à odisseia que foram os anos da pandemia de COVID, quando foi diagnosticado com neoplasia do sangue (que é bem mais comum do que o autor possa sentir, e que, efetivamente, não será suficiente para lhe assinar a sentença de morte), Partida constrói-se como um romance encaixado em memórias, encaixado em ensaio, e, a ser, efetivamente, a última obra do autor, é uma despedida melancólica para ser lida num destes dias modorrentos de um inverno longo que mimica o bom velho clima inglês.
«Incurável mas tratável» soa como... a vida, não é? Embora haja inevitavelmente alguns sonhadores que tentam escapar a esta equação existencial.
Num registo que brinca com a fiabilidade da memória e o poder da ficção, Barnes cria uma espécie de tríptico autoficcional e metanarrativo onde o autor se confunde com o narrador, e as personagens se apresentam como figuras de carne e osso.
Preocupado com a forma do legado do escritor e do homem, Barnes (o narrador) decide oferecer ao leitor uma história dentro de outra história: uma formulação atípica de auto e homodiegese literária que recorre de igual maneira à experiência e à ficção sobre o lento esmorecer do corpo, da cognição e das faculdades do homem, enquanto o artista ainda sente o ímpeto de criar e de partilhar com o leitor parte da sua energia:
Estou consciente de que em breve existirei apenas como uma prateleira cheia de livros mais um conjunto de Episódios Biográficos. E a vida não é uma tragédia com um final feliz, apesar do que a religião promete; é, antes, uma farsa com um final trágico ou, no seu melhor, uma comédia ligeira com um final triste..
Numa forma fluída entre o recorte, a diarística e a confissão, Barnes reescreve-se, denunciando o modo como a necessidade de autocorreção aparece com a idade, como o hábito da repetição, encaminhando o leitor para o fulcro da sua partida:
Nunca acreditei na serenidade da velhice — sempre me pareceu uma fábula concebida para a tornar mais admirável, e a nós, mais complacentes.
Barnes não é um narrador dócil, feito à ideia de finitude e disposto a aceitar o corte do fio da vida (e da obra) simplesmente porque já teve a sua parte. Não são de abnegação e arrependimento as suas últimas palavras. O Barnes de Partida recusa negociar com a vida (ou com a morte?); sabe que já vivemos milénios suficientes neste planeta para ter percebido que a vida não é justa nem séria, e que coisas más acontecem muitas vezes a pessoas boas, e coisas boas às vezes acontecem a pessoas más, e que o caos repentino espreita constantemente sob cada superfície plácida, e não está exatamente em paz com isso. E se os leitores forem como eu, sentirão essa rebelião como dolorosa, porque desfaz a ideia que Barnes tenta encenar com esta obra.
Partida pretende ser um canto de cisne, mas como o seu autor sabe demasiado bem, não há assuntos terminados: «Quero que pelo menos esta questão fique esclarecida», dizemos. Como se isso fizesse muita diferença, na altura, ou mais tarde. A ser assim, não será esta despedida um gesto literário ambíguo? E se acaso se tornar qualquer outra coisa que não a última obra da sua carreira, onde é que isso deixa este Partida? Aceitá-lo como ato performativo seria uma hipótese, mas estaria isso de acordo com a elegância por que pugna o autor?
Há coisa de umas semanas, Barnes participou numa conversa com Ian McEwan onde, uma vez mais, refletiu — agora a par com alguém que estima e que lhe é próximo de várias formas —, sobre as manifestações da memória, do amor e da mortalidade. O resultado é uma conversa amigável, claramente íntima, com vários acenos, dicas e palavras que remetem para um passado comum a ambos. E então, a dada altura, McEwan interpela Barnes, com um sorriso matreiro: mesmo que não volte a publicar nem a escrever nada, o escritor não deixa de ser um romancista. Não deixa de observar...
Fazendo ecoar Saramago: Se podes olhar, vê. Se podes ver, repara, McEwan deita uma piscadela de olho à sua própria história. Em 2022, havia prometido que Lições seria o seu último livro, e entretanto, vimos surgir nos escaparates a novidade O que podemos saber. Lições foi, efetivamente, o último livro de McEwan, até o escritor escrever outro.
À sua insinuação, Barnes responde de forma desprendida: pergunta-me isso de dentro de um ano ou dois.. Vindo de quem, outrora, já tinha dado a sua última entrevista, não serão os rumores desta despedida, como a morte de Twain, um exagero literário? Pela minha parte, espero que sim. Se assim não for, Partida é uma despedida (ou despedidas, no original) emotiva e barneana, refinada e clássica, repleta de respeito pelo ofício do escritor e pelo seu público:
Quando me perguntam sobre o modo como vejo o nosso relacionamento, respondo que não sou um escritor didático. Não digo como devem pensar ou viver. Não escrevo ex cathedra: os romancistas não devem falar com os leitores partindo do princípio de que são mais sábios. Em vez disso, prefiro uma imagem do escritor e do leitor na esplanada de um café numa cidade não identificada de um país não identificado. O tempo está agradável e temos uma bebida gelada à nossa frente. Lado a lado, olhamos para as muitas e variadas expressões de vida que passam diante de nós. Observamos e trocamos impressões. (...)Murmúrios normais numa conversa, um (ou nenhum) dos quais pode acabar por metastizar numa história. Pelo canto do olho, vejo que partilha a minha atenção. Mas raramente apanho as suas respostas acho que está sentado do lado do meu ouvido surdo.
No entanto, espero que tenha gostado do nosso convívio ao longo dos anos. Eu gostei, sem dúvida..
Terminar assim esta conversa, senhor Barnes, é malevolamente enternecedor.
January 30, 2026
I hadn’t realized until I finished that I’d been reading this supposed final book by Julian Barnes on his 80th birthday. I found that out when I checked Wikipedia to see if he was still alive. I think “Jules” would find that funny as he spends a good few paragraphs talking about how we begin to lose track of who is still alive as we get older.
Much of this book is about memory, aging, and whether or not one is or ought to be raging against that final departure which is inevitable for all of us.
I think the first section on memory and Proust’s madeleine was a bit tedious for me but I’m glad I continued on as I found his discussion of his cancer diagnosis quite interesting (I’m a former oncology nurse) and certainly his “re-kindler” friends and their failure was very cleverly observed.
The end returns again to memory but it’s also a farewell and I appreciated his “departing” words and that writing too.
Happy 80th Birthday Jules!
(Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.)
Much of this book is about memory, aging, and whether or not one is or ought to be raging against that final departure which is inevitable for all of us.
I think the first section on memory and Proust’s madeleine was a bit tedious for me but I’m glad I continued on as I found his discussion of his cancer diagnosis quite interesting (I’m a former oncology nurse) and certainly his “re-kindler” friends and their failure was very cleverly observed.
The end returns again to memory but it’s also a farewell and I appreciated his “departing” words and that writing too.
Happy 80th Birthday Jules!
(Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.)
March 2, 2026
Life and memory can be so... quixotic, don't you find?
What is it with me and reading sad books when I definitely shouldn't?
I love reading semi-autobiographical novels, but the elegantly written Departure was focused on separations, departures and death rather than life and moments.
Departure sketches the past and the future; there is a beginning and an end; the one, unclear and foggy (memory can be tricky), the other hopeful, yet bleak.
What is it with me and reading sad books when I definitely shouldn't?
I love reading semi-autobiographical novels, but the elegantly written Departure was focused on separations, departures and death rather than life and moments.
Departure sketches the past and the future; there is a beginning and an end; the one, unclear and foggy (memory can be tricky), the other hopeful, yet bleak.
November 19, 2025
I need people to read this; I am SOBBING and need to know if that is normal.
February 28, 2026
This is the closest Julian Barnes has come to replicating Flaubert’s parrot perfection. It is a great final book, if it does turn out to be his last. Like his earlier works, the plot isn’t the most important element. More than the story itself, it is a book about how we access memories. The discussions about Proust and AI in the first chapter are so good that it’s somewhat sad that Barnes doesn’t like Proust enough to keep him more central to this memorable exploration of how we remember and construct our lives.
February 25, 2026
Julian Barnes neemt met Departure(s) op waardige, eervolle en uiteraard eigenzinnige manier afscheid van zijn schrijverschap en aan het eind ook van zijn lezers. Waardig en eervol, omdat het een lezenswaardig boek is dat o.a. gaat over ouder worden, over leven en sterven, over herinneren en vergeten en over literatuur, inclusief een verhaal dat als ideale kapstok fungeert om de overpeinzingen van de auteur aan op te hangen en te etaleren.
Eigenzinnig, omdat Barnes Barnes niet zou zijn als hij het braafjes en binnen de lijntjes had gehouden. Nee dus. Alleen al de manier waarop het bovengenoemde verhaal - het relaas van daadwerkelijk door de auteur beleefde feiten, voor zover je hem wil geloven - tot stand is gekomen, leest als een échte Julian Barnes. En dat betekent witty, eloquent, naughty & tongue-in-cheek, om het met oer-Britse termen te zeggen over deze oer-Britse schrijver.
Het mag dan niet zijn beste boek zijn, het beklijft wel heel sterk omwille van enerzijds de erg persoonlijke anekdotiek en de oprechte overpeinzingen (zoals hij dat o.a. ook deed in Levels of Life) die je als lezer stevig met je eigen (al dan niet nakende) fysieke en mentale vergankelijkheid confronteert en je anderzijds doet genieten van welgekozen literaire verwijzingen (Proust, Goethe) en een opbouw die hij tot het eind met intelligent uitgedachte samenhang vol kruisverwijzingen blijft handhaven. Meesterlijk!
Blijft de vraag of het écht zijn laatste boek zal zijn. Ik meen te geloven van wel. Hij kondigt het bij het begin reeds aan, herhaalt het nog eens aan het eind en zijn argumenten klinken overtuigend. Je gunt het hem ook ... en toch denk je tegelijk: als zijn pen nog steeds zo witty, eloquent, naughty & tongue-in-cheek kan schrijven, waarom dan toch niet ... ?
Whatever: Kudos & thank you, Julian Barnes!
Eigenzinnig, omdat Barnes Barnes niet zou zijn als hij het braafjes en binnen de lijntjes had gehouden. Nee dus. Alleen al de manier waarop het bovengenoemde verhaal - het relaas van daadwerkelijk door de auteur beleefde feiten, voor zover je hem wil geloven - tot stand is gekomen, leest als een échte Julian Barnes. En dat betekent witty, eloquent, naughty & tongue-in-cheek, om het met oer-Britse termen te zeggen over deze oer-Britse schrijver.
Het mag dan niet zijn beste boek zijn, het beklijft wel heel sterk omwille van enerzijds de erg persoonlijke anekdotiek en de oprechte overpeinzingen (zoals hij dat o.a. ook deed in Levels of Life) die je als lezer stevig met je eigen (al dan niet nakende) fysieke en mentale vergankelijkheid confronteert en je anderzijds doet genieten van welgekozen literaire verwijzingen (Proust, Goethe) en een opbouw die hij tot het eind met intelligent uitgedachte samenhang vol kruisverwijzingen blijft handhaven. Meesterlijk!
Blijft de vraag of het écht zijn laatste boek zal zijn. Ik meen te geloven van wel. Hij kondigt het bij het begin reeds aan, herhaalt het nog eens aan het eind en zijn argumenten klinken overtuigend. Je gunt het hem ook ... en toch denk je tegelijk: als zijn pen nog steeds zo witty, eloquent, naughty & tongue-in-cheek kan schrijven, waarom dan toch niet ... ?
Whatever: Kudos & thank you, Julian Barnes!
January 27, 2026
"naš mentalni prostor biva ispunjen živim davnašnjim prizorima, potom sledi duga praznina, pa besmislena sadašnjost, dok se gomilaju dani koji se ponavljaju, i pometnja. naš život, drugim rečima, svede se na priču s velikom rupom u sredini."
teško sam podnela ovu knjigu. kao da je Barns bio pored mene dok sam je čitala, trudio se da me nasmeje (onim svojim prepoznatljivim humorom), a jedva se suzdržavao da se ne rasplače. Ostala mi je velika knedla u grlu. ma, srce mi se zgrčilo. verujem da će je svako ko voli Barnsa tako doživeti. 🫀
teško sam podnela ovu knjigu. kao da je Barns bio pored mene dok sam je čitala, trudio se da me nasmeje (onim svojim prepoznatljivim humorom), a jedva se suzdržavao da se ne rasplače. Ostala mi je velika knedla u grlu. ma, srce mi se zgrčilo. verujem da će je svako ko voli Barnsa tako doživeti. 🫀
February 9, 2026
Estaba terminando el libro mientras aterrizaba en madrid y vi a lo lejos los cuatro rascacielos como único simbolo verdaderamente reconocible de la ciudad desde el aire. Pensé: qué intento tan burdo de relevancia, vaya imagen vulgar. Era una frase “de escritor”, mía pero convencida de sí misma, elevada y voluntariosa. Barnes logra este tipo de espíritu en quien lo lee: nos convence de que nuestras ideas más humildes y nuestras pequeñeces banales están llenas de literatura y que merecen tener una forma determinada. No sé si es algo bueno o todo lo contrario. Pero gracias. Ha sido un placer.
February 9, 2026
Julian Barnes's sense of an ending.
If The Sense of an Ending was about how we misremember the past, Departure(s) is about how we prepare to leave it behind.
Now eighty, Julian Barnes has called this slim but profound book his last novel - though whether that's true is anyone's guess. And really, how can one not hold out hope that Barnes still has another masterpiece up his sleeve? As it stands, Departure(s) is both metafiction and memoir, an artful meditation on memory, mortality, and the quiet indignities of aging.
The semi-fictional narrator, a writer named Julian unabashedly modeled on the author himself, begins by musing on involuntary memory before announcing: "There will be a story—or a story within the story—but not just yet." What follows is both that story and the reflective, rueful silence surrounding it. Barnes revisits familiar themes - love, death, and memory - but here they feel distilled to their essence, each sentence bearing the light touch of a master who knows restraint is its own form of grace. His prose remains immaculate: supple, wry, and deceptively simple.
The "story," when it arrives, concerns two university friends, Stephen and Jean, whom Julian once introduced and who later married, divorced, and - decades on, with a little help from Julian - found their way back to one another. Their rekindled love, shadowed by betrayal and the toll of time, becomes a mirror for the narrator's own reckoning: with illness (Barnes writes candidly of his incurable but manageable blood cancer), with the erosion of the body, and with the ever-trickier dance between truth and invention.
Ultimately, the most compelling thing about Departure(s) is the storyteller himself - the weary, witty, unsentimental observer who has spent a lifetime interrogating how art shapes loss. The real draw is not the "story within a story," but Barnes's own farewell. Whether this truly marks his final bow is beside the point; what matters is how beautifully he writes about memory and its absences, about aging, dying, and about the necessity, and the impossibility, of saying goodbye.
A quietly dazzling coda to one of contemporary literature's most compelling and enduring bodies of work.
Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf for providing me with an advance copy via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
"Departure(s) "was published on January 20, 2026, and is available now.
If The Sense of an Ending was about how we misremember the past, Departure(s) is about how we prepare to leave it behind.
Now eighty, Julian Barnes has called this slim but profound book his last novel - though whether that's true is anyone's guess. And really, how can one not hold out hope that Barnes still has another masterpiece up his sleeve? As it stands, Departure(s) is both metafiction and memoir, an artful meditation on memory, mortality, and the quiet indignities of aging.
The semi-fictional narrator, a writer named Julian unabashedly modeled on the author himself, begins by musing on involuntary memory before announcing: "There will be a story—or a story within the story—but not just yet." What follows is both that story and the reflective, rueful silence surrounding it. Barnes revisits familiar themes - love, death, and memory - but here they feel distilled to their essence, each sentence bearing the light touch of a master who knows restraint is its own form of grace. His prose remains immaculate: supple, wry, and deceptively simple.
The "story," when it arrives, concerns two university friends, Stephen and Jean, whom Julian once introduced and who later married, divorced, and - decades on, with a little help from Julian - found their way back to one another. Their rekindled love, shadowed by betrayal and the toll of time, becomes a mirror for the narrator's own reckoning: with illness (Barnes writes candidly of his incurable but manageable blood cancer), with the erosion of the body, and with the ever-trickier dance between truth and invention.
Ultimately, the most compelling thing about Departure(s) is the storyteller himself - the weary, witty, unsentimental observer who has spent a lifetime interrogating how art shapes loss. The real draw is not the "story within a story," but Barnes's own farewell. Whether this truly marks his final bow is beside the point; what matters is how beautifully he writes about memory and its absences, about aging, dying, and about the necessity, and the impossibility, of saying goodbye.
A quietly dazzling coda to one of contemporary literature's most compelling and enduring bodies of work.
Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf for providing me with an advance copy via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
"Departure(s) "was published on January 20, 2026, and is available now.
January 21, 2026
Is it fiction or is it non-? With an author as sly as Barnes, hard to tell. Nonetheless, with its Proustian references and trips to the past with characters (or is it him?) from his Uni days, does it really matter? I listened to the entire work in one sitting as he narrated it himself. And the ending made me cry.
March 1, 2026
A Life, Part Two
Yes, Mr Barnes, if this truly is your final book, you leave the stage with dignity. You have always written as though each book might be your last, and this one feels like a pilgrimage through your biographical and literary memories. I read it as a source of inspiration.
After so many decades of writing, I can see how the fear of repeating yourself might become a trap. Yet your wife’s words come to mind: that she would only stop when a new verb was invented to describe it, or when someone finally pinned her against a wall and told her she could no longer do this or that. Perhaps this is your case. And as you ask of me at the end of this book, I shall not stop looking at you.
Happiness often fails to satisfy us because we expect too much of it. As long as I remain someone in good health and spirits who dreams of exuberant happiness, I hope that by the time I am eighty I will have the lucidity and courage to accept that parts of us begin to fall away. To recognise decline is to stand in a moment of fragility, courage and daring.
Once again paraphrasing your wife—whom I’ve always admired—I’ll miss reading what you’ll no longer write 🤍🤍
Yes, Mr Barnes, if this truly is your final book, you leave the stage with dignity. You have always written as though each book might be your last, and this one feels like a pilgrimage through your biographical and literary memories. I read it as a source of inspiration.
After so many decades of writing, I can see how the fear of repeating yourself might become a trap. Yet your wife’s words come to mind: that she would only stop when a new verb was invented to describe it, or when someone finally pinned her against a wall and told her she could no longer do this or that. Perhaps this is your case. And as you ask of me at the end of this book, I shall not stop looking at you.
Happiness often fails to satisfy us because we expect too much of it. As long as I remain someone in good health and spirits who dreams of exuberant happiness, I hope that by the time I am eighty I will have the lucidity and courage to accept that parts of us begin to fall away. To recognise decline is to stand in a moment of fragility, courage and daring.
Once again paraphrasing your wife—whom I’ve always admired—I’ll miss reading what you’ll no longer write 🤍🤍
Read
February 5, 20263,5*
Knyga apie senėjimą, mirtį, ligą, apie mus apgaudinėjančią atmintį, apie meilę...su dažnais nuklydimais į literatūrą - pas Floberą, Prustą...
Autoriui pandemijos pradžioje buvo diagnozuota reta kraujo vėžio forma. Ir JB pristatė šią knygą, kaip paskutinę. Ir taip, ji liūdna, bet ne verkšlenanti. Tokia susitaikanti su išėjimu - tiek iš literatūros lauko, tiek iš gyvenimo. Taiklus pavadinimas.
Kodėl toks vertinimas? Nžn., tiesiog tikėjausi kažko daugiau, kažko stipriau "/ Bet, gal čia toks klišinis mąstymas, jog prieš mirtį žmogus (pa)sako kažką svarbaus/reikšmingo. Štai pats JB man sako - "Pasakyti kažką išmintingo, tai nereiškia pasakyti tiesą". O ta tiesa gal ir mirštančiam nelabai aiški.
Beje, ne romanas čia. Su autofikcija irgi nelabai norisi sutikti. Man knyga skaitėsi kaip literatūriniai memuarai.
Knyga apie senėjimą, mirtį, ligą, apie mus apgaudinėjančią atmintį, apie meilę...su dažnais nuklydimais į literatūrą - pas Floberą, Prustą...
Autoriui pandemijos pradžioje buvo diagnozuota reta kraujo vėžio forma. Ir JB pristatė šią knygą, kaip paskutinę. Ir taip, ji liūdna, bet ne verkšlenanti. Tokia susitaikanti su išėjimu - tiek iš literatūros lauko, tiek iš gyvenimo. Taiklus pavadinimas.
Kodėl toks vertinimas? Nžn., tiesiog tikėjausi kažko daugiau, kažko stipriau "/ Bet, gal čia toks klišinis mąstymas, jog prieš mirtį žmogus (pa)sako kažką svarbaus/reikšmingo. Štai pats JB man sako - "Pasakyti kažką išmintingo, tai nereiškia pasakyti tiesą". O ta tiesa gal ir mirštančiam nelabai aiški.
Beje, ne romanas čia. Su autofikcija irgi nelabai norisi sutikti. Man knyga skaitėsi kaip literatūriniai memuarai.
Read
January 10, 2026A 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.
February 8, 2026
This book reads as a memoir (but may be literary fiction or a combination of the two). The narrator is a writer named Julian who tells us about his role in bringing two friends together, once during university days, and another time more recently. After watching their relationship fail initially, Julian helps them rekindle their romance forty years later. It also includes his diagnosis with an incurable but manageable form of leukemia. Major themes are memory (especially involuntary memory), love, and the eventual decline of the body through age and illness.
Barnes breaks a promise never to write about his friends by waiting until after they have died. The narrative deals with gaps in memory, particularly the missing forty years between the couple's two relationships. While reading, I found myself pondering the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of our memories. It is intimately written, as if the author is speaking directly to the reader. Julian Barnes is one of my favorite authors and I am sad to know that this will be his last published book.
4.5
Barnes breaks a promise never to write about his friends by waiting until after they have died. The narrative deals with gaps in memory, particularly the missing forty years between the couple's two relationships. While reading, I found myself pondering the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of our memories. It is intimately written, as if the author is speaking directly to the reader. Julian Barnes is one of my favorite authors and I am sad to know that this will be his last published book.
4.5
March 3, 2026
‘I like some of your books but not others….This hybrid stuff you do - I think it’s a mistake. You should do one thing or the other’. So says Jean, one of the central characters in Departures[s], to another of its central characters, Julian Barnes. Jean would have hated Departure[s] as it is, if you’ll pardon the oxymoron, pure hybrid: a mixture of autobiography, essay and fiction. The fiction, which Barnes tells us is based on a true story, has a beginning and an end, and a hole in the middle: Barnes introduces his fellow students Stephen and Jean to each other at Oxford in the sixties and they become lovers. Eventually they decide to separate and Barnes also loses contact with them. Forty years later Stephen writes to Barnes and asks him to arrange a meeting with Jean, and Stephen and Jean become a couple once again.
Early on in Departure[s] Barnes says it will be his last book and, at the end, bids goodbye to his readers. This is not because of his blood cancer, diagnosed in 2020, as the condition is incurable but manageable - a pretty good definition, as Barnes observes, of life itself. It’s mainly because he feels he has said everything he has to say in the novel and prefers to stop before falling into repetition; doing again what he has done before, but less well. This final novel is a meditation on ageing, illness, death, memory, love, fact and fiction. Barnes writes about life with cancer, departed friends, an ageing Jack Russell Terrier called Jimmy, literature, and the relationship between life and fiction.
Stephen and Jean both confided to Barnes about difficulties in their renewed relationship on the condition that he never wrote about it. They have now passed on and Barnes has changed their names. So the responsibilities of an author to their friends, and the parasitic nature of art, are also central themes. Of course, one has to take on trust that the story of Stephen and Jean is true; or perhaps one should do nothing of the sort, particularly as in his opening chapter Barnes has told us that we should only trust novelists ‘when they tell us the beautiful lies of their fiction’, and be ‘genially sceptical’ when they tell us ‘where they get their ideas from’. He also addresses the reader, teasingly: ‘And yes, I follow you: if I broke that oath [to Stephen and Jean] how dependable is my promise to you of authenticity?’ It probably doesn’t matter, as Barnes seems to be suggesting in this book that there is no firm line between fact and fiction, what happened and what we remember, and that in writing about our experience we inevitably fictionalise it. We simultaneously record and sort our experience in notebooks and diaries, prioritising certain things while discarding others, remembering what we want to remember and, if you happen to be a novelist, what might be useful in future fiction. A story with a hole in the middle also serves as a metaphor for memory, indeed life itself, Barnes noting that as we age childhood memories often become sharper and the middle years increasingly hazy.
Despite its hybrid form and diverse themes Departure[s] is satisfyingly coherent and readable, touching, thoughtful, and often wryly amusing. It’s subtlety of thought and complex interweaving of fact and fiction also invite a rereading.
Early on in Departure[s] Barnes says it will be his last book and, at the end, bids goodbye to his readers. This is not because of his blood cancer, diagnosed in 2020, as the condition is incurable but manageable - a pretty good definition, as Barnes observes, of life itself. It’s mainly because he feels he has said everything he has to say in the novel and prefers to stop before falling into repetition; doing again what he has done before, but less well. This final novel is a meditation on ageing, illness, death, memory, love, fact and fiction. Barnes writes about life with cancer, departed friends, an ageing Jack Russell Terrier called Jimmy, literature, and the relationship between life and fiction.
Stephen and Jean both confided to Barnes about difficulties in their renewed relationship on the condition that he never wrote about it. They have now passed on and Barnes has changed their names. So the responsibilities of an author to their friends, and the parasitic nature of art, are also central themes. Of course, one has to take on trust that the story of Stephen and Jean is true; or perhaps one should do nothing of the sort, particularly as in his opening chapter Barnes has told us that we should only trust novelists ‘when they tell us the beautiful lies of their fiction’, and be ‘genially sceptical’ when they tell us ‘where they get their ideas from’. He also addresses the reader, teasingly: ‘And yes, I follow you: if I broke that oath [to Stephen and Jean] how dependable is my promise to you of authenticity?’ It probably doesn’t matter, as Barnes seems to be suggesting in this book that there is no firm line between fact and fiction, what happened and what we remember, and that in writing about our experience we inevitably fictionalise it. We simultaneously record and sort our experience in notebooks and diaries, prioritising certain things while discarding others, remembering what we want to remember and, if you happen to be a novelist, what might be useful in future fiction. A story with a hole in the middle also serves as a metaphor for memory, indeed life itself, Barnes noting that as we age childhood memories often become sharper and the middle years increasingly hazy.
Despite its hybrid form and diverse themes Departure[s] is satisfyingly coherent and readable, touching, thoughtful, and often wryly amusing. It’s subtlety of thought and complex interweaving of fact and fiction also invite a rereading.
February 17, 2026
Siamo più che adulti, anche se per come la vedo io nessuno lo è mai del tutto, siamo solo dei bambini travestiti da adulti
La prima parte, con la sua malattia e il tempo del Covid, non mi ha presa. Anche i ragionamenti sulla memoria non mi sembravano ingranare bene. Poi la lettura è decollata.
Il rapporto con lo scrivere, il raccontare storie essendone partecipe, il passare del tempo, i ricordi che svaniscono o si modificano, l'amore in età avanzata, tutta una serie di riflessioni che spesso ho condiviso pienamente.
Non uno dei suoi migliori libri, ma non posso negare che Barnes rimanga uno dei miei scrittori preferiti.
La prima parte, con la sua malattia e il tempo del Covid, non mi ha presa. Anche i ragionamenti sulla memoria non mi sembravano ingranare bene. Poi la lettura è decollata.
Il rapporto con lo scrivere, il raccontare storie essendone partecipe, il passare del tempo, i ricordi che svaniscono o si modificano, l'amore in età avanzata, tutta una serie di riflessioni che spesso ho condiviso pienamente.
Non uno dei suoi migliori libri, ma non posso negare che Barnes rimanga uno dei miei scrittori preferiti.
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February 3, 2026Hvala na svemu Žil, živ bio.
January 24, 2026
És estar en les millors mans.
February 15, 2026
"In fin dei conti, noi vivi siamo un’esigua minoranza rispetto ai morti, e a tutti i non ancora nati"
In Partenze, Julian Barnes costruisce una meditazione breve ma densissima su amore, memoria e finitudine, senza mai indulgere nella consolazione. È un libro che sembra parlare sottovoce, ma lascia un’eco lunga.
L’amore, qui, non coincide con la felicità semplice. «La felicità non mi rende felice»non è una provocazione, ma la constatazione che ogni gioia porta già in sé l’ombra della perdita. Amare significa esporsi al tempo: più intensa è la felicità, più evidente diventa la sua precarietà.
Il discorso si approfondisce quando Barnes distingue tra memoria volontaria e quella che definisce IAM (Involuntary Autobiographical Memory). La prima è ciò che costruiamo consapevolmente: il racconto che facciamo di noi stessi. È fragile, soggetta al degrado del corpo e della mente. La seconda, invece, è ciò che accade senza preavviso: un odore, una luce, una parola, e il passato ritorna con forza intatta. In questo senso Barnes dialoga idealmente con Marcel Proust e con la memoria involontaria di À la recherche du temps perdu: il passato non si ricostruisce, irrompe.
Ed è qui che il libro diventa particolarmente toccante.
Se la memoria volontaria si indebolisce, l’IAM può ancora sopravvivere: non controlliamo più il racconto di noi stessi, ma il passato continua a visitarci. È una forma di resistenza al declino, ma anche una ferita sempre aperta, soprattutto quando riguarda l’amore perduto. Non scegliamo di ricordare: siamo ricordati.
La riflessione si allarga poi a una prospettiva quasi cosmica: noi vivi siamo un’esigua minoranza rispetto ai morti e ai non ancora nati. La vita appare come un intervallo sottilissimo tra due immensità. In questo scenario, la memoria — volontaria o involontaria — è ciò che rende quell’attimo denso, stratificato, umano.
Ma Partenze è anche qualcos’altro: un saluto. C’è la sensazione che Barnes si rivolga direttamente ai suoi lettori, come se riconoscesse un cammino condiviso. Bellissima l’idea che scrittore e lettore siano una coppia che procede insieme nel tempo: uno scrive, l’altro accompagna; uno formula le domande, l’altro le abita. Non un autore che parla dall’alto, ma due coscienze affiancate nella stessa traversata.
In questa prospettiva, il libro diventa anche un ringraziamento: per l’ascolto, per la fedeltà, per la disponibilità a sostare nelle sue inquietudini. Se la vita è un attimo evanescente, la letteratura è forse il modo più umano di attraversarlo insieme.
In Partenze, Julian Barnes costruisce una meditazione breve ma densissima su amore, memoria e finitudine, senza mai indulgere nella consolazione. È un libro che sembra parlare sottovoce, ma lascia un’eco lunga.
L’amore, qui, non coincide con la felicità semplice. «La felicità non mi rende felice»non è una provocazione, ma la constatazione che ogni gioia porta già in sé l’ombra della perdita. Amare significa esporsi al tempo: più intensa è la felicità, più evidente diventa la sua precarietà.
Il discorso si approfondisce quando Barnes distingue tra memoria volontaria e quella che definisce IAM (Involuntary Autobiographical Memory). La prima è ciò che costruiamo consapevolmente: il racconto che facciamo di noi stessi. È fragile, soggetta al degrado del corpo e della mente. La seconda, invece, è ciò che accade senza preavviso: un odore, una luce, una parola, e il passato ritorna con forza intatta. In questo senso Barnes dialoga idealmente con Marcel Proust e con la memoria involontaria di À la recherche du temps perdu: il passato non si ricostruisce, irrompe.
Ed è qui che il libro diventa particolarmente toccante.
Se la memoria volontaria si indebolisce, l’IAM può ancora sopravvivere: non controlliamo più il racconto di noi stessi, ma il passato continua a visitarci. È una forma di resistenza al declino, ma anche una ferita sempre aperta, soprattutto quando riguarda l’amore perduto. Non scegliamo di ricordare: siamo ricordati.
La riflessione si allarga poi a una prospettiva quasi cosmica: noi vivi siamo un’esigua minoranza rispetto ai morti e ai non ancora nati. La vita appare come un intervallo sottilissimo tra due immensità. In questo scenario, la memoria — volontaria o involontaria — è ciò che rende quell’attimo denso, stratificato, umano.
Ma Partenze è anche qualcos’altro: un saluto. C’è la sensazione che Barnes si rivolga direttamente ai suoi lettori, come se riconoscesse un cammino condiviso. Bellissima l’idea che scrittore e lettore siano una coppia che procede insieme nel tempo: uno scrive, l’altro accompagna; uno formula le domande, l’altro le abita. Non un autore che parla dall’alto, ma due coscienze affiancate nella stessa traversata.
In questa prospettiva, il libro diventa anche un ringraziamento: per l’ascolto, per la fedeltà, per la disponibilità a sostare nelle sue inquietudini. Se la vita è un attimo evanescente, la letteratura è forse il modo più umano di attraversarlo insieme.
February 1, 2026
Un híbrido más de Barnes que supone un final de vida literaria muy digno, y supongo que, para sorpresa de nadie, hace match con "Nada que temer" y "Niveles de vida", trilogía que recomendaría a todo aquel que guste de las "Meditaciones" de Marco Aurelio. Al igual que éste, sabe pertrechar de montones de herramientas para afrontar el sufrimiento, la madurez y la vejez, solo que con más guasa. Me quedo con la frase calmante que sobrevuela la estructura del libro: "Es solo el universo, haciendo lo suyo."
Aunque he llevado mal durante la lectura la interpelación constante al lector (por no hablar de las páginas y páginas sobre la terapia de pareja de los amigos del autor), en la página final todo cobra sentido. Qué emotivo, por dios, al borde de las lágrimas me ha dejado.
Espero que todo esto de la última novela no sea otra filfa publicitaria y que Barnes no se desdiga. Me sentiría engañada si volviese, como hacen los toreros, porque, ha estado bien. Muy bien.
Aunque he llevado mal durante la lectura la interpelación constante al lector (por no hablar de las páginas y páginas sobre la terapia de pareja de los amigos del autor), en la página final todo cobra sentido. Qué emotivo, por dios, al borde de las lágrimas me ha dejado.
Espero que todo esto de la última novela no sea otra filfa publicitaria y que Barnes no se desdiga. Me sentiría engañada si volviese, como hacen los toreros, porque, ha estado bien. Muy bien.
February 2, 2026
А тут Барнз такий грайливий, щоб не сказати жовіальний, не дивлячись на загальний прощавальний посил. Помірно іронічний, прямо сподобався. Щоб не плакати я сміялася - з цієї опери.
Тож прощавайте, містере Барнз, сподіваюсь відбуття затримається.
Тож прощавайте, містере Барнз, сподіваюсь відбуття затримається.
January 30, 2026
It pains me that as I amble at 'pre-terminal' age (in the sense that we're all pre-terminal aren't we) toward my own Departure(s), I shall no longer enjoy the anticipation of the next Julian Barnes novel, as this is, he firmly declares, his last. I am aware that shortly I shall exist as only a shelf-ful of books plus a cluster of Biographical Anecdotes.” [156]
A pity.
As the years have gone on I've had the sense that I've been aging at an ever quickening pace, close to drawing even with Mr. Barnes. And though we've lived cosmically distant lives, whether Mr Barnes knows it or not (I suspect not), we've shared countless experiences, stirred memories, though separated in time and space as we are, shared not by tea and sweets but through the agency of paper and ink: loves, losses, friends found and lost, disappointments and regrets. Human frailty, memory, aging and death. When you've lived more than six decades you begin to know what Mr Barnes is talking about in a very personal way. You've walked different yet similar paths.
Fortunately Julian Barnes has left – correction, will leave (don't want to rush him off stage prematurely) us with over twenty-five books to return to again and again, many of which I look forward to reading for the first time.
As you've noticed, this isn't really a review. If you've read 'Sense of An Ending' or 'The Only Story' or 'Levels of Life' – well, then you know Barnes. You know his wit and easy manner, his erudition. A character in 'Departure(s)' chastises him for his 'hybrid' style, mixing real with made-up people. “I think it's a mistake. You should do one or the other.”
I love his hybrid style.
I imagine myself being rushed to hospital, breathless, speechless, perhaps even unconscious. They see this old geezer and are coming down on the side of 'straight on to end-of-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. [57]
A pity.
As the years have gone on I've had the sense that I've been aging at an ever quickening pace, close to drawing even with Mr. Barnes. And though we've lived cosmically distant lives, whether Mr Barnes knows it or not (I suspect not), we've shared countless experiences, stirred memories, though separated in time and space as we are, shared not by tea and sweets but through the agency of paper and ink: loves, losses, friends found and lost, disappointments and regrets. Human frailty, memory, aging and death. When you've lived more than six decades you begin to know what Mr Barnes is talking about in a very personal way. You've walked different yet similar paths.
Fortunately Julian Barnes has left – correction, will leave (don't want to rush him off stage prematurely) us with over twenty-five books to return to again and again, many of which I look forward to reading for the first time.
As you've noticed, this isn't really a review. If you've read 'Sense of An Ending' or 'The Only Story' or 'Levels of Life' – well, then you know Barnes. You know his wit and easy manner, his erudition. A character in 'Departure(s)' chastises him for his 'hybrid' style, mixing real with made-up people. “I think it's a mistake. You should do one or the other.”
I love his hybrid style.
I imagine myself being rushed to hospital, breathless, speechless, perhaps even unconscious. They see this old geezer and are coming down on the side of 'straight on to end-of-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. [57]
January 29, 2026
“That’s what I’ve been after all my writing life: the whole story.” Barnes has been a favourite author of mine since my early twenties. He insists this novella will be his final book. It’s a coy fiction–autofiction mixture featuring the same fixations as much of his work: how time affects relationships and memory, how life gets translated into written evidence, and how we make peace with death. The narrator is one Julian Barnes, a writer approaching age 80 and adjusting to a recent diagnosis of a non-life-threatening blood cancer. The ostensible point is to retell his Oxford University friends Stephen and Jean’s two-stage romance: they were college sweethearts but married other people; then Julian reintroduced them in their sixties and they married – but it didn’t last.
He parcels out bits of this story in between pondering involuntary autobiographical memory (IAM), his “incurable but manageable” condition, and his possible legacy. He hopes he’ll be exonerated due to waiting until Stephen and Jean were dead to write about them and adopting Jean’s old Jack Russell terrier, Jimmy. His late wife, Pat Kavanagh, is never far from his thoughts, and he documents other losses among his peers, including Martin Amis (d. 2023 – for a short book, this is curiously dated, as if it hung around for years unfinished). There are also, as one would expect from Barnes, occasional references to French literature. Confident narration gives the sense of an author in full control of his material. Yet I found much of it tedious. He’s addressed subjectivity much more originally in other works, and the various strands here feel like incomplete ideas shoehorned into one volume.
It’s a shame that I had just reread Talking It Over, a glistening voice-led novel of his from 1991, because it showed up the thinness and repetition of much of his recent work. (I even thought I spotted a reference to Talking It Over as Jean is warning Julian not to write about her and Stephen. “I’ll tell you the truth, and don’t you ever fucking use it, not even deeply disguised in some novel where I appear as Jeanette [Gillian?] and Stephen is Stuart.”) I see his oeuvre as a left-skewed bell curve: three of the first four novels are not worth reading and five of the last seven have also been dubious, but with much excellent material in between. It’s been a case of diminishing returns from The Sense of an Ending onwards, but I have many excellent rereads to look forward to.
If you’ve not read Barnes before, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start as you’ll get a taster of his trademark topics and dry wit, but delving into his back catalogue may well prove more rewarding.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
He parcels out bits of this story in between pondering involuntary autobiographical memory (IAM), his “incurable but manageable” condition, and his possible legacy. He hopes he’ll be exonerated due to waiting until Stephen and Jean were dead to write about them and adopting Jean’s old Jack Russell terrier, Jimmy. His late wife, Pat Kavanagh, is never far from his thoughts, and he documents other losses among his peers, including Martin Amis (d. 2023 – for a short book, this is curiously dated, as if it hung around for years unfinished). There are also, as one would expect from Barnes, occasional references to French literature. Confident narration gives the sense of an author in full control of his material. Yet I found much of it tedious. He’s addressed subjectivity much more originally in other works, and the various strands here feel like incomplete ideas shoehorned into one volume.
It’s a shame that I had just reread Talking It Over, a glistening voice-led novel of his from 1991, because it showed up the thinness and repetition of much of his recent work. (I even thought I spotted a reference to Talking It Over as Jean is warning Julian not to write about her and Stephen. “I’ll tell you the truth, and don’t you ever fucking use it, not even deeply disguised in some novel where I appear as Jeanette [Gillian?] and Stephen is Stuart.”) I see his oeuvre as a left-skewed bell curve: three of the first four novels are not worth reading and five of the last seven have also been dubious, but with much excellent material in between. It’s been a case of diminishing returns from The Sense of an Ending onwards, but I have many excellent rereads to look forward to.
If you’ve not read Barnes before, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start as you’ll get a taster of his trademark topics and dry wit, but delving into his back catalogue may well prove more rewarding.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
February 11, 2026
Der schwer kranke Julian Barnes schreibt elegant und souverän anekdotenhaft von dem Wesen autobiografischer Geschichten, der Literatur, Büchern, der Liebe und den letzten Dingen, die wirklich wichtig sind: "Ich habe das Gefühl, den Tod etwas mehr zu akzeptieren, etwas gelassener zu sein."
Humorvoll und etwas resignativ zieht er auf den letzten sechs Seiten ein berührendes Fazit seines schriftstellerischen Lebens und der Weltgeschichte, letztere fällt beklemmend aus.
Ist dies sein letztes Buch? Hoffentlich nicht.
Humorvoll und etwas resignativ zieht er auf den letzten sechs Seiten ein berührendes Fazit seines schriftstellerischen Lebens und der Weltgeschichte, letztere fällt beklemmend aus.
Ist dies sein letztes Buch? Hoffentlich nicht.
March 2, 2026
4.5*
Que raio de livro! É como uma conversa com alguém que não conhecemos e que nos fala sobre coisas que realmente não nos interessam mas que não conseguimos deixar de ouvir e acabamos a implorar para que não pare, porque sabemos que algures surgirão os trechos de uma inteligente sagacidade, os pormenores cheios de humor e as resoluções nada clarividente. Tudo o que se quer num bom romancista que não escreve romances. Saudades, já.
Que raio de livro! É como uma conversa com alguém que não conhecemos e que nos fala sobre coisas que realmente não nos interessam mas que não conseguimos deixar de ouvir e acabamos a implorar para que não pare, porque sabemos que algures surgirão os trechos de uma inteligente sagacidade, os pormenores cheios de humor e as resoluções nada clarividente. Tudo o que se quer num bom romancista que não escreve romances. Saudades, já.
February 15, 2026
I’m a Barnes fan overall, and this was no exception to my general liking of his work. In his classic hybrid form, Barnes combines memoir with fiction here, delivering something that is less a story than a contemplation on human identity, the nature of love, and memory—all topics which I spend a good deal of time thinking about. I found that in relatively few pages new light was shed on the subjects at hand, and I was just charmed with the author’s personality, as purely *him* now, in his self-proclaimed last book—and at 80 years old—as ever.
While not life-changing, I did find this well worth the read. One to revisit on a rainy day.
While not life-changing, I did find this well worth the read. One to revisit on a rainy day.
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