L'unica storia

by Julian Barnes, Susanna Basso (Translator)

«Abbiamo quasi tutti un'unica storia da raccontare. Non voglio dire che nella vita ci capiti una cosa sola; al contrario, gli avvenimenti sono tantissimi, e noi li trasformiamo in altrettante storie. Ma ce n'è una sola che conta, una sola da raccontare, alla fine». E la storia di Paul, diciannovenne beneducato, l'unica che a distanza di cinquant'anni valga ancora la pena di raccontare, è una storia d'amore. Quello per la quarantottenne madre di famiglia Susan, dalla battuta pronta e dal sorriso imperturbabile. Con lei, per lei, Paul impara tutto quel che c'è da sapere sull'amore. E in seguito, per sempre, da provare inutilmente a dimenticare.

Un'estate dei primi anni Sessanta, rientrato per le vacanze nei sobborghi londinesi dove vive con i genitori e afflitto dalla noia placida e solitaria dei suoi diciannove anni, Paul Roberts accoglie il suggerimento materno di iscriversi al circolo del tennis. Ma al suo primo torneo di doppio, anziché con uno dei vari indistinguibili Hugo, con una delle brune coetanee Caroline che avrebbero fatto la felicità della signora Roberts, il sorteggio lo accoppia con Susan Macleod. Alta e scanzonata, sicura in campo e affascinante, Susan ha un marito, due figlie e grossomodo l'età di sua madre. Con lei Paul inizia una relazione scandalosa che lo traghetta nella vita adulta e lo cambia per sempre. «Ed è così che vorrei ricordare ogni cosa, se solo potessi», lamenta il narratore, rievocando dalla prospettiva della vecchiaia gli esordi di quella sua travolgente storia d'amore: l'euforia dell'anticonformismo, l'ebbrezza del sesso, la fuga, il nuovo inizio. Ma le storie non sono mai davvero uniche, né univoche, e nel match giocato da Susan e Paul, quello della donna navigata con il suo bel-ami non è che il primo set. Per il secondo, il narratore, abbandonata la presa diretta dell'adolescenza, sceglie lo sguardo esterno di un tu ideale, che diventa impassibile terza persona nell'ultima parte del libro. Man mano che «lo strepito dell'io» si acquieta, ci racconta della costellazione di altre storie, tutte legittimamente uniche, che circondano i due amanti: il grottesco marito di Susan, Mr E.G., per il quale Paul non è che uno dei «giovani cicisbei» di cui la consorte si attornia, le due figlie variamente ostili, il generoso amico Eric, la saggia e disillusa Joan, con il suo gin, i suoi cani e i suoi cruciverba truccati. E soprattutto la storia del rivale subdolo e invincibile con cui il giovane Paul si trova a fare i conti, fallendo. «Che cosa preferireste, amare di piú e soffrire di piú; o amare di meno e soffrire di meno?», si era chiesto il narratore in apertura del romanzo. È una domanda che i personaggi di Julian Barnes, dal Geoffrey Braithwaite del Pappagallo di Flaubert al Tony Webster del Senso di una fine, a cui L'unica storia è strettamente collegato, si sono posti spesso. Per Paul, più di cinquant'anni dopo quel primo fatidico torneo di doppio misto, la risposta sta forse nell'appunto scritto su un taccuino in gioventú e mai piú depennato: «In amore, ogni cosa è al tempo stesso vera e falsa; l'unico argomento al mondo sul quale è impossibile dire insensatezze».

Genres: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Novels, British Literature, Literature

248 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 18, 2018

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

[Paromjit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Julian Barnes's latest offering, an author I absolutely adore. It is a profound and moving love story, and the complexities, intense suffering and heartbreak that accompanies it. It has Paul looking back on his only story, the love of his life, and his shifting perspectives as time passes. Barnes can be relied on for his well crafted beautiful prose and imagery, underscored by a musicality that beguiles and delights. The novel is split into three parts, and relates the story of 19 year old Paul, a Sussex University student who in 1963 meets and falls in love with 48 year old married Susan, who has children older than him and carries heavy emotional baggage from her personal history. What follows in a detailed examination of the repercussions on the people in their lives of their love affair amidst the middle class suburban attitudes, social norms and expectations of the period that the lovers are subject to.

Barnes uses the classic device of moving from first person narrative, to the second person and finally the third person to highlight the increasing distance that Paul injects into his love story, moving from the intense passion at the beginning to a more dispassionate approach. He is aware that his memories are unreliable and his thinking tainted by self delusion. What Barnes gives is his insights into the human condition, a subtle reflection and observations on the nature of love and the trajectory it follows for Paul, infused with an air of melancholia set in a specific time and place. Whilst there are echoes of Barnes previous novels, I found this a brilliant and thought provoking read that I recommend highly. Many thanks to Random House Vintage for an ARC.

[Adina ( not enough time ) · Rating 4 out of 5]

.“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question. You may point out –correctly –that it isn’t a real question. Because we don’t have the choice. If we had the choice, then there would be a question. But we don’t, so there isn’t. Who can control how much they love? If you can control it, then it isn’t love. I don’t know what you call it instead, but it isn’t love.”.

Thus begins the latest novel by one of my favorite authors, Julian Barnes. I immediately knew, just by reading those words that I will be witness to a beautiful and heartbreaking love story which will leave me, after the last page, fulfilled by the exquisite writing but also spent from suffering along with the characters. I was entirely right.

.“Most of us have only one story (…) that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine.”.

The Author tells the story of Paul, a young man of 19 and his first love, Susan, a middle age married woman of 48. They meet in 1963 on the tennis court, where fate brought them together for a double match. They begin to spend more and more time together until they fall irremediably in love.

The novel is divided in three parts, the first chapter is written in first person and relates the beginning of the love story. The second part is a mixture of 1st and 2nd person and deals with the inevitable degradation and end love while the 3rd part, where we showed Paul’s remaining life, is written mostly in a detached 3rd person.

The authors explain his choices to use these narration techniques better than I could. .“And first love always happens in the overwhelming first person. How can it not? Also, in the overwhelming present tense. It takes us time to realize that there are other persons, and other tenses. ”.
“But nowadays, the raucousness of the first person within him was stilled. It was as if he viewed, and lived, his life in the third person. Which allowed him to assess it more accurately, he believed. “

I thought that the change between 1st, 2nd and 3rd person narration to be of powerful effect and it worked very well to confer the intended atmosphere and tension. It was particularly compelling in the 2nd chapter which started in 1st person and moved to 2nd person when the relationship started to face problems and Susan changed. 2nd person is somewhat in between the personal 1st person and the 3rd, which suggests an intermediary state, where Paul’s efforts/failure to save Susan and their love transitions from the intense love and suffering to a more detached form.

If you read The Sense of An Ending, you get to immediately see the similarity between The Only Story and the 2011 Booker winner. They both deal with an older man looking back at his life and the unreliability of memory. If in The Sense of An Ending the theme is subtly introduced and we are left to discover it ourselves while reading, here it is expressed, out in the open through narrator’s words.

“But here’s the first problem. If this is your only story, then it’s the one you have most often told and retold, even if –as is the case here –mainly to yourself. The question then is: do all these retellings bring you closer to the truth of what happened, or move you further away?”
“He sometimes asked himself a question about life. Which are truer, the happy memories, or the unhappy ones? He decided, eventually, that the question was unanswerable.”
“So, that familiar question of memory. He recognized that memory was unreliable and biased, but in which direction? Towards optimism? That made initial sense. You remembered your past in cheerful terms because this validated your existence. You didn’t have to see your life as any kind of triumph –his own had hardly been that –but you did need to tell yourself that it had been interesting, enjoyable, purposeful. Purposeful? That would be pitching it a bit high. Still, an optimistic memory might make it easier to part from life, might soften the pain of extinction. But you could equally argue the opposite. If memory is biased towards pessimism, if, retrospectively, all appears blacker and bleaker than it actually was, then this might make life easier to leave behind.”

I don’t know if the similarities were intentional or if there was laziness in finding new ideas. However, both novels are amazing and in the same time similar and different, both worth reading and living.

The Only Story is a story about and powerful love sorted to fail, about hope, social conventions, shame, unspoken guilt and loss. It is a beautifully written novel, as everything Barnes writes and I consider myself lucky to have been able to read this novel before it was published.

I want to thank to Julian Barnes, Random House UK/Vintage, and Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review. I read and ARC and the quotes may change in the final version of the book.

[Larry H · Rating 3 out of 5]

"First love fixes a life forever: this much I have discovered over the years. It may not outrank subsequent loves, but they will always be affected by its existence. It may serve as model, or as counterexample. It may overshadow subsequent loves; on the other hand, it can make them easier, better. Though sometimes, first love cauterises the heart, and all any searcher will find thereafter is scar tissue."

When Paul was 19 years old and visiting his family in a stifling London suburb while on summer break from university, his mother encouraged him to visit the local tennis club. While silently mocking the self-important people who took their tennis seriously and themselves even more so, he is randomly partnered in a tournament with Susan Macleod. Despite the obvious differences between them—Susan is in her late 40s, married, mother to two adult daughters, the two develop a strong bond.

Susan likes to tease Paul for his youthful braggadocio, his lack of real knowledge of the world around him and relationships, and his playful nature. Paul is utterly fascinated by Susan's sense of humor, her candidness about her unsatisfying marriage and her less-than-appealing husband, and the sense that she's not concerned or shocked by anything. After a long period of flirtation, the two become lovers.

Despite disapproval from his parents and some in the community around them, Susan and Paul carry out their relationship hidden in nearly plain sight. He spends a great deal of time at her house, being routinely welcomed and abused by her husband and daughters, and Paul wonders if everyone knows the truth and chooses not to delve too deeply, or if they're fooling everyone. An idealistic young man, he dreams of running away with her one day, rescuing her from the life she seems unhappily chained to.

"One of the things I thought about Susan and me—at the time, and now, again, all these years later—is that there often didn't seem words for our relationship; at least, none that fitted. But perhaps this is an illusion all lovers have about themselves: that they escape both category and description."

When the couple finally does flee to London and move in together, at first it seems like the realization of their (mostly Paul's) dreams. He has escaped his parents' disappointment and helped free Susan from a loveless and occasionally abusive marriage. But little by little, the cracks in their relationship begin to show themselves, the differences between them magnify, and Paul realizes that there is deeper unhappiness in Susan than he ever could imagine.

In The Only Story , Julian Barnes provides a meditation on first love, on the most impactful relationship in our lives, and how it shapes our later views on love, relationships, happiness, and trust. It's a longing, nostalgic look at what seemed like simpler times, before we realized what a hold the world had on us, and how factors beyond our feelings for one another can affect our relationships. It's also an insightful commentary on obligation, desire, commitment, and emotion.

Barnes is really a magnificent writer. I absolutely loved his book The Sense of an Ending (see my review), which I read seven years ago. But while I marveled at Barnes' use of language, emotion, and imagery, I didn't find this book particularly captivating. I was drawn in by the subject matter, but it moved very slowly, and meandered quite a bit. Paul also had a way of being coy with his narration, which frustrated me.

May-December romances are familiar literary fodder, and today, we're just as apt to read stories about younger men and older women, with the man being more affected than the woman. While Barnes definitely brings a few new twists to this age-old trope, I wish that The Only Story had a little more spark for me, so I could remember more than just how beautifully told the story was.

See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com, or check out my list of the best books I read in 2017 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2017.html.

[Diane S ☔]

Leaving this unrated. I've made it to 30% and this is an author I usually adore. His writing is wonderful as always but the plot just doesn't appeal. Quite frankly, I'm bored and just can't continue reading this. When a book is a chore to read the best thing to do is move on. It is what I have decided to do with sincere apologies to the author.

[Seemita · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question."

This sentence, which introduced this most recent book of Julian Barnes to his potential readers, was pretty much my Achilles heel from Page 1. I don’t quite understand how you can adjust the levels of love, like making marks on a burette and letting the content drip as per your desire of colour and consistency of the final emotion. Quantifying love is beyond my comprehension.

And yet, there is a certain granular tenderness in this story of a young man and his (almost) thirty years senior lover that prevents this love story from turning into a chore.

Seen in the rearview mirror during his twilight years, Paul reminisces the first time his 19-years old self fell for the 48-years old married Susan at a Tennis Court when the two were brought, fortuitously, together to team up for a mixed doubles match, and that his feelings were near immediately reciprocated. Ignited by this act that was both adventurous and liberating, Paul and Susan built walls around them, barricading their respective families with a dangerous, and often confounding, indifference and pushing this affair out of their current state, both literally and geographically. But at their new abode, that stripped them off their familial clutches, love gets suddenly exposed to the calamities of habituation, expectations and ageing. As a result, a whole new world sprouts between the two – one where they commence playing from different sides.

Barnes’ signature prodding into the delicate gossamer of human dilemmas and questionable foibles is much on display here although the narrative veered to the unpleasant edge of excess a good many times. Of the three sections the novel is divided into, the first was a watertight bag that didn’t allow for any of my emotions to blossom. The characters appeared like a bunch left unanchored on a theatre stage, waiting for the director to give them a cue. But beyond those 80 odd pages, Barnes plays his magic trick and all of a sudden, the palette of love bursts open and renders an immersive experience. The turning points when love turns into duty, the duty into a burden, the burden into a gash and the gash into a permanent scar, are the crevices where Barnes resonated the most with me.

”Love was by its very nature disruptive, cataclysmic; and if it was not, then it was not love.”

There, he did speak my mind.

--

Also on my blog

[Paula K · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Julian Barnes’ writing. His The Sense of an Ending and Levels of Life were brilliant. He is absolutely one of my favorite authors. That’s why it is so disappointing to not have enjoyed his most recent book The Only Story. The story of a 19 year old boy having an affair with a middle aged woman just wasn’t my thing.

I will of course be looking forward to his next endeavor!

3 out of 5 stars

[Bianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up

I declared 2017 the Julian Barnes year on account of reading and loving seven of his books.

The Sense of An Ending, while it is one of his most popular books, was my least favourite novel of his. The Only Story is somewhat similar to that one, as it has an older narrator, Paul, reminiscing about his nineteen-year-old self in the 1960s and his first love and relationship with Susan, a woman twenty-nine years his senior. You read that right. Honestly, I didn't have any qualms about that, I read books about younger men being seduced by older women before.

I would rather be outraged than bored. And oh my, it pains me to say this, but The Only Story was tedious, repetitive and I had to force myself to get back to reading it.

I don't know about you, but when I read about something taboo, forbidden, especially a risky love affair, I expect passion, animal attraction, a sense of inevitability and urgency. Even in the beginning of the relationship, there wasn't much fire. It was all so dry and passionless. It was all very proper without actually being proper. Why was Paul so taken with Susan? I couldn't tell you.

While the relationship lasts much longer than expected, unfortunately, it takes a very sad turn, as Susan becomes an alcoholic. That was painful to read about. At least, I felt something. I was even more annoyed with Paul and heartbroken for Susan.

As for the writing, there were a few paragraphs worth highlighting, especially in the beginning, but it became repetitive and drawn out. The shifts from the first-person narration, to second and then to third and again back to first were jarring.

Ultimately, I just didn't feel much about the characters and the writing wasn't outstanding to make up for the lack of a gripping story.

I've received this novel via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to Random House UK, Vintage Publishing for allowing me to read this novel.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently read a sentence in another book that stayed with me.
“There comes a time in every man’s life when he looks back more than forward”. ( fitting in Julian Barnes “The Only Story”)

This book is as much - about a man’s memories - fading memories as well-than it is about love.
“He sometimes asked himself a question about life. Which were truer, the happy memories, or unhappy ones? He decided, eventually, that the question was
unanswerable “.

“He remembered his own
early attempts to define love, back in the village, alone in his bed. Love, he had ventured was like a vast and sudden increasing of a lifelong frown”.
Wow... bleak experience.
.....love is an increasing blessed smile for me ...

I found the beginning intriguing...part two the least interesting...and the last part the best ( sad)....but at least the narrator expressed his feelings more. He was more detached from his memories - yet most raw and vulnerable.

It’s debatable to me however that most of us have only one story worth telling that matters.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d forgotten how contemplative and funny Julian Barnes is. The mood of this novel is nostalgic and retrospective – but not saccharine. That a book so touching and tragic could be so ironic and amusing, and helplessly sad, and then end on a cold, blunt note struck me as realistic and sort of wonderful. I really admired the final pages. I don’t think it should have ended any other way. Our lives are often disastrous and heart-breaking, our minds flit back and forth, and sometimes we are cold and cruel, and sometimes we just appear that way, and sometimes we are so young, and almost always we get broken, and this looking-back and picking-apart by Barnes’s narrator, this drowning in what happened, and what was, and how it ended, was right up my alley. I enjoy it more now that it’s over, oddly. Perhaps it was triggering for me.


I didn’t realize that there was panic inside her. How could I have guessed? I thought it was just inside me. Now, I realize, rather late in the day, that it is in everyone. It’s a condition of our mortality. We have codes of manners to allay and minimise it, jokes and routines, and so many forms of diversion and distraction. But there is panic and pandemonium waiting to break out inside all of us, of this I am convinced. I’ve seen it roar out among the dying, as a last protest against the human condition and its chronic sadness. But it is there in the most balanced and rational of us. You just need the right circumstances, and it will surely appear. And then you are at its mercy. The panic takes some to God, others to despair, some to charitable works, others to drink, some to emotional oblivion, others to a life where they hope nothing serious will ever trouble them again.


And when I see pairs of young lovers, vertically entwined on street corners, or horizontally entwined on a blanket in the park, the main feeling it arouses in me is a kind of protectiveness. No, not pity: protectiveness. Not that they would want my protection. And yet – and this is curious – the more bravado they show in their behavior, the stronger my response. I want to protect them from what the world is probably going to do to them, and from what they will probably do to each other.


And by that time he had made the most terrifying discovery of his life, one which probably cast a shadow over all his subsequent relationships: the realization that love, even the most ardent and the most sincere, can, given the correct assault, curdle into a mixture of pity and anger. His love had gone, had been driven out, month by month, year by year. But what shocked him was that the emotions which replaced it were just as violent as the love which had previously stood in his heart. And so his life and his heart were just as agitated as before, except that she was no longer able to assuage his heart. And that, finally, was when he had to give her back.

[Celeste Corrêa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Editado em 6 /3/2020

As recordações fazem-nos falta.

Julian Barnes mostra-nos que todos temos a nossa história de amor, mesmo que tenha sido um fiasco, que se tenha desvanecido, que nunca tenha funcionado e mesmo que tenha sido apenas mental não foi menos real.
Temos muitas histórias, mas geralmente apenas contamos uma, a única história, como o título deste livro.
É um livro sobre o amor entre um jovem de dezanove anos e uma mulher mais velha, casada e mãe de duas filhas, que inicia no primeiro ano da década de 60 e que, não obstante a diferença de idades e experiências, há afinidades que ultrapassam gerações.

O livro é dividido em três partes: nas duas primeiras – escritas na primeira pessoal do singular – acompanhamos esse amor, e na terceira parte – escrita na terceira pessoal do singular – temos uma mistura de observação e memória, que não é de fiar, ora tendenciosa, ora optimista, ora pessimista.
Um tratado sobre o amor, a sexualidade, as relações sociais, parentais ao longo de algumas décadas.
É um livro sábio, maduro com o qual me identifiquei facilmente: já dei muitas voltas ao sol, também tenho a minha única história.

Excertos:

«O primeiro amor marca a vida para sempre: isso descobri eu com os anos. Pode não desqualificar amores futuros, mas eles serão sempre influenciados pela sua existência. Pode servir de modelo ou de exemplo a refutar.» pág.92

«No amor, tudo é ao mesmo tempo verdadeiro e falso; é o tema sobre o qual não é possível dizer nada de absurdo.» pág.220

[Jennifer Blankfein · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Only Story by Julian Barnes is an introspective retrospective on a first love and how it shaped the narrator’s life. I loved this thought provoking love story told many years later and the internal discussion about memories.

In part one, nineteen year old Paul is home from university for the summer and with his mother’s encouragement, he joins the local country club to play tennis. He is partnered with Susan, a married woman old enough to be his mother. Paul and Susan spend time together and as their lives intertwine, he meets Susan’s friend Joan, and Susan gets to know Paul’s college buddies. Paul falls in love, Susan is attracted to him, and the unlikely couple begins an affair. When their taboo relationship becomes public, they are kicked out of the country club. Young Paul is energized by the public disapproval, and despite her marriage, albeit loveless, the two travel together, and they live together for over a decade. There was love and romance, and everything was so good. This is how Paul wants to remember.

In part two Paul tells us all the things he remembers but would want to forget. They had borders living with them in the attic, Susan’s husband punched him and on another occasion he smashed her teeth in. Susan was an alcoholic and taking antidepressants. The realities of life are revealed and author Julian Barnes switches narration from first person, to third person as he distances himself from intense feelings of lust and love to disappointments and heartbreak.

Susan and Paul’s non traditional relationship was a beautiful love affair and at the same time marred by lies, abuse and alcohol. Paul discusses the idea that feeling less and lower expectations can protect you from too much emotion and hurt. His happiness is based on Susan, but her happiness has nothing to do with him. She is devoted to drinking and he takes that as rejection.

In the end, Paul can’t stop Susan from drinking so he leaves her, but every time she needs him, he goes to her. He is emotionally tethered and his love for her causes him to be angry and disgusted with himself, wondering if there is something to be said for feeling less.

The Only Story is a raw look at young love, memory and bias, and how over time you can gloss over difficult times to shape your memories. I enjoyed the author’s retelling of Paul and his falling in love with an older woman, his all in full commitment and his naiveté, her baggage with her husband, children and her addictions, and how his love blinded him. Romantic and sad with love, forgiveness and continual heartbreak, this story is thought provoking when it comes to how we look back at our lives and remember certain things. Beautifully written and short in length, this is well worth the read.
Author interview included at https://booknationbyjen.com/2019/05/1...

[Agnieszka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love was by its very nature disruptive, cataclysmic; and if it was not, then it was not love.

I’m starting to have slight problem with Julian Barnes’ novels. While I still admire his dexterity and turn of phrase, he’s a great stylist and in every novel of him I’ve read so far there always are plenty highlighted passages I particularly enjoyed but net effect leaves me increasingly a bit unsatisfied. So it happened with The noise of time I read last year and here is the same issue. I will say it again, I can’t find fault with his writing, it's the story itself that left me not entirely impressed. Neither I found it profound nor convincing. Romance of a youn man with much older woman is a theme old as the world and it’s hard to say something fresh that wouldn’t be cliche, that wouldn’t feel banal and well-worn. Yes, love is a puzzle and it may constantly mystify us. Sometimes one could mistake it for desire or sense of duty or even worse a pity. And we experience all these feelings here, the whole gamut of emotions, all the light and dark side of love are displayed yet something lacks.

The narrator of the novel is an adult Paul who after years returns to his only history. The novel is written in three parts and creates kind of love triptych. In the first part we have Paul remembering the beginnings of his relationship with Susan – their clandestine meetings, disapproval of Paul’s parents and castigatory comments of locals. This phase, told from first person perspective, feels the most enjoyable and innocent. The second scene brings quite serious problems and shows protagonists trying to arrange their life anew and Barnes shifts here to mostly second person narrative. Finally, the last element of the story focuses on Paul's life after lovers parted their ways and Barnes again changes narration to the third person this time. I've found this structure quite interesting and voice from the most involved to the almost detached very fitting and mirroring stages of their relationship. And even now writing these words I feel I should like this one more. Likeable protagonists not always are necessesary to be more engaged in the story. So the matter of me not especially liking anyone here, neither Paul and Susan nor his parents, her husband or daughters is the factor, I think. Though there was one character I liked, Joan, Susan’s old friend. Ageing, lonely woman with drinking problem, brusque and unkempt with dogs to keep her company. Hardly agreeable material and yet I liked her. The story is subtly told, with kind of tenderness that spoke to me but as a whole it won't leave a deeper mark, I'm afraid.

3,5/5

[Trudie · Rating 3 out of 5]

( 2.5 probably but I feel guilted into a 3 )

So.... it pains me a little to write this review because I really don't like to be so far outside of popular opinion on a book. It is perhaps a shame this is my first Julian Barnes novel as I know he is a much beloved author and his The Sense of an Ending is a popular Booker winner. There is no doubt you are in capable writerly hands when picking up this novel. My reactions to this are not indictments about the writing itself, which is mostly magnificent.

Ultimately I really disliked this. Since this is so blatantly wrong the fault must be entirely mine. I just could not overcome my absolute indifference to this love affair. I have no notion of the attraction between the two people central to this narrative. What I do know is he liked her tennis outfit with the green piping, he was oddly fascinated by her rabbity teeth and she like to call him her "dirty stop-out" . That really is the sum total of my understanding of what drew these two people together and it was just not enough to hang an entire life story on no matter how touching the mediations on love and it's life-long ramifications.
Plus I have questions. Why did Mr Mcleod seem so unperturbed by his wife bringing a 19 year lover home from tennis, he barely looks up from the gardening ? also her daughters reactions are largely left undocumented. What was Susans attraction to this seemingly self-absorbed young man, it appears to have nothing to do with sex as she announces herself frigid by why of introduction quite early on, and he doesn't sound particularly skilled in this area ( I mean the teeth were my first clue here ). Ultimately what Mrs Mcleod was thinking is frustratingly unknowable. We just know she is profoundly troubled and I would have liked a better handle on why.

Obviously, warmer hearts and more generous (or adept) readers than I will fill in the gaps required and will inevitably be much more open to this story, but as presented I was profoundly depressed by it and willed it all to be over.

( Sorry Neale ! )

[پیمان عَلُو · Rating 5 out of 5]

تا دلتان بخواهد چرت و پرت عاشقانه نوشته شده،پس دیگر نیازی به انگشت‌تان ندارید...
«ببخشید،گویا جمله در جای مناسبی تمام نشد،اصلاح می‌کنم:
*پس دیگر نیازی به انگشت‌تان ندارید برای بالا آوردن...»

[ آیا این کتاب یک آت آشغال است ؟!_هرگز]

این سومین کتابی بود که از بارنز خواندم و از خدا که پنهان نیست از شما چه پنهان،دوست داشتم با یک کتاب بد طرف باشم.
چرا ؟! چون اگر کسی *تاپ تن نویسندگانم را پرسید،اسم او «بارنز»در بین آنان نباشد،اما این بارنز لعنتی حتی یک رمان عاشقانه را هم شاهکار می‌نویسد...
برای خواننده‌ای به مانند من،بارنز«او»یک معشوقه اجباریست.هرجا اثری از او می بینم،ترک اختیار می‌کنم و میخَرم.
کتاب با این پاراگراف شروع می‌شود: ترجیح می‌دهید نصیبتان عشقِ بیشتر و رنجِ بیشتر باشد یا عشق کمتر و رنج کمتر؟ به نظرم،در نهایت،تنها سؤال واقعی همین است.
حتی اگر ۲۸۲ صفحه این کتاب خالی بود و در صفحه ۲۸۳ فقط این پاراگراف نوشته می‌شد با این سؤال،باز هم پنج ستاره را از من می‌گرفت...
[فقط یک داستان] داستان جوانی ۱۹ ساله به نام پل است که حتی نمی‌داند عشق چیست اما عاشق می‌شود،آن هم عاشق زنی چهل و نه ساله...
خود پل در این مورد می‌گوید:همه‌ی ما دنبال یه جای امن هستیم.
این جوان که در خانه از دست مادرش در *امان نیست،امنیت را در بغل زنی جست‌و‌جو می‌کند،زنی هم‌سن مادرش که دوتا هم دختر دارد و یک شوهر ...
تنها آرزوی او می‌شود فرار با سوزان...
یک نه صد دل عاشق می‌شود،سوزان به او می‌گوید که :هیچ چیز اون طور که به نظر می‌رسه نیست،پل.این تنها درسیه که می‌تونم بهت بدم.
اما خب یادگیری این درس برای پل کمی سنگین تمام می‌شود،بعد از ده/دوازده سال یک شب که دراز کشیده با خودش می‌گوید:دنیای آدم بزرگ‌ها واقعا همین طوری ست؟ در پس همه‌ی ظواهر؟
و اصل ماجرا در چه عمقی پسِ آن ظواهر نهفته است یا نهفته خواهد بود؟
ادامه داستانِ فقط یک داستان را دوست ندارم برایتان شرح دهم اما در آخر دو نکته:

نکته اول:
پل در پایان می‌گوید:هرکجا که یک زوج می‌بینم میخواهم جلوی معامله‌ای که احتمالا دنیا با آنها خواهد کرد ازشان محافظت کنم و همینطور جلو کاری که احتمالا باهم خواهند کرد.

نکته دوم:
کارگردان فقید سینما پولانسکی می‌گوید:
تو وجود هر آدمی رگه هایی از دگرآزاری و سادیسم وجود داره... و میدونی چه وقت این حس بیدار میشه؟ وقتی می‌فهمی یه نفر وابسته‌ات شده...

حالا این شما و این هم [فقط یک داستان]

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

From some late state in mature life, Paul finds he still believes that “love is the only story” and feels compelled to tell the story of how in his youth at 19 years he took up fulfilling that mission with gusto in his love for one Susan McLeod. That she was nearly 30 years older than him made for some interesting challenges to his ideals. Though we’ve seen age disparities in books and movies before, I’ll admit it was a challenge for me to suspend my disbelief with that many decades of difference. But the inevitable conditioning to more easily accept an older man and younger woman pairing and my desire not to be ageist in matters of love spurred me on to submerge myself in this rendition.

It all starts with Paul learning to play tennis at his parents’ country club in their suburban upscale community outside of London. He has a great time partnering with Susan in doubles and appreciates her feistiness, her self-deprecating humor, and her wit at the expense of aristocratic pretensions.

She laughs at life, this is part of her essence. And no one else in her played-out generation does the same. She laughs at what I laugh at. She also laughs at hitting me on the head with a tennis ball; at the idea of having a sherry party with my parents; she laughs at her husband, just as she does when crashing the gears of the Austin shooting brake. Naturally, I assume she laughs at life because she has seen a great deal of it, and understands it.

Her husband seems an alcoholic buffoon and takes little notice how much time he and Susan spend together as companions. That her husband turns out to be periodically abusive to Susan and even to Paul helps convince Paul of the rightness of crossing the line to a secret love relationship with Susan. Because of her many years of a sexless marriage, she is in many ways a novice at love as much as Paul. Of course, the delicious blossoming doesn’t stay secret for long, and some hard rain falls from the community, Paul’s family, and Susan’s grown daughters, who are close to Paul’s age (tagged as Miss G. and Miss N.S. for “Miss Grumpy” and Miss Not So (Grumpy). Damn those torpedoes!

Like Paul, we the reader have a vested interest in seeing their relationship work, even though we can see likely tragedies lurking down the line. Paul makes a respectable story for himself and struggles to bend his sacrifices into fitting with that story. I joined with him as an “everyman” narrator as he nobly tries to pin down the core lessons and truths gained from attempting to live for love. All the aphorisms and famous quotes from literature are weighed from his experience. I felt keenly the thin ice he encounters when the accumulated evidence of fallibility of his memory emerges. Are his castles made of sand, his jousting against windmills? Does his ultimate ambivalence makes his raison d'etre a fool’s playbook?

I felt Barnes nursed out a lot of lasting truths about love, which is hard to accomplish these days given the vast river of literature delving into the subject. I felt some of the same pleasure from Krauss’ “The History of Love”, though that one was more playful and fanciful. Paul here defends the wisdom of going with loves flow at first without analysis:

The lover, in rapture, doesn’t want to “understand” love, but to experience it, to feel the intensity, the coming-into-focus of things, the acceleration of life, the entirely justifiable egotism, the lustful cockiness, the joyful rant, the calm seriousness, the hot yearning, the certainty, the complexity, the truth, the truth, the truth of love.
Truth and love, that was my credo. I love her, and I see the truth. It must be that simple.

Here we get some of his insights about the fear of love ending always seeming to intrude and take over the story any couple tries to build:

I didn’t realize that there was panic inside her. How could I have guessed? I thought it was just inside me. Now, I realize, rather late in the day, that it is in everyone. It’s a condition of our mortality. We have codes of manners to allay and minimize it, jokes and routines, and so many forms of diversion and distraction. But there is panic and pandemonium waiting to break out inside all of us, of this I am convinced. …The panic takes some to God, others to despair, some to charitable works, others to drink, some to emotional oblivion, others to a life where they hope that nothing serious will ever trouble them again.

The business of judging one’s life in retrospect has a lot in common with the two other books by Barnes that I’ve read. In “The Sense of an Ending”, a middle aged man puts out a lot of nostalgia over his life’s course and reveals his account of bad behavior in the past to be unreliable from biased memory. In the “Noise of Time”, an account of the interior life of the Russian musician Shostakovich also shows a man struggling to contrive justifications for the sacrifices and compromises he made to succeed in the Soviet system, to the detriment of integrity and fairness to his family. Paul is definitely more charming, fundamentally good, and lovable compared to these other two lead characters. The undertow he comes up against is specific to his trajectory, but it felt universal as well.

This book was provided for review through the “First to Read” program of Penguin Random House.

[Emily B · Rating 3 out of 5]

When reading this I had a few hours with not much to do so I read around 70% of it in one sitting. I think if I read it under different circumstances and had to stop and start it, I probably would have found it difficult to pick up again.

I wasn’t that keen on the storyline of a 19 year old young man falling in love with a 48 year old married woman but found that other circumstances, relationships and the time period made it more interesting.

I definitely felt similarities between this and his other work ‘the sense of an ending’. The use of 1st/2nd/3rd person was nice and I think it helped this novel. However the end was a little too drawn out for me.

Overall I was left feeling slightly sad as a result of reading this book.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of us have only one story to tell. I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there’s only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine.

Everyone has their love story. Everyone. It may have been a fiasco, it may have fizzled out, it may never even have got going, it may have been all in the mind, that doesn’t make it any less real. Sometimes, it makes it more real. Sometimes, you see a couple, and they seem bored witless with one another, and you can’t imagine them having anything in common, or why they’re still living together. But it’s not just habit or complacency or convention or anything like that. It’s because once, they had their love story. Everyone does. It’s the only story

The book is narrated by Paul some 50 years after, as a 19 year old, he commenced an affair with a much older, woman Susan, after the two are picked as mixed doubles partners (chosen by lot as the two remark at intervals later) and consists of her memories of their lengthy relationship.

But here’s the first problem. If this is your only story, then it’s the one you have most often told and retold, even if –as is the case here –mainly to yourself. The question then is: do all these retellings bring you closer to the truth of what happened, or move you further away?

You understand, I hope, that I’m telling you everything as I remember it ……. I think there’s a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer …..

Immediately then we recognise that Julian Barnes is returning to some of the same themes and ideas as in his novel The Sense of an Ending - which of course, won the Booker prize, against an infamous longlist picked by Stella Rimmington and her fellow jurors to be “readable”. Perhaps ironically, Sense of An Ending failed to win the Costa Prize in the same year (the prize explicitly designed to reward books which make reading enjoyable) despite being shortlisted.

That book featured a narrator with unreliable memory and self-delusion, and an apparent resolution of a mystery at the end of the novel (albeit with the reader believing the actual truth may still differ). This novel is very different – the narrator is well aware of the subjectivity of his own memories and the ways in which he lied to himself over time, the only real mystery here is in the narrator trying to understand his true views on his experiences, and there is no resolution to be had there by narrator or reader.

The initial affair commences in a village in respectable, middle class, suburban Surrey, in the early 1960s (Paul one of the first intakes to Sussex University).

At first Paul comments

The time, the place, the social milieu? I’m not sure how important they are in stories about love. Perhaps in the old days, in the classics, where there are battles between love and duty, love and religion, love and family, love and the state. This isn’t one of those stories. But still, if you insist. The time: more than fifty years ago. The place: about fifteen miles south of London.

But the reader realises that the social conventions of the time are key to the novel – in particular a certain type of English resolution to avoid addressing difficult situations, and later Paul reflects

Another thing he had come to understand. He had imagined that, in the modern world, time and place were no longer relevant to stories of love. Looking back, he saw that they had played a greater part in his story than he ever realized. He had given in to the old, continuing, ineradicable delusion: that lovers somehow stand outside of time.

And in those two paragraphs something else changes – the first is in the second person, the second in the third person, and this is another important and distinctive aspect to the novel – as Paul looks back on his only story, the story of his first love, his tale changes over time in person – broadly starting in the first person (in the flush of the lengthy initial affair – carried out with Susan’s husband’s clear knowledge but also disgust), moving to the second person (as the relationship matures and Susan leaves her husband and becomes more difficult as Susan begins to drink) and then to the third person (as Susan lapse into complete alcoholism can no longer be denied or ignored), before poignantly returning to the first person. This progression is not entirely smooth and is mixed up with a much more irregular variation in tense between present and past.

Two crucial passages address this directly:

And first love always happens in the overwhelming first person. How can it not? Also, in the overwhelming present tense. It takes us time to realize that there are other persons, and other tenses.

And

For instance, he thought he probably wouldn’t have sex again before he died. Probably. Possibly. Unless. But on balance, he thought not. Sex involved two people. Two persons, first person and second person: you and I, you and me. But nowadays, the raucousness of the first person within him was stilled. It was as if he viewed, and lived, his life in the third person. Which allowed him to assess it more accurately, he believed.

Many themes, phrases (a washed out generation, Susan’s husband hitting a ball as though he hates it) and ideas which Paul remembers (or in some cases imagines/dreams) recur throughout the book - for example an indelible image which had pursued him down his life: of being at an upstairs window, holding on to Susan by the wrists.

Paul also collects in a notebook famous sayings on love, deleting or adding them as his ideas on love change – over time he realises that many concepts about love, and their exact opposites, apparently are equally true, and perhaps, and one of his favourite phrases is:

In love, everything is both true and false; it’s the one subject on which it’s impossible to say anything absurd

And ultimately, reflecting on his life-defining, joyous but impossibly difficult relationship with Susan, he reflects on the profound lines from Tennyson, which are so well known as to be almost banal, but which nevertheless get at the heart of the great unresolvable in Paul’s story:

One entry in his notebook was, of course: ‘It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ That was there for a few years; then he crossed it out. Then he wrote it in again; then he crossed it out again. Now he had both entries side by side, one clear and true, the other crossed out and false.

I did find a small number of false notes – which seemed out of place in what is otherwise a meticulously crafted novel (just as we would expect from Barnes) - - a football terrace chant and most oddly of all (if acknowledged as such by Paul) a crassly obscene suggestion to Susan involving root vegetables. Other odd notes seem to have been randomly lifted from other writers. For example there is a passage on an interesting but rather detailed list of reasons on why people do crosswords (with various sub-bullets added) – which almost reminds me of Simon Okotie; a concept taken from a Formula One race commentary which stands out for its specificity (with the location of the race and the driver and commentator involved) in a book of generalizations, and perhaps reminds me more of Ian McEwan; and an obsession with Susan’s precious ears with their elegant helices which can only have been lifted straight from some working notes on a translation of Haruki Murakami.

But much of the imagery is very memorable – I particularly enjoyed

To remember her back to what he still thought of as her innocence: an innocence of soul. Before such innocence became defaced. Yes, that was the word for it: a scribbling-over with the wild graffiti of booze.

And the book contains much wisdom on love in particular, my favourite and one I have sadly learned myself over the years

Nowadays, at the other end of life, I have a rule of thumb about whether or not two people are having an affair: if you think they might be, then they definitely are.

Overall an excellent book – and one which poses already a quandry for this year’s Booker committee. Do they short/longlist it and get accused of conventionality (Barnes has been shortlisted for the Booker three times before winning it) or do they omit and thus ignore what is already I think likely to be one of the deservedly widest read literary books of 2018.

My thanks to Penguin Random House UK for an ARC via NetGalley.

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.”
So opens this novel with the premise that most of us have only one story worth telling. This is Paul’s - his first love: told in three, conversational and introspective parts, with fluid tenses (and persons: first, second, and third), dry humour, and addressing unreliable memories, the nature of truth, and the structure of stories. The timeline zig-zags, with counter-factual scenarios and hindsight blurring the truth.

“You understand, I hope, that I’m telling you everything as I remember it?... So I’m not necessarily putting it down in the order that it happened. I think there’s a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands put on it by the rememberer.”

It starts about 50 years earlier, in a leafy commuter town in the 1970s, when Paul is home from university for the summer.
“Vocal, incompetent cricket was played on the village green.”
He’s 19 and bored, so joins the tennis club - reluctantly. In a lucky dip, mixed-doubles, he plays against Paul and Susan Macleod (in their forties, with two daughters). There’s friendly banter, lifts, and matches just with Susan. It’s obvious to the reader where it’s heading, but the way it unfolds longer-term is less so.

The heady joys of summer love become complicated and dark, including estrangement, domestic violence, and caring for someone with mental health issues and alcoholism .
“You realise how sympathy and antagonism can coexist.”
In a book exploring memory, someone starts to lose theirs, though whether that’s a blessing or a curse is left open. Maybe it’s both.

Overall, this shares themes with his 2011 The Sense of an Ending (see my review HERE), but this, from 2018, is more conscious of women’s experience.

“Everyone has their love story… Everyone does. It’s the only story.”


Image: Maybe the power of first love in humans is not so different to imprinting in ducklings who follow the first thing they see when the hatch, which occasionally, isn’t even a duck (Source)

Quotes

• “I’m remembering the past, not reconstructing it… I’m not trying to spin you a story; I’m trying to tell you the truth.”

• “Life is a cross section, memory is a split down the grain, and memory follows it all the way to the end.”

• “First love fixes a life forever… And first love always happens in the overwhelming first person… Also, in the overwhelming present tense.”

• “But nowadays, the raucousness of the first person within him was stilled. It was as if he viewed, and lived, his life in the third person.”

• “Which are truer, the happy memories, or the unhappy ones?”

• “One of the last tasks of his life was to remember her correctly,”

• “When you are young, you owe no duty to the future; but when you are old, you owe a duty to the past.”

• “His emotional life was recast as a social life… His life consisted mainly of observation and memory.”

• “Perhaps love could never be captured in a definition; it could only ever be captured in a story.”

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this sad and beautiful novel, Barnes contemplates how a person's biggest love story can shape a whole life. Now you can certainly question whether there generally is something like "the only story", but to me, that is beside the point: Once more, this gifted author finds the perfect words to describe complicated inner worlds and to illustrate what moves people, what irrevocably affects them, and how certain events and feelings shape people in a way that leaves them changed forever - for better or worse. Barnes is just a brilliant psychological author whose main topic is always the human heart and its strange workings.

Our protagonist is Paul who, at 19, falls in a love with Susan, a 48-year-old married mother of two. It's England in the 1960's, and Paul enjoys that his unusual, norm-defying relationship goes against the middle-class expectations of his family and the village - he is young, in love and causes scandal, so what could be more fun? Susan, on the other hand, is part of a generation that was young during the war and carries some baggage. Now both of them are part of an era of change, but their prerequisites and attitudes towards love, marriage and sex are very different. When Susan finally leaves her family for Paul, things go into a direction he (and the reader) didn't expect...

Barnes structures his book in three parts, and I just loved how he illustrated Paul's personal development by changing from a first person narration (#1), to a second-person narration adressed to Susan (#2) to a third-person narration (#3) in which the older Paul talks about his younger self - the entire story is told by an older Paul around 50 years after it happened. This whole strategy skillfully adds to the intensity of the novel and never feels forced - it sure takes a Julian Barnes to pull this off.

"The Only Story" is a wonderfully moving, intelligent and beautifully written book, and I am now determined to become a Barnes completist.

[Roula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Αλλο ενα υπεροχα μελαγχολικο βιβλιο απο τον πολυαγαπημενο μου Τζουλιαν Μπαρνς.εδω λοιπον λεει πολλες,μεγαλες και σκληρες αληθειες -για αλλη μια φορα- σχετικα με τον ερωτα και τις σχεσεις.ο πρωταγωνιστης στα 19 του χρονια καλειται να ενηλικιωθει γνωριζοντας το μεγαλο του ερωτα ,μια γυναικα που τον περνα σχεδον 30 χρονια!!ομως αυτο καθολου δεν τον πτοει καθως ακομη περισσοτερο και απο τον ερωτα θελει να ζησει την ενηλικιωση.να κοντραριστει με την κοινωνια, με τους γονεις του και να κανει αυτο που θελει.και ενω ισως καποιος αλλος συγγραφεας θα εξερευνουσε ολες αυτες τις ρομαντικες πτυχες μιας τετοιας σχεσης, ο Μπαρνς, οπως ειναι πλεον αναμενομενο για εμας που λατρευουμε τη γραφη του, εστιαζει στις σκοτεινες πλευρες , στο ρεαλισμο και στα προβληματα που προκυπτουν μεσα σε μια τετοια σχεση.
Το βιβλιο ειναι τρυφερο, απο την αλλη ομως ειναι συγκινητικο,μελαγχολικο και περα για περα ρεαλιστικο.αυτο ακριβως λατρευω στον Μπαρνς, τιποτα δεν ειναι πασπαλισμενο με χρυσοσκονη στα μυθιστορηματα του.αλλωστε ουτε και η ζωη ειναι ετσι.ουτε ο ερωτας.ουτε οι σχεσεις.και αυτο ειναι οκ, κυριως οταν την (μοναδικη) αυτη ιστορια της ζωης του αναλαμβανει να τη διηγηθει καποιος που ξερει πολυ καλα τον τροπο, οπως ο Μπαρνς..

[Dianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In love. everything is both true and false; it's the one subject on which it's impossible to say anything absurd."

This is a lusciously written meditation on love by the incomparable Julian Barnes. The story is a simple one; an older man ruminates on his first love and the consequences rendered upon his life - but this telling is all about the journey, the truths being discovered and pondered, the gentle unraveling of a life and love gone by.

I loved this, but it does meander a bit in the end. Maybe meander isn't the right word; it gets more introspective with less "action" by the main characters - and some reviewers have found this "boring." I guess it depends on your preference for story over writing. I am a sucker for writing and I could eat Julian Barnes' writing with a spoon. He is precisely my cup of tea.

Recommended t0 fans of Barnes and Ian McEwan. Perhaps not at the level of "The Sense of an Ending," but lovely nonetheless.

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

An old man reminisces about the great love affair of his life, his affair with a woman 30 years older than himself whom he met and ran away with when he was just 19 and she 48, married and with two daughters older than Paul himself. It was never going to turn out well, and of course it doesn’t. But for Paul it remains “the only story” and he shares it with the reader in exhaustive and ultimately repetitious and tedious detail. This is a solipsistic novel that assumes the reader is as interested in Paul’s great love affair as he is. He muses and reflects and as Susan herself points out “You know, Paul…sometimes I’m really disappointed in you…you keep coming up with these banal comments and banal questions.” And that’s the problem for me of this book – it’s a banal story that aspires to be something greater. But Paul, and by implication Barnes, isn’t up to it. He’s a cold fish. He stays with Susan while she self-destructs but it’s never clear why he does so. There doesn’t seem to be any passion, or even love, involved. In fact it’s never clear what the attraction is in the first place. And more importantly we never hear from Susan herself and it’s even less clear what she sees in Paul. Her marriage isn’t satisfactory but why she should throw everything up for a callow young man seems inexplicable. There’s a hint of misogyny here as well. It’s implied that if only Susan had been better able to cope then it would all have been fine, thus letting Paul off the hook. I felt uncomfortable all the way through this novel, which seems to me to be attempting to be profounder than it actually is. In essence it’s a pretty sordid tale hedged around with cliché and platitude, and ultimately it fails to convince.

[Deniz Balcı · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of diyorum! Ben ne okudum, sen nasıl bir yazarsın Julian Barnes?! Daha senenin en başından 2026'nın en iyi okumalarından birini yaptığımı duyuruyorum. 'Biricik Hikaye' sadece Barnes'ın en iyi eserlerinden biri değil, edebiyat tarihinin en güçlü anlatılarından bir tanesi.

19 yaşında bir üniversite öğrencisi olan Paul Roberts ile ondan yirmi dokuz yaş büyük; evli ve iki kız çocuğu olan Susan Macleod'un ilişkisi anlatılıyor romanda. Derinleştikçe örseleme gücü artan bir aşktan bahsediyor yazar. O kadar muazzam tespitleri var ki kitabın altını çizmekten, notlar almaktan karalama defterine döndürdüm. Aşka dair yazılmış en güçlü metinlerden birisi olduğunu düşünüyorum. Aşk dediğimiz şey doğası gereği sorunludur. Proust'un 'Kayıp Zamanın İzinde'sinde 'Swann'ın Aşkı' bölümü ile, beşinci kitap olan Mahpus'taki anlatıcı ile Albertine arasındaki aşkın hikayesinin okuduğum en iyi aşk anlatıları olduğunu düşünürüm. Bu roman çok daha girift ve çağdaş bir hikayeyi, öylesine etkileyici ve çok daha sade bir şekilde anlatıyor ki, bende yarattığı etkiyi kelimelerle anlatmam zor. Aşktan bahsedecekse bir kitap sadece güzel tarafından değil, hayatı cehenneme çevirme gücü olan geleceğinden de bahsetmeli. Bu spesifik anlamında ve genel anlamda; 'Biricik Hikaye'nin benim edebiyattan ne bekliyorsam hepsini veren bir eser olduğunu rahatlıkla söyleyebilirim.

Julian Barnes, çok önemsediğim bir yazardır. Kendisinden kötü bir şey okumadım bu güne değin. Fakat bu kitap ile külliyatına olan ilgim arşa çıktığı gibi bir yandan da artık en sevdiğim yazarlar listesine girdi.

Roman üç bölümden oluşuyor: İlk bölümde Paul Roberts, üniversite tatili için ailesinin yanına gelmiş bir genç olarak; bir ferdi olmaktan hoşlanmadığı orta sınıf İngilizlerin yaşadığı, muhafazakar kasabada; oraya tahammül etmenin yollarını arıyor. Zaman geçirmek için tenis kulübüne başladığında orada Susan Macleod ile tanışıyor. Susan, üniversite çağında iki kızı olan, sıradan bir evliliğin içine hapsolmuş 38 yaşında bir kadın... İkili kulüpteki görüşmelerini dışarıya taşıyarak, kimsenin onaylamadığı ama engel de olamadığı bir aşkın başlangıcını veriyorlar. İlk bölüm tuhaflığından dolayı hayli şevkle okunan bu aşkın oluşumuna ayrılmış. Giriş kısmı yani bir nevi. Dinamikler yeniden düzenleniyor ve bu sıra dışı durumun sadece bir tutku histerisi gibi olan varlığıyla romanı ilerletiyor.

Fakat... İkinci ve üçüncü kısımlar romanın vurucu kısmını oluşturuyor. Zira artık her aşkın dinamiklerinde olan çetrefilli engeller kendini gösteriyor. Birbirine bir zamanlar iyi gelmiş, hala iyi gelmek isteyen ama bir türlü gelemeyen iki bireyin sıkıntılı öyküsü dökülüyor önümüzde. Son derece hüzünlü ve gerçek... İlk bölümde, 50.sayfada şu paragrafı yazıyor yazar: "Herkesin bir aşk hikâyesi vardır. Herkesin. Bu hikâye bir fiyasko olmuş olabilir, sonunda eski ateşini yitirmiş olabilir, hatta hiçbir zaman başlamamış olabilir, tamamen zihinde kalmış olabilir ama bu onu daha az gerçek kılmaz. Kimi zamanlar, onu daha gerçek kılar. Kimi zamanlar, bir çift görürsünüz, birbirleriyle olmanın can sıkıntısından espri güçlerini kaybetmiş görünüyorlardır, onların ortak herhangi bir şeyleri olabileceğini hayal edemezsiniz ya da hâlâ niçin birlikte yaşadıklarını. Ne var ki sadece bir alışkanlık ya da gönül hoşnutluğu yahut geleneksel kurallarla ilgili bir şey değildir bu. Nedeni bir zamanlar onların bir aşk hikâyesi yaşamış olmalarıdır. Herkes yaşar bunu. Biricik hikâyedir bu."

İşte bu kitap karakterlerimizin 'biricik Hikayesi'ni anlatıyor bize. Fakat sadece süreci anlatmakla kalmıyor, altta yatan bütün çatışmaları, zamanın karşısında aşkın nasıl yaşlandığını da gösteriyor. Bir zamanlar sonsuza kadar seveceğimizi düşündüğümüz insana, zamanla kimlikleri çok daha farklı ama aşk kadar güçlü diğer duyguları nasıl hissetmeye başladığımızı anlatıyor. Hikayeden bağımsız bunların altını öyle güzel çiziyor ki bizi de alıp kendi 'biricik Hikaye'mize götürüyor. Kendi geçmişimizin mahkemesinde, kendimizi ve sevgimizi yargılamamıza sebep oluyor. Epey de yorucu oluyor tabi.

Misal 121. sayfada: "Aşk lehine bir mutlakçısın, dolayısıyla evliliğe karşı bir mutlakçısın. Meseleyi fazlasıyla düşünüp taşındın ve çok sayıda tuhaf benzetmeler buldun. Evlilik, içinde kendinden hoşnutluğun yaşadığı ve asla zincirlenmediği bir köpek kulübesidir. Evlilik, gizemli bir karşı simya işlemiyle altını, gümüşü ve elmasları yeniden adi metallere, elmas taklidi cama ve kuartza dönüştüren bir mücevher kutusudur. Evlilik, dibinde delikleri ve eksik bir küreğiyle iki kişilik eski bir kano barındıran, artık kullanılmayan bir tekne-ev'dir." gibisinden inanılmaz tespitlerle devam ediyor.

Büyük aşkların omurgası bana kalırsa inanılmaz sorunlu oluşlarında yatıyor. Kavuşumun ve huzurun sonuç olduğu bir aşkın, başka bir şey olduğu kanısındayım ama kesinlikle elde kalan aşk olmuyor. Mesele, insanı kemiğine kadar acıtan hissin varlığında gizli. Bütün büyük şarkılar, inanılmaz eserler de o acıdan beslenip çıkmıyor mu? İşte bu kitapta aşkın doğurduğu acının nasıl büyüdüğü ve karakterleri yutan bir canavara nasıl dönüştüğü gerçekliğini net bir şekilde izleyebiliyoruz.

Barnes'ın son dönem romanlarından biri bu. İngiliz Edebiyatı denilince bütün kitaplarına güvenle yaklaşılabilecek ender yazarlardan biri olduğu söylenir Barnes için, o kadar doğru ki... Mutlaka okumanızı tavsiye ederim.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘The Only Story’ (2018) by Julian Barnes tells the story of one man – Paul and the one love, the only story, the single relationship that defines him, that determines his path in life.

There are echoes here of Barnes’ brilliant ‘Sense of an Ending’ – to which ‘Only Story’ is most definitely a worthy successor, but the two are both very different books, different stories to be told. In ‘Only Story’ Barnes is mapping the human heart and plotting the anatomy of a one-time functional, erstwhile highly dysfunctional and crumbling relationship – which is all-encompassing, life-determining – and Barnes writes here with such precision, such tenderness, such intensity and an almost forensic analysis of the dynamics, history and impact of such a relationship.

Barnes writes this story from the single but multiple perspectives of Paul – as a young (some might say) naïve and inexperienced 19 year old, embarking on a first meaningful relationship; from Paul living and breathing that relationship; from Paul as an older man – looking back at his life and recounting the relationship that came to determine him.

‘The Only Story’ is a very authentic, truthful and intense story and there is little or no romanticism here, Paul is certainly an anti-heroic central protagonist in this story. There is much here also to consider about memory and truth and the deeply flawed nature of nostalgia.

‘The Only Story’ is a very dark story, or at least a story that takes many dark turns – it is written so very well, with such clarity, depth of feeling, authenticity and sense of purpose. Whilst Barnes latest novel may not be quite up there with ‘Sense of an Ending’ – it is certainly extremely close. Highly recommended and not to be missed.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Most of us have only one story to tell. I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there’s only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine."

In The Only Story, Barnes revisits a subject he explored in The Sense of an Ending: the unreliable narrator, an older man looking back on his youth and trying to make sense of it. In the former book, we as readers worked out the inconsistency in the narration. Here, Paul, our narrator, is clear from the beginning that he cannot claim to be accurate:

"I'm not necessarily putting it down in the order that it happened. I think there’s a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer. Do we have access to the algorithm of its priorities? Probably not. But I would guess that memory prioritises whatever is most useful to help keep the bearer of those memories going."

What we are presented with, then, is Paul’s attempt to collect his thoughts and feelings about events from 50-or-so years ago when, as a 19-year-old, he was involved in an affair with a much older woman. The events he is remembering, for the main part of the book, took place in England in the 1960s and social commentary plays an important part in the story alongside the events Paul is recollecting:

"…what might the neighbours think, and who might subsequently refuse to come for sherry?"

And

"The fact that it would never come to court, that middle-class England had a thousand ways of avoiding the truth, that respectability was no more shed in public than clothes…"

But, primarily, related in the first person, we read of Paul's meeting with and then affair with Susan. Then, related in the second person, we read about it starting to fall apart. Then related in the third person, we read about Paul's life afterwards. That’s a simplification, and there is actually a mixture of first, second and third person narration at times, but it gives you an idea. There is perhaps a clue about this in the following:

”Sex involved two people. Two persons, first person and second person: you and I, you and me. But nowadays, the raucousness of the first person within him was stilled. It was as if he viewed, and lived, his life in the third person. Which allowed him to assess it more accurately, he believed.”

It is as if Barnes is seeing youth as a time of self-centredness, all about me, with middle-age then bringing a sense of reflection and older-age leading to the third person, more detached assessment mentioned in the quote.

The three ages of man: me, you and he.

It would not be right to discuss the events of the book as that would spoil it. But Barnes is writing from his position as a man in his 70s who has observed life and has a gift to be able to write things down in a way that makes them sound obvious even if you haven’t especially thought them through. He writes a lot about love and a lot about the ageing process (there are many similarities with The Sense of an Ending, I think).

On love, he borrows a quote from elsewhere more than once:

"'In love, everything is both true and false; it’s the one subject on which it’s impossible to say anything absurd.'"

On ageing, he makes comments such as:

"Strange how, when you are young, you owe no duty to the future; but when you are old, you owe a duty to the past. To the one thing you can’t change."

And

"Back then, it had sounded like a counsel of despair; now, it struck him as normal, and emotionally practical."

This is a book filled with observations that could only really come from an older person. Sadly, I am getting to the age where I can relate to far too many of them (although I am about 10-12 years younger than Paul in the book). A sad story of love that goes wrong and the impact of that on the people involved. It is beautifully written - it is not often I sit and read over 200 pages with barely even a comfort break.

My thanks to Penguin Random House UK for a free ARC via NetGalley.

[Ilenia Zodiaco]

“Che cosa preferireste, amare di più e soffrire di più, o amare di meno e soffrire di meno? Credo che, alla fine, l’unica vera domanda sia questa”

Recensione: https://www.illibraio.it/unica-storia...

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very different novel to The Noise of Time, this book also shows that Barnes is still in great form. As others have said, this one shares a few elements with his Booker winner The Sense of an Ending. Once again, we are looking back at the events of an older man's youth, and once again the nature of memory and love is a key theme. At times I was also reminded of his early novel Metroland.

The book has three sections, each of which has a different character.

The first part is narrated in the first person, and is a wonderful mixture of nostalgia and comic moments. It describes the narrator Paul's first serious love affair, which started in the early/mid 60s when he was a 19 year old student. As a temporary member of the local tennis club, he is paired with the middle aged housewife Susan in a mixed doubles tournament, and the two form a bond that blossoms into an affair, largely ignored by Susan's husband, who they call E.P. (elephant pants). By the end of this part, Susan has left her husband and she and Paul have moved to London together.

The second part, narrated in the second person, is much sadder, as it relates Susan's slow descent into alcoholism and mental illness, and her gradual estrangement from Paul.

The final part, mostly narrated in the third person, tells Paul's story from the point where he left Susan, and describes how their affair shaped the rest of his life.

As always Barnes is a fine story-teller, and the book is quite moving at times. Many seemingly incidental moments and observations are recalled later in the book, making me think it would reward re-reading.

[foteini_dl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Όμως, αυτή είναι η φύση των σχέσεων, όλων των σχέσεων: πάντοτε φαίνεται να υπάρχει κάποια ανισορροπία, του ενός ή του άλλου είδους.

Αυτή η φράση ταιριάζει για να περιγράψει και τη σχέση μου με το τελευταίο πόνημα του Barnes. Δυστυχώς, το αποτέλεσμα είναι ανισόρροπο.

Στο πρώτο κεφάλαιο, όπου βλέπουμε πώς αναπτύσσεται η σχέση ανάμεσα στον 19χρονο Paul και τη 48χρονη Susan σ’ ένα προάστιο του Λονδίνου της δεκαετίας του ‘60, έφτασα οριακά στο σημείο να παρατήσω το βιβλίο. Στο επόμενο κεφάλαιο βλέπουμε τη ρωγμή στη σχέση εξαιτίας του αλκοολισμού της Susan και στο τελευταίο, ο Paul, 50 χρόνια μετά τη γνωριμία με τη Susan, κάνει μια ενδοσκόπηση και προσπαθεί να καταλάβει τι δεν πήγε καλά.

Διαβάζοντας το πρώτο κεφάλαιο, έφτασα οριακά στο σημείο να παρατήσω το βιβλίο. Πολύ ρομαντικό, σχεδόν μελό, για τα γούστα μου και κοινότοπο. Στα επόμενα δύο, ευτυχώς, είδα να εμφανίζεται τo δυνατό στοιχείο του Barnes: ο κυνισμός. Όμως, δε θα το κρύψω, βαρέθηκα αρκετά. Είδα μια επανάληψη: το βιβλίο κινείται ανάμεσα στο πρώτο του βιβλίο, το “Metroland” και το “ A Sense of an Ending”, και κυρίως προσεγγίζει το πρώτο. Για πολλούς αυτό είναι καλό, αλλά για μένα δείχνει μια έλλειψη φρεσκάδας και επαναληψιμότητα. Επίσης, δε μοιάζει να έχει ούτε τη δυναμική των δύο προαναφερθέντων βιβλίων. Το “Metroland”, στο οποίο είναι πιο κοντά, ήταν ένα δυνατό ντεμπούτο και έκρυβε και μια κριτική απέναντι στη μεσαία αστική τάξη, η οποία εδώ ναι μεν υπάρχει, αλλά πολύ επιφανειακά. Το “ A Sense of an Ending” επίσης μου δημιούργησε έντονα συναισθήματα, ενώ αυτό όχι.

Βέβαια, όσον αφορά τη γραφή αυτή καθαυτή, έχει ενδιαφέρον η εναλλαγή του αφηγηματικού προσώπου που επέλεξε ο συγγραφέας σαν μέσο για να δείξει την πορεία της σχέσης: πρώτο πρόσωπο όταν ο πρωταγωνιστής είναι ερωτευμένος, δεύτερο όταν απομακρύνεται και η σχέση διαλύεται σιγά-σιγά και τρίτο όταν είναι στο τέλος ένας ακόμα πιο δυστυχισμένος άνθρωπος, που το μόνο που κάνει είναι να προσπαθεί να βρει τρόπους να δείξει τη δυστυχία του και τις τύψεις του.

Σε γενικές γραμμές, το βιβλίο διαβάζεται εύκολα, μιας και η αφήγηση ρέει, και βλέπουμε πολλά θετικά στοιχεία της εργογραφίας του Barnes. Αλλά και μια επανάληψη (δυστυχώς). Έχω την αίσθηση ότι σε λίγες μέρες δε θα θυμάμαι σχεδόν τίποτα, παρά το γενικό feeling του βιβλίου.

[Wen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A maverick 19-year-old Paul falls head over heels for a 48-year-old Susan who he sees as an age-agnostic free-spirit, and who's non-assuming manner always elevates his confidence. .
The story drags on from here, even after the woman turns out as an impostor. Regardless of that, we can all imagine that the initial luster fades over time as the boy grows up. The romantic love, "absolute' as in theory, is called upon to cement the decade-long responsibility....
I'd better reserve my judgement; after all the story was set in the mid-20th century.
My second Julian Barnes after the booker-winning The Sense of An Ending. Once again it felt much longer than the real length. I didn't quite get the purpose of changing point of views between parts. while reading, was later enlightened by GR friends' reviews. Yet I still think the story would have been more compelling had it been all in the first-person narrative.
There were numerous brilliant recollections on love . But for a love story it’s just too emotionally austere to me.

[piperitapitta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pre(i)storia di un amore

«Pensi che ti si schianterà il cuore. Adesso, qui, subito.»
E se non ti si schianta subito, leggendo di quest’unica storia, poco ci manca. Perché Barnes ha il pregio raro, comune a pochi eletti, di cambiare registro senza alcuno strappo, di saper trasformare in tragedia la commedia, di passare dalla prima alla terza persona in poche pagine e di coinvolgerti, con il TU, come se facessi parte di quell’unica storia, di passare dalla primavera-estate di un amore all’autunno-inverno dell’esistenza, con la stessa fluidità di scrittura, con la stessa capacità catalizzatrice delle prime battute del romanzo.
«Abbiamo quasi tutti un’unica storia da raccontare. Non voglio dire che nella vita ci capiti una cosa sola; al contrario, gli avvenimenti sono tantissimi, e noi li trasformiamo in altrettante storie. Ma ce n’è una sola che conta, una sola da raccontare alla fine. E questa è la mia».
Se allora il tono della prima parte è scanzonato e molto maschile (e per maschile non intendo privo di sensibilità ma, al contrario, un concentrato di sensibilità altra da quella femminile), la seconda, in cui il dramma si manifesta, lascia attoniti, nonostante le avvisaglie, per la repentinità con la quale si manifesta, avviene e, infine, si compie.
Si fugge, per non essere travolti.
Ci si allontana, per mettersi in salvo.
Ci si sottrae, per non sommare la propria sconfitta a quella dell’altro.

Ma cosa è meglio, ci ammonisce Barnes sin dell’incipit, che cosa preferiresti? Amare di più e soffrire di più o amare di meno e soffrire di meno?



E allora, ascoltando Paul, un "Casey" Paul settantenne, raccontarci della sua storia con Susan, iniziata quando lui era un inesperto e impacciato diciannovenne e lei una matura madre e moglie quarantottenne, assistendo all’evoluzione della loro anticonvenzionale relazione nata sui campi da tennis di un sobborgo londinese, che la memoria (ancora la memoria, ancora il tempo, ancora il lato oscuro della mente che ricorda e non ricostruisce - «Io sto ricordando il passato, non lo sto ricostruendo» - scrive Barnes) scandaglia e rivive quasi in cerca dei segni che il giovane sé avrebbe dovuto individuare per scongiurare la fine, quella fine, ma anche quale ineluttabile accettazione del fatto che quella era e sarebbe stata l’unica storia possibile, che alternative non ce ne potevano essere, e che in ciascuno di noi resta impressa sulla carne, indelebile, quell’unica storia, felice o infelice che sia stata e che ha determinato le persone che siamo, Barnes ci racconta non solo di una storia di amore, ma anche di una storia di dipendenza, di violenza, di abusi capaci di tratteggiare un'epoca e una nazione che passavano dalla repressione alla libertà sessuale (e qui, come non pensare alla coppia di Chesil Beach di Ian McEwan?), che vedeva esplodere, in una progressione inarrestabile, una rivoluzione dei costumi fino a quel momento impensabile.
Seguiamo le sue parole, ci addentriamo nelle mappe della sua memoria, ricalchiamo le tracce che ci portano al sito archeologico dove è possibile vedere le impronte, preistoriche, lasciate sul suo cuore e nella sua psiche. Sono anche le nostre, lo scopriamo seguendolo, anche noi abbiamo un'unica storia da raccontare, e forse è proprio per questo che la sua, quella di Paul, la sentiamo così vera e così falsa, così vicina e così lontana, così nostra e così estranea: «In amore, ogni cosa è al tempo stesso vera e falsa; l’unico argomento al mondo sul quale è impossibile dire insensatezze», e noi, insieme a Paul, l'abbiamo imparato, scrivendo e cancellando sul nostro taccuino alla voce "amore" le nostre verità.