The Only Story (Russian Edition)

by Julian Barnes

Overview

Vpervye na russkom — novejshij (opublikovan v Britanii v fevrale 2018 goda) roman proslavlennogo Dzhuliana Barnsa, laureata Bukerovskoj premii, komandora Francuzskogo ordena iskusstv i literatury, odnogo iz samyh yarkih i original'nyh prozaikov sovremennoj Britanii. "Odna istoriya" — ehto "pronicatel'nyj, yuvelirnymi kasaniyami ispolnennyj analiz togo, chto proiskhodit v golove i v dushe u vlyublennogo cheloveka" (The Times); ehto "bolee glubokoe i ehffektivnoe issledovanie temy, uzhe zatronutoj Barnsom v "Predchuvstvii konca" — romane, za kotoryj on nakonec poluchil Bukerovskuyu premiyu" (The Observer). "U bol'shinstva iz nas est' nagotove tol'ko odna istoriya, — pishet Barns. — Sobytij proiskhodit beschislennoe mnozhestvo, o nih mozhno slozhit' skol'ko ugodno istorij. No sushchestvenna odna-edinstvennaya; v konechnom schete tol'ko ee i stoit rasskazyvat'". Itak, poznakom'tes' s Polom; emu devyatnadcat' let. V tennisnom klube v tihom londonskom prigorode on vstrechaet missis S'yuzen Maklaud; ej sorok vosem'. S ehtogo i nachinaetsya ih edinstvennaya istoriya — ved' "vlyublennym svojstvenno schitat', budto ih istoriya ne ukladyvaetsya ni v kakie ramki i rubriki"…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9785389148079
Publisher:	Inostranka
Publication date:	03/28/2018
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	437 KB
Language:	Russian

About the Author

Джулиан Барнс (р.1946) - английский писатель, неоднократно входивший в шорт-лист Букеровской премии. Джулиан Патрик Барнс родился 19 января 1946 года в Лестере (Великобритания). В 1957-1964 годах учился в городской лондонской школе, затем, в 1968 году, с отличием окончил оксфордский колледж "Магдалена". Три года в качестве лексикографа принимал участие в издании дополнительных томов "Оксфордского английского словаря". В 1977 году Джулиан Барнс стал обозревателем и литературным редактором "New Statesmen" и "New Review", а в 1979-1986 годах был телевизионным критиком в "New Statesmen" и "Observer". С 1990 года он сотрудничает с журналом "New Yorker".

Hometown:

London, England

Date of Birth:

January 19, 1946

Place of Birth:

Leicester, England

Education:

Degree in modern languages from Magdalen College, Oxford, 1968

Read an Excerpt

1
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Only Story"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Julian Barnes.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Reading Group Guide

The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of The Only Story, the newest novel by Julian Barnes.

1. The opening line reads, “Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less?” Which would you pick? Do you agree with Paul that this isn’t a fair questions because “we don’t have the choice”?

2. Susan and Paul have a quarter-century age difference, yet he repeatedly insists throughout the novel that neither one of them was taking advantage of the other. Do you agree, or do you think there is an inherent power imbalance between them due to that gap?

3. Games and sports feature prominently throughout the story, whether tennis, golf, or crossword puzzles. How do each of these activities, and the attitudes the characters have toward them, illuminate and illustrate the nature of love as they interpret it?

4. Discuss the character of Joan and her role as Paul’s only true confidant when it comes to his relationship with Susan.

5. Point of view consistently changes throughout the novel, with part one being in first person, part two in second person, and part three in third, second, and first. Why do you think Barnes chose to do this? How did the different perspectives impact the reading experience and influence how you understand Paul?

6. On pages 115–116, Paul presents his theory that memory is like a “log-splitter.” How is the nature of memory demonstrated throughout the novel, and do you agree with Paul when he says, “Life is a cross section, memory is a split down the grain, and memory follows it all the way to the end”?

7. As Susan’s alcoholism progresses, she tells Paul she has “a moral disease” caused by her being from “a played-out generation” (page 169). What do you think is the impetus for her drinking, and how do you interpret her repeated insistence that her generation is “played out”?

8. A subsequent girlfriend of Paul’s calls Susan a “madwoman” in an attic (page 186), a reference to not only Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre but also the groundbreaking 1979 work of feminist literary criticism of that title by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. How does Susan fit into the broader tradition of literary housewives? Is she a transgressive feminist, a beleaguered relic of pre–sexual revolution England, or something else entirely?

9. Do you think Paul was right to “hand back” Susan to her daughters, or do you think he abandoned her? How did his decision color your opinion of him?

10. As we see throughout the novel, and as is explicitly discussed in part three, Paul is obsessed with defining love. Discuss what it means when, on page 246, he posits, “Perhaps love could never be captured in a definition; it could only ever be captured in a story.”

11. How is marriage represented in the novel, and how important is it that Paul himself never marries?

12. Gordon Macleod is an extremely complex man—something Paul comes to realize only later in life. Discuss the evolution of their relationship, and Gordon’s significance as a man who subscribes to traditional British masculinity.

13. Paul and Susan’s final encounter is, on the surface, anticlimactic, but at its core imbued with deep significance. How did you interpret it?

14. After their first match, when Paul apologizes for causing them to lose, Susan says, “The most vulnerable spot in doubles is always down the middle” (page 9). How does this idea reemerge throughout the novel—that our weakest spot is the space between us and someone else?

15. What is your only story?

Editorial Reviews

02/19/2018
Barnes’s deeply touching novel is a study of heartbreak; like his Man Booker Prize–winning The Sense of an Ending, it includes fading reminiscences, emotional complications, and moments of immeasurable sadness as an aging Englishman remembers his first and only love. Bored 19-year-old Paul meets 48-year-old Susan at the tennis club when they pair up for mixed doubles. She has a husband and two daughters older than Paul, but it is the 1960s, Paul’s first summer home from university, and he is impervious to social correctness, parental disapproval, or long-term consequences. Paul and Susan share a satiric view of their suburban surroundings that turns into a secret romance, then a not-so-secret affair. Together they move to London, where, over the next decade, Paul studies law and becomes a law office manager while Susan deteriorates into alcoholism and depression. Fifty years later, Paul looks back on the relationship in an account strewn with unanswerable questions and observations about the nature of love. As painful memories mount, Paul’s narration switches first to second person and then builds more distance by settling into third person. By revisiting the flow and ebb of one man’s passion, Barnes eloquently illuminates the connection between an old man and his younger self. 75,000-copy announced first printing. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

[The Only Story] combines complicated relationships with a limpid, unfussy style, brilliant wit with sorrow, an obsession with love and its shelf life, and a commitment not only to great storytelling but also to exploring how stories are told.”—Porter Shreve, San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Written with crystalline retrospection. . . . The youthful missteps that give shape to life is Julian Barnes’s great theme.”—Megan O’Grady, Vogue
 
“Barnes’ prose is quietly elegant and adroit. . . . [The Only Story is] a thought-provoking meditation on memory and the seemingly endless complexities of love.”—Doug Childers, Richmond Times-Dispatch
 
“Tender and touching. . . . The Only Story is a gracefully told and . . . honest rendering of the arc of a great passion.”—Harvey Freedenberg, Book Reporter
 
“Heartbreaking. . . . It’s a cliché to say the love is inexplicable, but the strength of The Only Story is Barnes’s willingness to explore the nature of that inexplicability, how it makes for honeymoons and tragedies alike.”—Mark Athitakis, Newsday
 
“Beautifully done.”—Heller McAlpin, NPR
 
“Perplexing, profoundly enjoyable. . . . Lyrical and lasting.”—Thomas J. Millay, Los Angeles Review of Books
 
“Barnes’s novels, essays, and stories are among the most innovative works of literature of the past forty years [and The Only Story] is one of the best books of his career.”—Michael Magras, The Houston Chronicle
 
“The prose master paints a lovely, elegiac portrait of a young man’s disruptive love affair . . . forgoing the easy literary clichés of May-December romance for something much sadder, deeper, and more resonant.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Mesmeric. . . . The reader drifts along on Barnes’ gorgeous, undulating prose. Focusing on love, memory, nostalgia, and how contemporary Britain came to be, Barnes’ latest will enrapture readers from beginning to end.”—Alexander Moran, Booklist (starred)

“[This] deeply touching novel is a study of heartbreak. . . . By revisiting the flow and ebb of one man’s passion, Barnes eloquently illuminates the connection between an old man and his younger self.”—Publishers Weekly

“Consistently surprising. . . . It shows a novelist at the height of his powers [and is] a book that quietly sinks its hooks into the reader and refuses to let go.”—Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Times (UK)
 
“Often playful and always elegant, [it] propels us forward, first into joy, and then into despair, and there is no escape from the central story as it becomes bleaker. This intense, taut, sad and often beautiful tale may well be Barnes's best.”—Lara Feigel, The Spectator
 
“One to savour. . . . Emotionally acute, profoundly beautiful, as droll as it is deep.”— Hephzibah Anderson, The Mail on Sunday
 
“Gentle, bleak, and brilliant . . . His themes are the big, unfashionable universals—ageing, memory, above all love.”—Jon Day, The Financial Times

From the Publisher

★ 2018-02-06
A May-September romance devolves into dysfunction and regret.Much like Barnes' 2011 novel, The Sense of an Ending, this one involves a man looking back at a youthful error in judgment and considering its consequences. Paul, the narrator, recalls being 19 and falling for 48-year-old Susan, who's in a loveless, sexless, and abusive marriage. Cocksure about their relationship in spite of others' judgments—Paul's parents and Susan's husband are righteously indignant, and the duo are kicked out of the tennis club where they began their affair—Paul decides to move in with Susan to pursue "exactly the relationship of which my parents would most disapprove." The thrill of independence is short-lived, though, as Susan's nascent alcoholism intensifies; the first half of the book mentions Susan's drinking habit, but as if to mirror Paul's youthful ignorance, Barnes doesn't overtly signal how deep she's sunk until she's practically beyond help. Barnes also shifts the narrative voice across the novel to underscore Paul's callowness: The novel opens in first person, turns to second as if to shift blame upon the reader, then closes in a bereft, distant third. Barnes' characterizations of both Paul and Susan are detailed and robust, though given the narrative structure, Susan remains a bit of a cipher. What prompted her to drink? What kept her from pushing back against her husband? Most critically, what drew her to Paul? Paul, though, is mainly concerned with what made their romance distinct from the usual romantic clichés. In other words, he's narcissistic, and his rhetoric, in first person or not, often takes on a needy, pleading tone ("sometimes, first love cauterizes the heart"; "tough love is also tough on the lover.") But that's by Barnes' design, and it's consistently clear that Paul was in love, just tragically ill-equipped to manage it.A somber but well-conceived character study suffused with themes of loss and self-delusion.

Kirkus Reviews