The Only Story

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Barnes, Julian, Adult Book / Fiction / General / Barnes, Julian
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Traverwood Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Barnes, Julian	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Barnes, Julian	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Barnes, Julian	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Barnes, Julian	4-week checkout	Due 04-23-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Barnes, Julian	4-week checkout	Due 05-11-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Barnes, Julian	4-week checkout	Due 05-10-2024

"From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending, a novel about a young man on the cusp of adulthood and a woman who is already there, a love story shot through with sheer beauty, profound sadness, and deep truth. 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. One summer in the sixties, in a staid suburb south of London, Paul comes home from university, aged nineteen, and is urged by his mother to join the tennis club. In the mixed-doubles tournament he's partnered with Susan Mcleod, a fine player who's forty-eight, confident, ironic, and married, with two nearly adult daughters. She is also a warm companion, their bond immediate. And they soon, inevitably, are lovers. Clinging to each other as though their lives depend on it, they then set up house in London to escape his parents and the abusive Mr. Mcleod. Decades later, with Susan now dead, Paul looks back at how they fell in love, how he freed her from a sterile marriage, and how -- gradually, relentlessly -- everything falling apart, as she succumbed to depression and worse while he struggled to understand the intricacy and depth of the human heart. It's a piercing account of helpless devotion, and of how memory can confound us and fail us and surprise us (sometimes all at once), of how, as Paul puts it, "first love fixes a life forever"-- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Doesn't compare with A Sense of An Ending But Worth a Read submitted by MH17 on July 25, 2018, 1:25pm I came to this book with high expectations, having read A Sense of An Ending, which was remarkable. This book, however, feels like a re-tread, a bit hastily-written perhaps, and does not pack the same emotional punch. Even when he comes in under expectations, though, Barnes is worth a read for his meditations on memory and time and what happens when you can't make love stay.

The Only Story submitted by maywang on July 16, 2021, 1:38pm Nice story. A bit too hasty in plot and writing compared to his other works, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Adulthood submitted by desuka81 on August 1, 2021, 12:29pm a novel about a young man on the cusp of adulthood and a woman who is already there, a love story shot through with sheer beauty, profound sadness, and deep truth