Talking It Over
Julian Barnes
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars
3.67
· 18 ratings · 288 pages · Published: 05 Apr 1991
Until everything goes wrong.
When it does, Gillian, Stuart and Oliver decide that it's time to talk it all over. Because although they'd all agree that the orderliness of their lives has suddenly mutated into chaos - the alarming fluctuations of love being the chief culprit - that's about all they'd agree on ("One bit of information and people are immediately off into their theories," says Stuart, a bit pedantically). And each of them is determined to be heard.
What we hear are three wonderfully realized voices telling three wildly different versions of one story - presenting the protean facts of disintegrating and escalating affections, laying blame, taking blame, talking about themselves, about each other, across each other, behind each other's backs, all in an attempt to get at the endlessly elusive truth. And what they reveal is the sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartrending process of selective memory that deeply colors the (more or less) fine art of eyewitnessing.
Once again, the brilliant author of "Flaubert's Parrot", "Staring at the Sun" and "A History of the World in 10-and-1/2 Chapters" gives us a dazzling work of imagination: witty, wry, playful and, in the end, honed to a razor-sharp emotional edge.
Tagged as:
- romance 4
- contemporary 3
- literary fiction 3
- 20th century 3
- funny 3
- friendship 3
- love triangle 2
- realistic 2
- unreliable narrator 2
- postmodernism 2
- drama 1
- satire 1
- comedy 1
- supernatural 1
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- format - reader age
- audiobook 2
- book 1
- adult fiction 1