Departure(s)

“[Barnes] has not merely blurred the line between fact and fiction; he has expunged it. . . . skillfully weaving in thoughts on love, on aging, on writing fiction, on preparing for death. It’s a virtuoso performance.” —Clare McHugh, The Washington Post

“Julian Barnes has achieved that rare thing: a departure on his terms, with a moving work that returns us to his oeuvre once again.” —Frank Lawton, The New Statesman

“Thoughtful and dynamic.” —Jeffrey Condran, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“A culmination . . . shimmering with [Barnes’s] silky, erudite prose; beneath the suave surface is an earnest investigation into the mysterious ways of the human heart.” —Adam Begley, The Atlantic

“Departure(s) is a richly layered autofiction mixing medical memoir and thwarted love story. . . . Artfully constructed to seem casually conversational, it braids erudite essayism and fiction. . . . [Barnes] relishes crossing a boundary of genre.” —Anthony Cummins, The Observer

“Slim and stark. . . Barnes’s prose is largely stripped bare. . . . . [yet] brims with wisdom reluctantly acquired. . . . His appetite for playfulness and detail, for bedrock human stuff, remains unslakable.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review

“Barnes is perhaps the great interpreter of mundane grandiosity, or grandiose mundanity. . . . Whether he’s writing fiction or nonfiction, Barnes is excellent, and always has been.” —Alex Clark, The Guardian

“Rewarding. . . . At once confidently authoritative and tentatively questioning. Barnes assumes a personal relation with his readers. . . . His voice is informal, confiding, sometimes playful. He appeals to our own experiences. . . . His vigilant attention to the world demands an answering thoughtfulness from his readers.” —Dinah Birch, Times Literary Supplement

“A masterpiece.” —Frances Wilson, The Spectator

“Departure(s), like so much of his work, makes for very worthwhile reading.” —Pat Carty, The Irish Times

“The writing is cerebral, but companionably so. . . . [Barnes] is the most punctilious of authors—orderly, factual, reasonable and contained. He is interested in the world and he loves digesting information in clear and presentable ways.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

“Triumphant. . . . Departure(s) interrogates the relationship between life and literature. . . enthralling and affecting.” —Max Lui, Financial Times

“Proustian in both focus and scope, Barnes’s philosophical flights are . . . reminiscent of W. G. Sebald, but with a warmth, humanity, and humor that are distinctly his own. . . . This is a rewarding and profound exploration of the human condition from a deeply captivating writer.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Departure(s) is slim but weighty, digressive yet incisive. . . . It is a welcome addition to his bibliography. . . [And] gives us unprecedented access to the thoughts and feelings of this extraordinarily interesting, erudite writer.” —Heller McAlpin, NPR

“Barnes explores memory, identity, and aging in this elegiacal and witty metafictional novella. . . . [and] remains in top form. Readers with a penchant for the precise prose of Ian McEwan or the collage metafiction of Sigrid Nunez will love his latest.” —Jon Jeffreyes, Library Journal (starred review)

“A revelatory meditation on love, death, and memory. . . . Barnes dives headlong into the slippery nature of memory and what one forgets through time or necessity. It’s an understated but graceful valediction by a writer whose work won’t soon be forgotten.” —Publishers Weekly

“An autofictional remembrance. . . . Questioning the merits of novel-writing as an endeavor, the way it prompts the writer to exaggerate and betray. . . . It’s clear that Barnes is writing with a certain urgency.” —Kirkus Reviews

“[Departure(s)] though slender, is packed with delights. . . . Barnes writes with candor. . . a fitting reminder of how he can be, by turns, playful and poignant.” —Malcom Forbes, The Washington Examiner

“As always with Barnes. . . the prose is enviably elegant, as when he writes that fiction ‘requires the slow composting of life before it becomes useable material.’ Literary nutrients abound in this generous work.” —Michael Magras, Shelf Awareness

“Departure(s) looks back across a life shaped by memory, loss and revision. [It’s] is an examination of how people live with its absence, its revisions and its aftereffects.” —Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat Gazette

“Illuminating. . . . An intimate, autobiographical book dedicated to taking stock of the author’s life in writing. . . . Barnes asks us to remember him as an observer of these ‘many and varied expressions of life that pass in front of us,’ ever attuned to how a tiny episode ‘might possibly metastasise into a story.’ The storytelling impulse makes us human. Barnes’ books are a celebration of this: long may they continue to be read.” —Sarah Moorhouse, Harvard Review Online

“Reading Departure(s) is an unparalleled lived experience.” —Saurabh Sharma, The Hindustan Times

“With his finely tuned language, his erudition, and his willingness to tackle unfashionable subjects (like death) head-on in fiction, [Barnes] evokes nostalgia for an older mode of writing. His novels are a reminder and an assurance—that fiction can be serious without being preachy.” —Anusua Mukherjee, The Hindu

“Moving and provocative.” —John Loonan, Washington Independent Review of Books

“Consistently interesting, and always likeable.” —Nikhil Krishnan, The Telegraph

“Completely sui generis.” —David Sexton, The Standard

“Barnes’s prose remains unmistakably his: dryly elegant, rhythmically exact, capable of producing an aphorism that feels earned. . . . Readable in a day, Departure(s) leaves a longer aftertaste. It comes away from death and returns to attention: what we notice when we believe the days are numbered, and what we miss when we assume they are not.” —Paul Perry, The Independent