Love, etc [Paperback]

The book retains the technique of out-to-camera narration, lending an intimacy to the story that makes us relate it to our real lives. Gillian doesn't just complain about her unsatisfactory sex life, she asks us how it compares to our own. Each event generates multiple points of view; not just from the central three characters, but peripheral figures like Gillian's daughter Sophie, or Mrs Dyer, the old woman across the road. There is no objective record of events; Barnes's message is that we shape our history according to how we see ourselves, even as those around us are forming radically different perceptions.

Overall the book feels a lot darker than Talking It Over. The characters, now in their forties, show no sign of having learnt from the upheavals of ten years ago. There are more rough edges than the last time round. Julian Barnes shows once again that he is a fine novelist with a great talent for dissecting complicated emotions.

Given the high standards of the best of Barnes's fiction his readership have certain expectations that if not met lead to great disappointment. Julian Barnes' previous novel, England, England was one such disappointment. A heavy handed satire, toying with notions of nationality and nationhood, it somehow found its way onto the Booker Prize shortlist (perhaps saying more about the paucity of modern British fiction and the quality of the judging panel than the quality of the novel). It is disappointing to note that the novel under review, Love etc, is not a return to form.

Love etc is a belated sequel to Talking it over (1991), and was the name of a French film adapted from Talking it over in 1997. Talking it over itself seemed to stem from the half chapter in a History of the World in 10 1/2 chapters - an essay on the meaning of love. Taliking it over had three principal characters, Stuart - the quiet boring one; Oliver - the flamboyant pretentious one; and Gillian - the sensible one. The three characters were caught in a love triangle. The plot seemed to echo that enjoyed so often by new wave French cinema. The novelty of Barnes approach was that each character took it in turns to address the reader. The novel was an exercise in perspective and unreliable narration (some years after Martin Amis's similar Success).

Love etc. adopts the same approach. There are the three central characters picking up where Talking it Over left of. They are ten years older, little wiser. Stuart is still relatively boring, has somehow managed to make a lot of money in the US, has remarried and separated, and keeps something nasty in his wallet; Oliver is a waster, still pretentious, still in love with Gillian; and Gillian is still relatively sensible. There is a greater role in this novel for Gillian's mother, whose gnostic words of wisdom litter the novel like Confuscian thought. The characters also still directly address the reader.

There are advantages in this approach. When done well the character's approach to the reader is not mediated through an ominscient authorial voice. When done well, the reader is shown how the same event can be viewed in many different ways by different observers. However, where the stylistic device gave Talking it over its novelty, grates here. We've seen it done before and the process feels like an exercise in ventriloquism. The characters all seem like different facets of one character, rther than distinct personae. The characters are too alike, their individuality based on stylistic quirks (Oliver uses big words; Stuart is banal), rather than any particular revelations of character.

Barnes gives the novel a "shock" ending which while handled sensitively seemed like an attempt to give the novel an issue to deal with rather than a necessary action of the characters.

This novel is disappointing, and this review has picked out what for this reviewer were weaknesses. Saying that, what is disappointing for Barnes is still a level above most contemporary English literary fiction.

The novel is very readable. It has a wry wit; and raises interesting observations and questions on the nature of love. However, I think, ultimately, that the novel fails.

This novel can be read without having read Talking it over, but the characters have more depth if Love etc is read after Talking it over.

If you want to try a Barnes novel I suggest Flaubert's Parrot or Staring at the sun. If you enjoy Love etc, try Alain de Botton's Essays in Love, or - in a very different style - Ivan Klima's Love and Garbage.

In *Love, Etc.*, the sequel to *Talking It Over* (1991), three characters involved in a love triangle take turns, uninterrupted by a narrator, to tell their versions of events. New readers will find it no handicap not to have read *Talking It Over*; others will be pleased to catch up with the characters.

We find Stuart making contact again with his former best friend Oliver, the man who married Stuart's former wife, Gillian, months after falling in love with her on Stuart and Gillian's wedding day. 'Well, I've changed', announces Stuart. A successful businessman now, he sets about 'rescuing' the couple by employing Oliver and renting the couple and their daughters his and Gillian's old marital home. Gillian, now a 'coper' ('quality time - there's always another load of washing up'), reluctantly accepts Stuart's ostensible kindness. A picture restorer, she is the breadwinner, and looks after not only her two children but also Oliver, who suffers a hopeless depression after beginning to doubt her loyalty.

Oliver, despising the seriousness of the novel's other voices, takes pleasure in alluding to Shakespeare, Byron and The Song of Roland (amongst other texts). He delights in favourite phrases ('Une etre sans raisonable raison d'etre) and favourite words('picayune', 'sempiternal'). 'Someone round here must represent the ludic and the abstract,' he says. Clever, pretentious, amusing and finally pathetic, he is brilliantly drawn and Barnes clearly has more interest in him than the rather pedestrian Gillian.

Despite Oliver's thought that Stuart might support one of his unfulfilled artistic 'projects' the plot moves towards Stuart's revenge on the 'wife-stealer' and his attempt to regain Gillian. Stuart presents himself as strident, reliable and realistic. At first he might seem the dullard that Oliver claims he is, but he is as difficult to pin down as his former best friend.

As events move towards disaster, the characters views of love change. Oliver, having long believed that love comes first, everything else in life being an 'Etc.', comes to see 'The sad truth' that relationships 'are about power.' For Stuart, 'First love is the only love', but after having taken his revenge he begins to doubt his love for Gillian. For Gillian, love is largely about managing a gone-stale marriage; yet after Stuart has taken his revenge she sees whether or not he still loves her as 'the key question'.

The final chapter is entitled 'What Do You Think?' Despite the reader's desire for certainty and the characters' attempts to charm and cajole him into accepting partial versions of events, one can only conclude that the truth simply doesn't exist. We are left just with different people's different stories.

As with *A History*, it is likely that readers will differ widely in their interpretations of what Barnes is up to. This is a book to read and enjoy, to lend to others and to argue about. Barnes has written something that will simultaneously delight readers and prompt them to consider anew the nature of love and the importance of stories in the construction of reality.