Nothing to Be Frightened Of (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

Julian Barnes is a great author and an interesting thinker, and his subject here is perhaps the biggest of all subjects - mortality: specifically, the deaths of one's parents, one's own decline and fall, the meaning of life. Important news, then, and from an important source. I very much looked forward to watching his perspective form, and perhaps finding comfort and wisdom, or even just a few laughs, in his elegant prose.

Unfortunately the book didn't quite live up to its promise - for me, anyway. This is a very literary book - a self-consciously literary book in which every thought, feeling, experience, is dutifully backed up by a strangely numb Allusion To Literature. Instead of calling on his vast literary experience to enliven or illustrate the deadening weight of the feelings we all experience when our parents die, I felt Barnes was actually using literature as a hiding place from the feelings he meant to engage with. The net effect is an apparent callousness - as if one's dad's death is just an excellent opportunity for another starred First. I'm sure that is not what he intended, and God knows we all need a place to hide ... The book was just a little smaller in scope than I'd hoped.

Still read it, though. He writes like an angel.

The Grim Reaper: is he all bad? Having read this book it looks as though Julian Barnes certainly thinks so; some people are afraid of dying and some people are afraid of the blank eternal nothingness of death itself. I'd hold my hand up to the former - just the mere thought of hospital beds and pained-looks from relatives, not to mention all the weeping and wailing, makes me shiver with horror, but eternal nothingness? No, I can't say I have a problem with that. Barnes sees things from the opposite view-point. Dying is fine, it's just the fact that it results in death which causes him problems.

Barnes is always a joy to read. He writes with a dry elegance and he invariably has interesting things to say. Here, amidst all the staring into the abyss, he writes with humour - and perhaps more warmth than he might care to admit - about his parents and grandparents: their lives and loves, and of course their final release from earthly bonds. He also writes with a fabulous gallows humour about funerals - the fat worm that positively seems to strut in the soil by the open grave - and the way in which we dream about dying (quietly, with dignity and a witty final line) differs from the sadly more common reality (howling into the darkness). He is also good on religion, indeed the book begins with something of an atheist's lament: "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him'. Barnes's brother, a philosopher, regards this sentiment as 'soppy' and I know exactly what he means but I'm with Julian on this one. I don't believe either, but I suspect I'd feel happier if I did.

There is a great deal of gloomy graveside meditation in here but every page is touched with humour, reflection and learning. Barnes is great at wheeling out the apposite quotation or anecdote. He's also good on the nature of memory and the philosophical examnation of death ('to be a philosopher is to learn how to die'). It's not a book for everyone but, for those of us who have ever reflected upon the welcoming grave, it's a beautiful and profound meditation on final things. A book to have by your bedside as the light fades....

I have long been a fan of Julian Barnes and purchased this new volume without reading reviews, as I now tend to do with favourite authors. I took it for granted that the writing would be excellent and it was. However, I was amazed at the feat that he has brought off here. The discourse on life and death, interwoven with autobiographical detail, passages about Jules Renard [and you don't need to know anything about him to enjoy the writing - to me he was only a name],combine to produce a stunning and thought-provoking book. It is one of the best he has written, for sheer content and style. Although death figures large, the result is never morbid. To me it is a celebration of life by one of the most literary of all writers. Where another author might have written separate chapters or disappeared down cul de sacs, Barnes has produced a masterpiece of constrained, fluid writing, integrating all the elements brilliantly.