Nothing to be Frightened of [Hardcover]

Barnes has an extremely lively mind, and a distinctive voice, which gives a certain jauntiness or gaiety to his darker
--* New York Review New York Review

`intensely serious book of striking elegance: a clever, complicated reverie on last things' --Sunday Telegraph

'It is entertaining, intriguing, absorbing ... elegance that makes a sombre subject irresistible reading.'

'...witty, poignant and allusive, deals with the problems of memory and bristles with asides on poetry, penguins and religion...'

'A book length essay which Barnes fans will adore'

`The best pages... are those in which he evokes his parents'

`Barnes dissects with tremendous verve and insight this awesome inevitability of death and its impact on the human psyche.'

`The grim reaper slinks through every page of Julian Barnes's compelling memoir-cum-meditation...he is consistently interesting and entertaining'

`an elegant, ludic meditation on death'

`intricate and elegantly structured beneath its anecdotal surface'

`It is not, Barnes tells us, an autobiography. It is rather an essay in the best sense: speculative and precise, intimate and metaphysical, capacious and democratic in the variety of voices, alive and dead, that are invited to counsel the author as he edges his way towards the void'

'I don't believe in God, but I miss Him.' Julian Barnes' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the French writer Jules Renard. Though he warns us that 'this is not my autobiography', the result is a tour of the mind of one of our most brilliant writers. When Angela Carter reviewed Barnes' first novel, "Metroland", she praised the mature way he wrote about death. Now, nearly thirty years later, he returns to the subject in a wise , funny and constantly surprising book, which defies category and classification - except as Barnesian.

Julian Barnes is the author of nine novels, including Metroland, Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10 Chapters, England, England and Arthur and George, and two collections of short stories, Cross Channel and The Lemon Table.