Pulse [Paperback]

Like most collections of short stories, the quality and interest of the individual stories varies. I found the final one - "Pulse", from which the volume gets its title - the most satisfying, if that is the right word for a story told by a man whose own marriage is disintegrating and whose elderly parents are facing serious health problems. In thirty pages Barnes creates a poignant picture of three people who are determinedly resilient in the face of life's problems. There are several further similarly sad stories, whilst others are lighter, for example the four separate "At Phil and Joanna's" stories which recount the dinner party conversations of a group of friends. I would like to think that these conversations are meant to be a caricature of the sorts of conversations that slightly smug middle class people might hold at dinner parties, since each participant seems to be trying to impress the others by how clever he/she is, and in the process they all come across as rather unlikeable. I quite enjoyed reading these stories once I had decided to view them as caricatures, but I can't help wondering whether this was really Barnes's intention. Perhaps he really does talk to his friends like this! As usual with Barnes's writing there is plenty of wit; I particularly enjoyed his observation on page 180 about a group of four noisily quarrelling people that "Mozart would have happily set this operatic quartet to music".

The short story format is a challenging one for a serious novelist, since it doesn't provide the opportunity for extended development of characters and themes. It is therefore difficult for even the very best writers to write anything memorable in this format. As an illustration, what are your ten favourite books? I suspect that virtually no-one would include a collection of short stories in his or her list. So, it's perhaps sensible to assess the quality of such a collection against that of other similar collections rather than against full length novels. I tried this with Barnes's volume. I have recently read or re-read three other similar collections: Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes; Graham Greene's Twenty-One Stories; and Doris Lessing's The Story Of A Non-Marrying Man And Other Stories. For me, Barnes doesn't come near to matching Lessing, but this is hardly a serious criticism since she probably represents the gold standard in terms of modern short fiction. I thought, though, that Barnes's collection was much better than Ishiguro's and also somewhat better than Greene's. So, Barnes can stand his ground with some of the best, and I think that this collection deserves to be widely read.

"Moreover the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'Also take for yourself quality spices--five hundred shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much sweet-smelling cinnamon (two hundred and fifty shekels), two hundred and fifty shekels of sweet-smelling cane, five hundred shekels of cassia, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, and a hin of olive oil.'" -- Exodus 30:22-24 (NKJV)

At their best, Julian Barnes' stories in this collection are better than the best of his novels that I've read. His sense of irony can be devastating in the smaller confines of a short story. "East Wind" is such a story and powerfully opens the collection. "The Limner" is almost as good, but in a quite different way . . . emphasizing that the meek can get the upper hand.

"Pulse" was my least favorite story . . . but it's certainly well written.

I also wasn't thrilled by the four-part cocktail hour entitled "At Phil & Joanna's."

I strongly suspect that Julian Barnes could produce a much better volume of stories, but that would require choosing them for their quality . . . rather than for their fitting into a theme.

I would be glad to read another set, but I'd be tempted to check first to see which stories other people liked best and to just read those.

See what you think.

This is the first collection of Julian Barnes' short stories that I have read, having previously enjoyed Arthur and George. This is an exceptionally enjoyable and diverse collection that frequently hits notes of beauty along the way.

Overall, these stories have a wide variety of starting points and settings, although there are recurring characters in the four "At Phil and Joanna" stories that are interleaved into the first half of the book. The "Phil and Joanna" stories follow the conversations of a group of friends attending dinner parties at a number of occasions. The speakers aren't identified, leaving the reader to work out whose voice is whose, and they have a realistic feel whilst also being very funny.

Whilst there humour to be found within the other stories, there is a sense of loneliness or loss running through a number of the stories. Whilst the story "Marriage Lines" focuses more explicitly on bereavement, it is often more subtly explored in the other stories. Barnes introduces us to a range of characters who have found themselves isolated either by through circumstances beyond them, or inadvertently of their own making. So, we are introduced to a pair of mid-list female novelists competing against each other but with no one to go home to in "Sleeping with John Updike"; we meet a rambler struggling to find a soul-mate in "Trespass"; "The Limner" is about a deaf portrait painter; and in "Harmony" features a pianist being treated for her loss of sight. My personal favourite was "Gardner's Questions", which focuses on a domestic tiff about what to do when a couple acquire a house with a garden for the first time. The characters are always well drawn, the narrators voice works well in each story and these are stories that are frequently moving.

Ultimately the stories are all well put together and it would be difficult to pick out a truly dud story, although I found "Carcassonne" and "Complicity" slightly less enjoyable than other stories. The stories in this volume don't end with a bang nor will get the readers' pulse racing - instead they are more low-key and successfully say much about human relationships and our own private worlds.