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.

Stuart, stodgy and predictable, was briefly married to Gillian before dashing Oliver stole her away. Ten years have passed, Stuart has remarried, divorced, become financially successful in the U.S., and returned to England. Oliver and Gillian are still married, the parents of two daughters. As their lives once again intertwine, many of the old tensions revive, along with some new tensions, the result of the characters' changes in ten years.

Barnes's characters are vivid, and their speeches to the audience are both dramatic and real. One can easily see how the various characters would interpret events differently, and that aspect of the book is fun to read. There are numerous disadvantages to Barnes's approach, however. The characters are independent of the reader, isolated not only from the reader but from each other, and they feel like actors on a stage who have not invited anyone in to share their lives. The reader's role becomes that of an observer or a judge, deciding not only what happened but what will happen in the future. Readers looking for an unusual narrative will find this book fascinating and carefully constructed, though perhaps a bit slow. Mary Whipple

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.