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Julian Barnes

Levels of Life Hardcover – 4 April 2013

by Julian Barnes (Author)

4.1 1,413 ratings

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‘You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...’ Julian Barnes's new book is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded him the 2011 Man Booker Prize described him as ‘an unparalleled magus of the heart’. This book confirms that opinion.

Print length

128 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Jonathan Cape
Publication date

4 April 2013
Dimensions

13.8 x 1.8 x 20.4 cm
ISBN-10

0224098152
ISBN-13

978-0224098151
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Product description

Review

It is extraordinary... [It] would seem to pull off the impossible: to recreate, on the page, what it is like to be alive in the world. -- Emma Brockes ― Guardian

This is a book of rare intimacy and honesty about love and grief. To read it is a privilege. To have written it is astonishing. -- Ruth Scurr ― The Times

It’s an unrestrained, affecting piece of writing, raw and honest and more truthful for its dignity and artistry... Anyone who has loved and suffered loss, or just suffered, should read this book, and re-read it, and re-read it. -- Martin Fletcher ― Independent

Levels of Life is both a supremely crafted artefact and a desolating guidebook to the land of loss. -- John Carey ― Sunday Times

While one might expect a Barnes book to impress, delight, move, disconcert or amuse, the last thing for which his work prepares us is the blast of paralysingly direct emotion that concludes Levels of Life. -- Tim Martin ― Daily Telegraph

From the Inside Flap

'You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...' Julian Barnes' new book is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded him the 2011 Man Booker Prize described him as 'an unparalleled magus of the heart'. This book confirms that opinion.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Jonathan Cape; 1st edition (4 April 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 128 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0224098152
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0224098151
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.8 x 1.8 x 20.4 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 583,075 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 2,296 in Death & Bereavement
- 5,072 in Biographies on Novelist & Playwrights
- 62,192 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
4.1 1,413 ratings

About the author

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Julian Barnes

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Julian Barnes is the author of nine novels, including Metroland, Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, England, England and Arthur and George, and two collections of short stories, Cross Channel and The Lemon Table.

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PurplePepper

What is most annoying

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 July 2023

Verified Purchase

is the Independent's reference to "this devastating book". This description is so off the mark that it makes me think the reviewer hasn't actually read the book, and whoever decided it ought to be on the front cover should be taken outside and, well, given a stern talking-to. Whatever the book is, good, bad, pointless - devastating it is not. Losing a loved one, your partner of many years, on the other hand may be.
I have now read the book three times since I bought it a year ago. Part one and two I still find magical. Part three, unfortunately, continues to leave me cold. It's a man's tale of some of the aftermath of his wife's death; the tale by possibly a man of a certain age and/or generation. He's restrained, detached, keeping the reader at a distance, outside in fact. The wife he has lost he never mentions by name.
Thus, in grief myself, I have not found what
I was looking for.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 April 2013

Verified Purchase

In this short book, Barnes gives an intimate picture of his on-going grief over the death of his wife in 2008. It is not easy reading as it touches on aspects of grief that most of us will have faced at some time and will either still be going through or will with luck have moved on from. He starts with a contemplation of ballooning as a metaphor for love raising us to a higher level, but the bulk of the book is about how he has lived with his grief, including his musings on whether he would or will commit suicide.

I would prefer not to give this a 'star-rating' as it surely cannot be defined as 'I love it', 'It's OK' etc., but Amazon's review system doesn't allow for the unrated or unrateable. It is undoubtedly skilfully written and moving in parts. It is, and I'm sorry to say it, also self-indulgent - while accepting that other people have undoubtedly undergone grief, Barnes writes as if he is the first to truly experience and understand it. It also seemed strange that this man in his sixties writes as if he is encountering grief for the first time in his life. I suspect he is subtly making a case for the grief of an uxorious husband (he uses the word uxorious himself, several times) being greater than other griefs.

I would, I suspect, have found this deeply moving had it been a letter from a close friend, but its intimacy is too intense - it left me with an uncomfortable sense of voyeurism. He criticises, in ways that I'm sure would enable them to recognise themselves, his friends' attempts to console him with clichéd expressions of condolence and encouragement. Have we not all felt that? But have we not all understood the genuine warmth behind these clichés and forgiven the clumsiness? Indeed, have we not all been as clumsy when the situation was reversed? But I think it is his musing on the possibility of his own suicide, a future he does not wholly rule out, that left me feeling I had read a private letter addressed to someone else.

We will all react differently to this book and for some it may provide comfort to know that the feelings we feel are not unique to us. I wish I could have written an uncritical review of this - I considered not posting a review at all, but it seems to me that some people will be misled by the publisher's blurb, as I was, and find themselves reading not a novel about 'ballooning, photography, love and grief' but an essay on Barnes' personal road through his own grief - a road it seems he is still travelling.

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emma who reads a lot

"perhaps, with luck, to France"

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 April 2013

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We meet in this book a man who feels his life has been completely, irretrievably ruined by the loss of his wife. Though two interesting stories come before (about ballooning and Sarah Bernhardt) the main energy, soul, focus of the book is the last section, a grief-drenched piece of writing by her widower, describing what came after the death of Pat Kavanagh.

Barnes has always dedicated his books to his wife, and this one is no exception, and I found myself at times almost feeling envious of the extent of feeling he had for her. How lucky he was (and so also, how unlucky) to find someone he was able to love with such longevity and depth, feeling she was 'sexy', clever AND the ideal long-distance walking companion - there's not many that can say that.

Others have already remarked on the discomfort that attacks the reader as they glimpse the world of a mourner who cannot forgive clumsy, ill-thought ventures by others to say 'the right thing'. I thought this third section was brutally frank but also beautifully constructed - it doesn't have his prose's usual balance and wit, which isn't surprising given the subject matter, but it does have all its traditional power. He is able to capture so perfectly his own desire to watch unimportant football matches and his new addiction to opera, with all its dramatic, over-the-top emotions - suddenly making sense to a grieving husband.

The book repays re-reading. It ends with an odd sentence about escaping, 'perhaps with luck, to France'. This brings the whole book back to its beginning with the very earliest attempts to cross the channel in balloons. I loved this sense of completeness and circularity, in a book which seemed so ravaging at times. I loved how it connected with all his other writings and his passionate sense of France. (And I loved how it reminded me of standing on those clifftops by the Bleriot memorial looking back towards England!) It's by far his saddest book, but don't miss it.

PS To remind yourself that Pat was also lucky to have him, try afterwards reading Nothing To Be Frightened Of , one of the best, funniest, sweetest, most fantastic books about being afraid of dying / families / memory. A great counterbalance.

Update, 22 May
I just re-read this book, and on re-reading I noticed even more the connections between the different sections. On first go, the bareness of the grief in the final chapter is so raw that I ended up ignoring what a well-textured book it is overall (I see other readers here have been flummoxed by the same contrast). Second time around I saw how much the earlier sections emphasise lifting off, viewing the world from above, leaving earthly cares behind; I felt this clearly related to the ideas of the third section, about loss, suicide, death. And I was much more moved by the details of section 2: a tall Englishman meets a tiny, fine-boned, beautiful, Slav-eyed foreigner and falls completely in love with her, but cannot keep her with him.... His name is Mr 'Burnaby' - too close to Barnes! These first two sections now seem to me completely relevant, essential, and beautiful.

30 people found this helpful

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Levels of Life Hardcover – 4 April 2013

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