di un amore
Pensi che ti si schianterà il cuore.
Adesso, qui, subito.
E se non ti si schianta subito, leggendo di questunica storia, poco ci manca.
Perché Barnes ha il pregio raro, comune a pochi eletti, di cambiare registro senza alcuno strappo, di saper trasformare in tragedia la commedia, di passare dalla prima alla terza persona in poche pagine e di coinvolgerti, con il TU, come se facessi parte di quellunica storia, di passare dalla primaveraestate di un amore allautunnoinverno dellesistenza, con la stessa fluidità di scrittura, con la stessa capacità catalizzatrice delle prime battute del romanzo.
Abbiamo quasi tutti ununica storia da raccontare, Non voglio dire che nella vita ci capiti una cosa sola al contrario, gli avvenimenti sono tantissimi, e noi li trasformiamo in altrettante storie.
Ma ce nè una sola che conta, una sola da raccontare alla fine, E questa è la mia.
Se allora il tono della prima parte è scanzonato e molto maschile e per maschile non intendo privo di sensibilità ma, al contrario, un concentrato di sensibilità altra da quella femminile, la seconda, in cui il dramma si manifesta, lascia attoniti, nonostante le avvisaglie, per la repentinità con la quale si manifesta, avviene e, infine, si compie.
Si fugge, per non essere travolti,
Ci si allontana, per mettersi in salvo,
Ci si sottrae, per non sommare la propria sconfitta a quella dellaltro,
Ma cosa è meglio, ci ammonisce Barnes sin dellincipit, che cosa preferiresti Amare di più e soffrire di più o amare di meno e soffrire di meno
E allora, ascoltando Paul, un "Casey" Paul settantenne, raccontarci della sua storia con Susan, iniziata quando lui era un inesperto e impacciato diciannovenne e lei una matura madre e moglie quarantottenne, assistendo allevoluzione della loro anticonvenzionale relazione nata sui campi da tennis di un sobborgo londinese, che la memoria ancora la memoria, ancora il tempo, ancora il lato oscuro della mente che ricorda e non ricostruisce Io sto ricordando il passato, non lo sto ricostruendo scrive Barnes scandaglia e rivive quasi in cerca dei segni che il giovane sé avrebbe dovuto individuare per scongiurare la fine, quella fine, ma anche quale ineluttabile accettazione del fatto che quella era e sarebbe stata lunica storia possibile, che alternative non ce ne potevano essere, e che in ciascuno di noi resta impressa sulla carne, indelebile, quellunica storia, felice o infelice che sia stata e che ha determinato le persone che siamo, Barnes ci racconta non solo di una storia di amore, ma anche di una storia di dipendenza, di violenza, di abusi capaci di tratteggiare un'epoca e una nazione che passavano dalla repressione alla libertà sessuale e qui, come non pensare alla coppia di sitelinkChesil Beach di Ian McEwan, che vedeva esplodere, in una progressione inarrestabile, una rivoluzione dei costumi fino a quel momento impensabile.
Seguiamo le sue parole, ci addentriamo nelle mappe della sua memoria, ricalchiamo le tracce che ci portano al sito archeologico dove è possibile vedere le impronte, preistoriche, lasciate sul suo cuore e nella sua psiche.
Sono anche le nostre, lo scopriamo seguendolo, anche noi abbiamo un'unica storia da raccontare, e forse è proprio per questo che la sua, quella di Paul, la sentiamo così vera e così falsa, così vicina e così lontana, così nostra e così estranea: In amore, ogni cosa è al tempo stesso vera e falsa lunico argomento al mondo sul quale è impossibile dire insensatezze, e noi, insieme a Paul, l'abbiamo imparato, scrivendo e cancellando sul nostro taccuino alla voce "amore" le nostre verità.
The Only Story by Julian Barnes is an introspective retrospective on a first love and how it shaped the narrators life.
I loved this thought provoking love story told many years later and the internal discussion about memories.
In part one, nineteen year old Paul is home from university for the summer and with his mothers encouragement, he joins the local country club to play tennis.
He is partnered with Susan, a married woman old enough to be his mother, Paul and Susan spend time together and as their lives intertwine, he meets Susans friend Joan, and Susan gets to know Pauls college buddies.
Paul falls in love, Susan is attracted to him, and the unlikely couple begins an affair.
When their taboo relationship becomes public, they are kicked out of the country club, Young Paul is energized by the public disapproval, and despite her marriage, albeit loveless, the two travel together, and they live together for over a decade.
There was love and romance, and everything was so good, This is how Paul wants to remember,
In part two Paul tells us all the things he remembers but would want to forget.
They had borders living with them in the attic, Susans husband punched him and on another occasion he smashed her teeth in.
Susan was an alcoholic and taking antidepressants, The realities of life are revealed and author Julian Barnes switches narration from first person, to third person as he distances himself from intense feelings of lust and love to disappointments and heartbreak.
Susan and Pauls non traditional relationship was a beautiful love affair and at the same time marred by lies, abuse and alcohol.
Paul discusses the idea that feeling less and lower expectations can protect you from too much emotion and hurt.
His happiness is based on Susan, but her happiness has nothing to do with him, She is devoted to drinking and he takes that as rejection,
In the end, Paul cant stop Susan from drinking so he leaves her, but every time she needs him, he goes to her.
He is emotionally tethered and his love for her causes him to be angry and disgusted with himself, wondering if there is something to be said for feeling less.
The Only Story is a raw look at young love, memory and bias, and how over time you can gloss over difficult times to shape your memories.
I enjoyed the authors retelling of Paul and his falling in love with an older woman, his all in full commitment and his naiveté, her baggage with her husband, children and her addictions, and how his love blinded him.
Romantic and sad with love, forgiveness and continual heartbreak, this story is thought provoking when it comes to how we look back at our lives and remember certain things.
Beautifully written and short in length, this is well worth the read,
Author interview included at sitelink com/
A very different novel to sitelinkThe Noise of Time, this book also shows that Barnes is still in great form.
As others have said, this one shares a few elements with his Booker winner sitelinkThe Sense of an Ending.
Once again, we are looking back at the events of an older man's youth, and once again the nature of memory and love is a key theme.
At times I was also reminded of his early novel sitelinkMetroland,
The book has three sections, each of which has a different character,
The first part is narrated in the first person, and is a wonderful mixture
of nostalgia and comic moments.
It describes the narrator Paul's first serious love affair, which started in the early/mids when he was ayear old student.
As a temporary member of the local tennis club, he is paired with the middle aged housewife Susan in a mixed doubles tournament, and the two form a bond that blossoms into an affair, largely ignored by Susan's husband, who they call E.
P. elephant pants. By the end of this part, Susan has left her husband and she and Paul have moved to London together.
The second part, narrated in the second person, is much sadder, as it relates Susan's slow descent into alcoholism and mental illness, and her gradual estrangement from Paul.
The final part, mostly narrated in the third person, tells Paul's story from the point where he left Susan, and describes how their affair shaped the rest of his life.
As always Barnes is a fine storyteller, and the book is quite moving at times.
Many seemingly incidental moments and observations are recalled later in the book, making me think it would reward rereading.
In this sad and beautiful novel, Barnes contemplates how a person's biggest love story can shape a whole life.
Now you can certainly question whether there generally is something like "the only story", but to me, that is beside the point: Once more, this gifted author finds the perfect words to describe complicated inner worlds and to illustrate what moves people, what irrevocably affects them, and how certain events and feelings shape people in a way that leaves them changed forever for better or worse.
Barnes is just a brilliant psychological author whose main topic is always the human heart and its strange workings.
Our protagonist is Paul who, at, falls in a love with Susan, ayearold married mother of two.
It's England in the's, and Paul enjoys that his unusual, normdefying relationship goes against the middleclass expectations of his family and the village he is young, in love and causes scandal, so what could be more fun Susan, on the other hand, is part of a generation that was young during the war and carries some baggage.
Now both of them are part of an era of change, but their prerequisites and attitudes towards love, marriage and sex are very different.
When Susan finally leaves her family for Paul, things go into a direction he and the reader didn't expect.
. .
Barnes structures his book in three parts, and I just loved how he illustrated Paul's personal development by changing from a first person narration, to a secondperson narration adressed to Susanto a thirdperson narrationin which the older Paul talks about his younger self the entire story is told by an older Paul aroundyears after it happened.
This whole strategy skillfully adds to the intensity of the novel and never feels forced it sure takes a Julian Barnes to pull this off.
"The Only Story" is a wonderfully moving, intelligent and beautifully written book, and I am now determined to become a Barnes completist.
Threeperson'd Love
For instance, he thought he probably wouldn't have sex again before he died.
My title does not imply anything so salacious as three in a bed, merely that I have John Donne in mind: "Batter my heart, threeperson'd God.
Probably. Possibly. Unless. But on balance, he thought not, Sex involved two people. Two persons, first person and second person: you and I, you and me, But nowadays, the raucousness of the first person within him was stilled, It was as if he viewed, and lived, his life in the third person, Which allowed him to assess it more accurately, he believed,
" Paul, the protagonist of Julian Barnes' latest novel, certainly does get his heart battered, and his observation that a love affair also creates a third person looking back on it later is very much his point.
The paragraph above comes from the last section of this threepart novel, in which Paul refers to himself as "he.
" Much of the second part is in the second person, "you, " It is only in the first part that Paul, in the unabashed exuberance of lusty youth, revels in "the raucousness of the first person": I, I, I.
I had no new definition of love, I didn't really examine what it was, and what it might entail, I merely submitted to first love in all its aspects, from butterfly kiss to absolutism, Nothing else mattered. Of course there was the rest of my life', both present and future, You could say that I put this part of my life on hold, Except that's not right: she was my life, and the rest wasn't, Put it another way. I was nineteen, and I knew that love was incorruptible, proof against both time and tarnish.
Barnes' thesis is that most people only have one story that matters, one special love that shapes everything.
And Paul's is special indeed, or at least different: a married woman, Susan Macleod, well over twice his age.
There is a reason, I think, why Barnes made it so, but we just have to accept it.
And accept the inherent improbability of this continuing for several summers under the noses of Susan's husband and daughters, Paul's parents, and the solidly middleclass inhabitants of their upscale community in the Stockbroker Belt of Surreyat least until the noses cannot ignore the evidence of eyes and ears, and Paul and Susan are drummed out of the tennis club.
But they are not chastened, Heads held high, Paul and Susan move to London, Paul writing a letter to his parents, saying he would send them an address as and when:
That seemed to cover it.
The last words of Part One, and ominous they are, I won't say exactly how things change, how "time and tarnish," in his earlier words, take their toll.
I thought the as and when' sounded properly grownup, Well, so I was. Twentyone. And ready to fully indulge, fully express, fully love my life, I'm alive! I'm living!' And this is how I would remember it all, if I could.
But I can't.
But a curious thing happens, As Paul's voice moves from "I" to "you," we feel its authenticity increase, Julian Barnes may or may not have been involved with an older woman although he has touched on the theme before in The Sense of an Ending, but it seems clear to me that some at least of the torment of Part Twoand Paul's helpless careening between pragmatism and denialmust come from painful personal experience.
The context may have been different, but surely he must know what it is to be trapped by love in a situation he cannot sustain And that is the reason, I think, why he chose the extreme difference in age.
Susan is not an ordinary girlfriend from whom Paul can break and move on, Loving her involves responsibility. It also involves assuming the consequences of long previous history, of which he was totally unaware in the first flush of love.
Loving her really is The Only Story, an event that moulds a lifetime,
It has taken some years for you to realize how much, beneath her laughing irreverence, there lies panic and pandemonium.
Three at least of Julian Barnes' last four books have involved the writer looking back on a history of love and loss.
Which is why she needs you there, fixed and steadfast, You have assumed this role willingly, lovingly, It makes you feel grownup to be a guarantor, It has meant, of course, that for most of your twenties you were obliged to forgo what others of your generation routinely enjoyed.
It certainly happens here. It is implied in the very title of sitelinkThe Sense of an Ending, It creates the extraordinary final section of his lament for his late wife, sitelinkLevels of Life.
It may also be true, at a remove, in his novel about Dmitri Shostakovich, sitelinkThe Noise of Time.
Explicitly or otherwise, all these books are in three parts, and the last of them shows the author in a deeply reflective mood, writing more as philosopher than storyteller.
Perhaps it was a little much here I found myself skating over this testament to a life halflived, even as I was consoled by his acceptance of it.
For there is also a fourth person present in this experience: the reader, Very present indeed in my own case, as an Englishman of a similar age and social background, living through different experiences, but in the same context, and ending with the same sober retrospection.
Not since Ian McEwan's sitelinkOn Chesil Beach have I read a novel that so clearly spoke to my generation's passage from youth to middleage.
And, though I tend to be more romantic still!, I can give more than a wry nod to Barnes's cleareyed realism:
Well, that was fair enough.
.
I hadn't come with, or for, any message, let alone for any forgiveness, From love's absolutism to love's absolution No: I don't believe in the cosy narrative of life some find necessary, just as I choke on comforting words like redemption and closure.
Death is the only closure I believe in and the wound will stay open until the final shutting of the doors.
As for redemption, it's far too neat, a moviemaker's bromide and beyond that, it feels like something grand, which human beings are too imperfect to deserve, much less bestow upon themselves.
Gather The Only Story Narrated By Julian Barnes Expressed As Volume
Julian Barnes