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This title in other formats:The Lemon Tableby Julian Barnes
Review-a-Day (What is Review-a-Day?)"A French literary syphilitic. One messy little love triangle. A doctor's fixation with Flaubert. This is just a brief entry into the multivalent mind of Julian Barnes. In fourteen books of stunning range, the brilliant Englishman has become one of the very few writers you cannot afford not to read....These gracefully constructed stories are subtle, erudite, and wise; they elevate us because there are few such generous observers of humanity. In a word: The Lemon Table is Barnes at his profound, dexterous best." Adrienne Miller, Esquire (read the entire Esquire review) "[Barnes's] fiction, as tightly constructed as a soundproof box, provides just as little access to the deeper questions within. This is a particular problem in The Lemon Table, which takes as its main preoccupation the uncomfortable intermingling of sex and old age — love and death, in other words, and what could be more crucial than that?....He dreams up some nicely unconventional figures and puts them in provocative scenarios, but he fails to discover any emotion richer than a condescending pathos." Ruth Franklin, The New Republic (read the entire New Republic review) Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Master prose stylist Julian Barnes presents a collection of stories whose characters are growing old and facing the end of their lives — some with bitterness, some with resignation and others with raging defiance. "Life is just a premature reaction to death," was what Viv's husband used to say. Once her lover and friend, he is now Viv's semi-helpless charge, who is daily sinking ever deeper into dementia. In "Appetite," Viv has found a way to reach her husband: by reading aloud snippets of recipe books until he calls out indelible — and sometimes unfortunate — scenes locked away in his brain. In "The Things You Know," two elderly friends enjoy their monthly breakfast meetings that neither would ever think of missing. Of course, all they really have in common is a fondness for flat suede shoes and a propensity for thinking spiteful, unspoken thoughts about one another's dead husbands. "The Fruit Cage" is narrated by a middle-aged man whose seemingly orderly upbringing is harrowingly undone when he discovers that his parents' old age is not necessarily a time of serenity but actually an age of aroused, perhaps violent, passions. In these stories, Julian Barnes displays the erudition, wit and uncanny insight into the human mind that mark him as one of today's great writers, one whose intellect and humour never obscure a genuine affection for his characters. Review:"Polished and classically structured, the 11 exquisite stories in this collection are as stylish as any of Barnes's creations, while also possessed of a pleasing heft. Told from a dazzling array of viewpoints, each is underpinned with a familiar Barnes concern: death. In 'The Revival,' the Russian writer Turgenev ruminates on lost love at the end of his life (as Tolstoy looks on), while in 'Hygiene' a WWII vet revisits more than just his old mates during an annual trip to London for his regimental dinner. The past is seen from the perspective of the barber's chair in 'A Short History of Hairdressing,' and from two entirely separate angles in 'The Things You Know,' about a pair of widows who mentally savage each other over the course of a polite breakfast. Fans of Barnes's conversational novels, such as Love, Etc and Talking It Over, may be nonplussed by the Dinesen-like sonority of the prose in 'The Story of Mats Israelson' ('When Havlar Berggren succumbed to akvavit, frivolity and atheism, and transferred ownership of the third stall to an itinerant knife-grinder, it was on Berggren, not the knife-grinder, that disapproval fell, and a more suitable appointment was made in exchange for a few riksdaler'), but readers willing to follow Barnes's imagination will not be disappointed. With the exception of the plodding last story, 'The Silence' (in which the title phrase is explained: 'Among the Chinese, the lemon is the symbol of death'), the author handles his dark subject matter with grace and humor. This is not a morbid trip. Instead, Barnes always has his eye on something unusual, and the reader is taken for a delightful ride. Agent, Helen Brann. (July 9)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"This is Barnes at his best. Don't miss this collection." Library Journal Review:"Eleven old-fashioned stories that take their time but are riveting, muscular, and real....Fine stories, well rounded and grounded." Kirkus Reviews Review:"The Lemon Table has plenty of sharp, even cruel, comic pleasures....The
Lemon Table, in ways both modest and grand, helps sustain a reader's faith in literature as the truest form of assisted living." Thomas Mallon, The New York Times Book Review About the AuthorJulian Barnes is the award-winning author of nine novels, including A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters and England, England, which was shortlisted for the 1998 Booker Prize. He is also the author of Something to Declare, Cross Channel and Letters from London 1990?1995. He lives in London, England. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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