The chorus in this drama of the chattering classes is Madame Wyatt, Gillian’s mother, who is wise and French and well-preserved by face creams and the decision to take herself out of the romantic fray. “I do not want love or sex anymore,” she tells us. “I prefer a well-cut suit and a sole off the bone.”
Love and sex fare badly in Barnes’s book, as do most of the characters, shown in the harsh light of first-person monologues. Barnes may let his characters speak for themselves, but that doesn’t mean you don’t feel the author at work. As in his earlier novels, like “Flaubert’s Parrot” and “A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters,” the story is studded with exotic bits of knowledge. Born in 1946 and educated at Oxford, Barnes was a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary before he wrote novels, and it shows. Oliver’s mind overworks in four languages, cataloging the merits of contraceptives, famous Belgians and fiction over nonfiction: “Fiction… is the norm, the bass line, the golden mean, the meridian, the north pole, the north star, the pole star, the lodestone… "
Barnes’s story doesn’t have any of this solidity, thank goodness. His narrators are unreliable; his point of view is shrouded; his moral center is shifty. His novel is a bleak examination of love in early middle age, of scaled-down passions and sensible compromises. Gillian notices that she and Oliver drop the “I” in “I love you” when they speak. “As if you weren’t taking responsibility for the feeling anymore.” Like his characters, Barnes refuses responsibility for a single truth, or a single way of telling a story. The epigraph to “Talking It Over” was an old Russian saying: “He lies like an eyewitness.” Barnes is an eyewitness to life, and lies beautifully.
Love, Etc.Julian Barnes (Jonathan Cape) 250 pages. 15.99 pounds
