Product Description

"I don’t believe in God, but I miss him." So begins Julian Barnes’s brilliant new book that is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the writer Jules Renard. Barnes also draws poignant portraits of the last days of his parents, recalled with great detail, affection and exasperation. Other examples he takes up include writers, "most of them dead and quite a few of them French," as well as some composers, for good measure.

The grace with which Barnes weaves together all of these threads makes the experience of reading the book nothing less than exhilarating. Although he cautions us that "this is not my autobiography," the book nonetheless reveals much about Barnes the man and the novelist: how he thinks and how he writes and how he lives. At once deadly serious and dazzlingly playful, Nothing to Be Frightened Of is a wise, funny and constantly surprising tour of the human condition.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2240594 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-21
• Released on: 2009-04-21
• Format: Import
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this virtuosic memoir, Barnes (Arthur & George) makes little mention of his personal or professional life, allowing his audience very limited ingress into his philosophical musings on mortality. But like Alice tumbling through the rabbit hole, readers will find themselves granted access to an unexpectedly large world, populated with Barnes's daily companions and his chosen ancestors (most of them dead, and quite a few of them French, like Jules Renard, Flaubert, Zola). This is not 'my autobiography,' Barnes emphasizes in this hilariously unsentimental portrait of his family and childhood. Part of what I'm doing—which may seem unnecessary—is trying to work out how dead they are. And in this exploration of what remains, the author sifts through unreliable memory to summon up how his ancestors—real and assumed—contemplated death and grappled with the perils and pleasures of pit-gazing. If Barnes's self-professed amateur philosophical rambling feels occasionally self-indulgent, his vivid description delights. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Most critics strongly recommended Julian Barnes's reflections on mortality. However, perhaps reluctant to embrace his disbelief, they seemed more impressed by his descriptive skill in depicting his family—in particular, his emotionally remote brother—even though a few critics cited the author himself as emotionally closed in his personal writing. Reviewers also praised the scope of Barnes's literary erudition more than any actual insight into the subject of death. A few reviewers felt that this dance around the subject makes Nothing to Be Frightened Of weaker than Barnes's other books. But most embraced the book's novelistic ambiguity, enjoying the story even if the author himself does not know how it will end.
Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

From Booklist
Some say death is “nothing to be frightened of,” but most of us do fear death and dying. British novelist Barnes—reflective and erudite, a stellar stylist and a piquant wit—confronts the paradoxes, fantasies, horrors, mystery, and inevitability of death in this bracing, mordantly funny, and expansive mix of musings, literary criticism, and memoir. Although he assures readers that this is not his autobiography, Barnes does portray himself at transforming moments throughout his life and presents vivid portraits of his grandparents, parents, and philosopher brother Jonathan. He also ponders the fates of his “dead, French, nonblood relatives,” mostly writers he admires, such as Jules Renard, and assays the viewpoints on mortality of such standard-bearers as Montaigne and Richard Dawkins. Laced throughout this satisfyingly riverine blend of inquiry and apologia are sharp comments on religion (who fears death more, a believer or an atheist?); science; and the enshrinement of art. Barnes avers that “death is the one appalling fact which defines life,” then wonders if, for all his skepticism, he doesn’t write in the hope of immortality. --Donna Seaman