Identify Books Toward Pulse
Original Title: | Pulse |
ISBN: | 0224091085 (ISBN13: 9780224091084) |
Edition Language: | English |
Julian Barnes
Hardcover | Pages: 228 pages Rating: 3.63 | 2359 Users | 268 Reviews
Details Regarding Books Pulse
Title | : | Pulse |
Author | : | Julian Barnes |
Book Format | : | Hardcover |
Book Edition | : | First Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 228 pages |
Published | : | January 6th 2011 by Jonathan Cape (first published January 1st 2011) |
Categories | : | Short Stories. Fiction. European Literature. British Literature |
Narrative In Pursuance Of Books Pulse
After the best-selling Arthur & George and Nothing to Be Frightened Of, Julian Barnes returns with fourteen stories about longing and loss, friendship and love, whose mysterious natures he examines with his trademark wit and observant eye.From an imperial capital in the eighteenth century to Garibaldi's adventures in the nineteenth, from the vineyards of Italy to the English seaside in our time, he finds the "stages, transitions, arguments" that define us. A newly divorced real estate agent can't resist invading his reticent girlfriend's privacy, but the information he finds reveals only his callously shallow curiosity. A couple come together through an illicit cigarette and a song shared over the din of a Chinese restaurant. A widower revisiting the Scottish island he'd treasured with his wife learns how difficult it is to purge oneself of grief. And throughout, friends gather regularly at dinner parties and perfect the art of cerebral, sometimes bawdy banter about the world passing before them.
Whether domestic or extraordinary, each story pulses with the resonance, spark, and poignant humor for which Barnes is justly heralded.
Rating Regarding Books Pulse
Ratings: 3.63 From 2359 Users | 268 ReviewsComment On Regarding Books Pulse
Pushed to five star on the strength of the penultimate and then the final stories - 'Carcassone' and 'Pulse' which were truthful and insightful, confirming Julian Barnes' talent as a writer. 'East Wind' enjoyed for its location, the four 'At Phil & Joanna's' increasingly entertaining, and 'Harmony' I found unreadable. (It's harking back to tales of a century ago?)A good collection of short stories, sort of a grounded, British David Sedaris. But while Sedaris aims for laugh-out-loud lines, Barnes mostly shoots from/for the heart. Four of Barnes' stories here constitute a novella ("At Phil and Joanna's, Parts 1,2,3, and 4), so I'm going to next try one of his novels.
I have come late to Julian Barnes, to my regret, but Im glad to have finally arrived. His Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending was my introduction, save for some short stories Id read here and there in the New Yorker and Granta. Some of the short stories in Pulse were published between 2003 and 2011, and Sense of Ending was released in mid 2011. Some of these short stories are echoed in Sense of an Ending. In At Phil & Joannas 4: One in Five, a character says I remember some intellectual on
Yawn. Or I should say, a few stories I enjoyed, but the majority were yawny disquisitions more than narratives. The first story was a story in the more traditional sense -- two people met, one was a mystery to the other, he tried to find out her secret, and he did, end of story. It was told with a combination of care and suspense, distance and desire. Thumbs up. But most of the rest of the stories were explorations of ideas. Gardening showed up a lot but I wasn't sure why it kept showing up, and
I'm a big Julian Barnes fan, and I love short stories. The stories in this collection were, for me, mixed. The book is divided into two sections, and I found all of the work in section two wonderful. Barnes sets some of these stories in the past, some in the present, and the title story, about the death of (presumably) his mother and his father's illness, was fantastic. The work in part one was mixed. There were four stories that focused on two couples, and in each story, these couples were
Not the most consistent volume of short stories I have ever read - several of these were interesting ideas underdeveloped, description without much substance, or (as with a recurring theme of dnner party conversations in the first half of the collection) felt like filler. However, the quality of Julian Barnes' writing cannot be denied, and there were two or three particularly interesting tales within. I particularly enjoyed a couple where the author gets to the core of human feeling and sad
I have the impression that Julian Barnes doesn't miss a single word spoken any where near him, nor a single moment of potential emotional discomfort that might find its way into a story somewhere.The Barnes ear is perhaps at its most deadly in the four stories (all in part One)in which a group of friends gathers for dinner and clever conversation at the home of one of the couples, Phil and Joanna. The men dominate the conversation, the women speak very little. Is this because the conversation
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