British writer, Booker laureate, tells the story of his marriage. Exquisitely, with complex allusions and historical parallels.
Julian Barnes, a British writer and critic, winner of the Booker, tells the story of his love and thirty years of happy marriage in a complicated way, with allusions and historical parallels. The first essay of the book is the story of Nadar, a French balloonist and novelist of the mid-XNUMXth century, the author of the most famous photograph, Sarah Bernhardt. The second part is about a short romance and balloon flights by Bernard herself and Fred Burnaby. And only in the third part the idea of the book is revealed: Barnes talks about how his wife Pat Kavanagh died of brain cancer in a month. The intonation of pain is unexpectedly simple, undisguised and stingy. Barnes once wrote, «I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him.» He also does not believe in the possibility of a meeting: “I don’t see her anymore, don’t touch, don’t hug, don’t listen, don’t make me laugh; I no longer wait for her steps, no longer smile at the knock of the front door, no longer fit her body comfortably to myself, and myself to her body. “Levels of Life” is a continuation of a conversation with a beloved woman about the events of the middle of the century before last, and a long letter about how he lives now, without her.
Eksmo, 192 p., 157 rubles.