Julian Barnes is a comprehensive introductory overview of the novels that situates his work in terms of fabulation and memory, irony and comedy. It pursues a broadly chronological line through Barnes's literary career, but along the way it also shows how certain key thematic preoccupations and obsessions seem to tie Barnes's oeuvre together (love, death, art, history, truth, and memory). Chapters provide detailed reading of each majorpublication in turn while treating the major concerns of Barnes's fiction, including art, authorship, history, love and religion. The book is very lucidly written, and it is also satisfyingly comprehensive - alongside the "canonical" Barnes texts, it includes brief but illuminating discussion of thecrime fiction that Barnes has published under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. This detailed study of fictions of Julian Barnes from "Metroland" to "Arthur and george" also benefits from archival research into his unpublished materials. The book will be a useful resource for scholars, postgraduates and undergraduates working in the field of contemporary literature. | Julian Barnes by Peter Childs, Paperback | Indigo Chapters