Love's Labour Lost?

19 year-old university student Paul fell in love with 48 year-old Susan at his home-village tennis club. Married to a bitter, onion-munching and progressively violent man, Susan seizes the chance of happiness with Paul. They ‘run away together’ as the expression then was and predictably it all in ends in tears. Their love-making becomes the ‘saddest sex of all’, Susan, isolated, become a hopeless alcoholic and Paul’s love turns to impotent pity and anger. He never marries.

So far so apparently dreary, but not when written by Julian Barnes. It’s the shifting of Paul’s narrative from first, second, and third person, and old man Paul reflecting on his young self’s experience of the ‘story’, subtly exploring the progressive damage wrought by their affair which makes this deceptively ordinary everyday story so disturbing, forcing listeners into analysing their own experiences of love and loss.

The effect of Susan’s disintegration on Paul is minutely observed, and the character of Susan’s elderly friend Joan, living alone with her dogs having got her life sadly wrong, are haunting. The narration is excellent, capturing a range of narrative voices young and old, male and female convincingly and sympathetically – a real achievement.

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15 people found this helpful

A great book.

Melancholic. Beautiful. A bit like the music of Eric Satie. You have to be in the mood for it.

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not my favourite love story

It was wrongly recommended to me as "one of the most beautiful love stories of the XXI century". It is rather common love story even though it is well written and well performed. It contains some interesting statements and observations about love but most of the time it was just boring.

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1 person found this helpful

Stunning

A beautifully performed tragic tale of how formative and all encompassing love can be. A must read

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Beautifully written but miserable

I was attracted to this book by the reviews in press - many saying this was best book of 2018

I can not fault the writing or the phrases - but dear me it is miserable - a man self pity for a love once had - I kept hoping for something of a story - a twist or a bit more - but no - it just kept going on and on about the relationship

It may be a critics favourite but not for me

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Not a comedy

Don't read if you need cheering up. I like French films in which not much happens but in which people are carefully examined and a sense of place and time is created. This story is a bit like that so I liked it. But I was a bit frustrated by the end because there's not much explanation for why one of the 2 main characters disintergrates as rapidly as they do.

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1 person found this helpful

so so for Barnes

It's got the character of å first, promising novel or an old man's pondering, returning to juvenile philosophy.

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"It wasn't only men who snore."

At first, the beauty of the writing combined with the near hypnotic gentleness of the performance by Guy Mott was sufficient to carry this reader forward before the boredom set in. Then came the realisation that the characters were all both tedious and insufferable: the innocent and immature nineteen year old youth believing himself in love with his tennis partner, a married woman with 'respectable' daughters older than himself and a boorish husband who drank, played golf and hit her. So gay and exciting to him before they moved in together, she was treated by him with a cold jealous fragility: no wonder she also began to succumb increasingly to the escape of alcohol. For all his talk of love, there was little, if any, emotion here.

Tedious, infuriating and boring despite the fine writing and impeccable narration. And set in the 1960s? Two decades earlier, perhaps

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food for thought

a book which encourages self reflection of one's own story, melancholic with some sad humour.

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Very enjoyable

Very well narrated and written. A simple yet engrossing story. Throughly enjoyed this very good book

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