The Only Story
by Julian Barnes
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Reading Club Session: 13th & 27th May
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First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn’t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he’s proud of the fact his relationship flies in the face of social convention. As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.Tender and profound, The Only Story is an achingly beautiful novel by one of fiction’s greatest mappers of the human heart.
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Questions for Discussion
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Julian Barnes
Novelist Julian Barnes was born in Leicester on 19 January 1946, and was educated at the City of London School and Magdalen College, Oxford. After working as a lexicographer on the Oxford English Dictionary, he began a career as a journalist
Barnes's first novel, Metroland (1980), follows the adventures of a young man escaping English suburbia in Paris in 1968. It was followed by Before She Met Me (1982), a story of jealousy and obsession. His next book, the acclaimed Flaubert's Parrot (1984), was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.
Staring at the Sun (1986) narrates the life story of Jean Sergeant, from the Second World War through to the first decades of the new millennium. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (1989) explores the relationship between art, religion and death, through a number of stories linked by images of shipwreck and survival, while Talking It Over (1991), winner of the French Prix Fémina, is the story of a triangular love affair. The Porcupine, a political novel set in Eastern Europe, was published in 1992. Cross Channel, a collection of short stories about English men and women living in France, was published in 1996 and was followed by a dark satire of contemporary English 'theme-park' culture, England, England (1998), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Arthur and George (2005) is based on the true story of a solicitor in the early twentieth century, accused of maiming cattle, and saved by the intervention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Love, etc (2000), continues the stories of the characters he created in Talking It Over. He also used to write a series of detective thrillers under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh, featuring the bisexual private-eye, Duffy.
Julian Barnes lives in London. His latest books are Nothing To Be Frightened Of (2008) - a memoir; Pulse (2011) - a collection of short stories; and the novels, The Sense of an Ending (2011), shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Novel Award and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, The Noise of Time (2016) and The Only Story (2018)
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