Awards

• Nominated for Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008

Overview

""I don’t believe in God, but I miss him."" So begins Julian Barnes’s brilliant new book that is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God and a homage to the writer Jules Renard. Barnes also draws poignant portraits of the last days of his parents, recalled with great detail, affection and exasperation. Other examples he takes up include writers, ""most of them dead and quite a few of them French,"" as well as some composers, for good measure. The grace with which Barnes weaves together all of these threads makes the experience of reading the book nothing less than exhilarating. Although he cautions us that ""this is not my autobiography,"" the book nonetheless reveals much about Barnes the man and the novelist: how he thinks and how he writes and how he lives. At once deadly serious and dazzlingly playful, Nothing to Be Frightened Of is a wise, funny and constantly surprising tour of the human condition.

Full Product Details

9780307356994

Table of Contents

Reviews

Death has a habit of bringing the best out in writers...Given its subject matter the whole book has an unexpectedly jaunty air. On virtually every page there is a good joke, even when - or perhaps especially when - Barnes is writing about the grimmest events. Julian Barnes is wonderful at keeping awe and flippancy in perfect balance...One of the joys of this book is that it contains so many playful asides, so many exhilaration diversions from its gloomy central theme. <br>--Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday <br> It is not, Barnes tells us, an autobiography. It is rather an essay in the best sense: speculative and precise, intimate and metaphysical, capacious and democratic in the variety of voices, alive and dead, that are invited to counsel the author as he edges his way towards the void <br>--Brian Dillon, Times Literary Supplement <br> Julian Barnes is a delightful companion and much of the book (its informal tone included) is like an extended and very interesting conversation. <br>--Cressida Connolly, Literary Review <br> Compelling...witty and erudite...consistently interesting and entertaining. <br>--Val Hennessy, Daily Mail <br> This book is both fun and funny. It is sharp, too, in the sense of painful as well as witty...You are in the presence of a nimble mind in complete mastery of, and engagement with, his chosen subject. <br>--Lucy Beresford, New Statesman <br> Intensely fascinating. <br>--Jane Shilling, The Times <br> Entertaining, intriguing, absorbing and so expansive that I was startled, on finishing, to note its brevity...Irresistible reading. <br>--Penelope Lively, Financial Times <br> Superb...[Barnes's] funniest and frankest work yet. <br>--KateSummerscale, Daily Telegraph <p> From the Hardcover edition.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE PEN/ACKERLEY PRIZE A Globe and Mail Best Book A New York Times Notable Book This brilliant meditation on death, a family memoir, and an argument with God (whom the author doesn't believe in, but misses) lays Barnes bare like no other previous work. Zsuzsi Gartner, The Globe and Mail Because his style has always been exceedingly irreverent and anything but lugubrious, he makes this horrible of all horrible subjects a light, amusing diversion almost.... Whether you believe spending a little regular time getting used to the idea that one day there will be no eyeballs in that skull of yours or you wish to avoid the unpleasant truth for now, picking up Barnes's death ramblings might be as good a way to spend some of the time you have left as any. Edmonton Journal A double-jointed performance in which Barnes lets his sharp, obsessive mind wander in search of some kind of meaning. . . . If he doesn't come up with any answers here, he asks a lot of provocative and fascinating questions. Call him Mr. Meaningful. Ottawa Citizen Barnes is neither depressed, nor depressing. He is honest and fantastically unconventional in discussing what is a matter of curiosity and concern to everyone who expects one day to die.... Death is inescapable and, in some manner to be revealed only at a later date, is approaching. If Barnes doesn't make the prospect more palatable, he certainly makes it more stimulating. The Gazette

Author Information

JULIAN BARNES is the author of numerous books, for which he has received the Booker Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Prix Médicis and Prix Femina. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d’honneur, and in 2021 the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He lives in London.

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