The Sense of an Ending

In his final novel, written in the shadow of cancer, Julian Barnes dissolves the fragile borders between fact and fiction

- SHINIE ANTONY

If Levels of Life by Julian Barnes went into flying, ballooning, and grieving—covering the highs and lows of life in a deliberately asymmetrical but brilliant memoir following his wife Pat Kavanagh’s death in 2008—his new book mixes fact and fiction in the aftermath of his own ‘manageable’ blood cancer diagnosis.

A condition he will die with, but not of, Departure(s), which comes out around his 80th birthday, will be his last and final novel, says the Booker-winning author.

Which explains the title, with the ‘s’ in brackets pluralising many mortalities, including the death of love in a relationship.

‘The narrative enfolds a couple who may or may not be real. Who made him promise he wouldn’t ever incorporate them into his fiction, but here they are. Like Levels of Life, this book, too, tackles a two-track narrative. There's the honesty of illness and the fog of fiction, where two old friends figure large in an almost love story. Memory is the common factor: nostalgia and reminiscences are powerful emotional states, And while burnt toast should bring back a kind of memory to him, it simply does not.