Oliver, Stuart, and Gillian have been friends and lovers. But it's been 10 years since this backbiting trio, which Julian Barnes first introduced in Talking It Over, last met--and a lot has changed. For starters, Oliver has married Gillian, and Stuart, his erstwhile best friend, hates him for it. Not just because Stuart was once married to Gillian, but because he still loves her and has never ceased to regard himself as her savior. Under the guise of repairing old friendships--"all blood under the bridge"--this mild-mannered third wheel insinuates himself into the couple's life by offering advice, providing support, and even giving Oliver a job. Once he's maneuvered his nemesis into a crippling depression, Stuart unveils his master plan.

In Love, Etc. Barnes adopts the same technique he used in the earlier installment, allowing his characters to speak their innermost thoughts and secrets directly to the reader--and just about everybody gets some good lines. (Oliver: "Yes, everything went swimmingly, which is a very peculiar adverb to apply to a social event, considering how most human beings swim.") But the book is also a bewitchingly intimate excursion into betrayal and jealousy. With painstaking detail, Barnes creates a vibrant portrait of a modern love triangle--as funny as it is cruel, as absurd as it is deep. Few contemporary writers can portray Middle England, with all its temptations, so darkly. --Matthew Baylis


From Publishers Weekly
The ever-brilliant Barnes concocts a mordant sexual comedy for his latest novel, taking over the later lives of three characters he introduced in the earlier Talking It Over. Straight, rather stuffy organic-food kingpin Stuart; his former best friend, the ebulliently witty layabout Oliver; and Gillian, whom Oliver stole from Stuart, address the reader in turns about just what happened (or in Oliver's case, show off for the reader in a dazzling display of verbal pyrotechnics that would bring down the house if this were a play). There's no doubt that in most ways Stuart deserves Gillian more than Oliver does, and the latter's attraction for her seems odd. On the other hand, Oliver is, unexpectedly, quite a good father, and there are hints of obtuseness and brutality about Stuart's bluff self-satisfaction. Poor Gillian, whose French-born mother also comments on the proceedings from a cynical distance, seems quite unable to decide between the two men when Stuart forcibly reenters her life. Out of their often self-serving, sometimes touchingly self-aware accounts of a handful of encounters emerges a funny, occasionally poignant look at the strange confusion between friendship and loveAas well as more than a hint that nobody truly knows just who they really are and what they are capable of. It's slight but telling and, except for Oliver's wonderful and witty set pieces, oddly subdued for Barnes, but it would make an excellent play, in the Tom Stoppard vein. (Feb. 13) Forecast: Although Barnes's succession of clever novels have won him a following here, the strongly English domesticity portrayed in Love, Etc. seems unlikely to gather him many new adherents. For connoisseurs of brilliant invective, however, it's a treat, and Knopf is anticipating that interest with a 40,000 first printing. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Barnes introduced the love triangle of wife Gillian, ex-husband Stuart, and current husband Oliver in his 1991 novel Talking It Over, in which Gillian leaves Stuart for his best friend, Oliver. This sequel (which can stand on its own) picks up a decade later with Stuart returning from a successful business sojourn in America and insinuating himself into Gillian and Oliver's life. Stuart uses his wealth as a foothold for his secret goal of winning Gillian back, cloaking it as a temporary stopgap for the family's privation under unpublished writer Oliver. Reminiscent of a radio play, the plot unfolds through soliloquies, often providing conflicting versions of the same incidents. Read with British accents and theatrical nuance by a cast with theater, TV, and radio credits, this is a case where audio surpasses the printed page. The lilting and witty dialog knit into a compelling tale that is highly recommended for adult fiction collections.Judith Robinson, Univ. at Buffalo, NYCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
The trio of readers makes the story come alive and the listener laugh out loud. Each narrator takes on a persona--the incredible Clare Higgins takes on many--and narrates that character's every thought throughout the novel. A love triangle plays itself out in a fascinating mix of different perspectives and memories. Gillian was married to Stuart until she left him for Oliver--now Stuart has returned to Britain from a stint in America and establishes himself in the couple's life. The drama that ensues is both comic and tragic: The different personalities and unique use of voices keep the listener engaged, and the ending comes too soon. Clever writing is highlighted by the gifted readers' performances. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
The latest novel by this esteemed British writer is not easy to read. Yes, his prose is supple, and, yes, his themes--among them, finding fulfillment in love, friendship, and sex--possess universal appeal when explored with the sensitivity and intelligence Barnes exhibits. It's the format that makes this novel difficult. As if they were sitting in a room together reflecting on their mutual history, the three main characters discuss the issues in their lives, each one focusing primarily on their relationships with the other two. What emerges is a love triangle: Gillian is now married to Oliver, but she was previously married to Stuart, and Oliver and Stuart used to be best friends. The history of this mutual relationship isn't related in anything like linear fashion but, rather, emerges gradually, as pieces of three peoples' lives, past and present, together and separately, fall slowly into place. If Barnes' technique is challenging, it also makes possible an immensely rich look into human nature. Barnes has a considerable following among readers of literary fiction; expect his latest to be the object of much discussion. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“An alarmingly perfect novel . . .. Barnes’s verbal mimicry is inventive, accomplished, revelatory, and also fun.” –The New York Review of Books

“Lively, lucid, ricocheting with wryly observed commentary on the human condition.”–Philadelphia Inquirer

“Painfully astute . . .. Barnes sharpens his insights with his penetrating wit and verbal virtuosity.”–The Washington Post

“Julian Barnes...[is an] ironist, artificer, psychologically flirtatious pool shark, a maestro who runs the table with his Rashomon variations.”–The New York Times Book Review



Review
?An alarmingly perfect novel . . .. Barnes?s verbal mimicry is inventive, accomplished, revelatory, and also fun.? ?The New York Review of Books

?Lively, lucid, ricocheting with wryly observed commentary on the human condition.??Philadelphia Inquirer

?Painfully astute . . .. Barnes sharpens his insights with his penetrating wit and verbal virtuosity.??The Washington Post

?Julian Barnes...[is an] ironist, artificer, psychologically flirtatious pool shark, a maestro who runs the table with his Rashomon variations.??The New York Times Book Review



Book Description
Twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Julian Barnes continues to reinvigorate the novel with his pyrotechnic verbal skill and playful manipulation of plot and character. In Love, etc. he uses all the surprising, sophisticated ingredients of a delightful farce to create a tragicomedy of human frailties and needs.

After spending a decade in America as a successful businessman, Stuart returns to London and decides to look up his ex-wife Gillian. Their relationship had ended years before when Stuart’s witty, feckless, former best friend Oliver stole her away. But now Stuart finds that the intervening years have left Oliver’s artistic ambitions in ruins and his relationship with Gillian on less than solid footing. When Stuart begins to suspect that he may be able to undo the results of their betrayal, he resolves to act. Written as an intimate series of crosscutting monologues that allow each character to whisper their secrets and interpretations directly to the reader, Love, etc. is an unsettling examination of confessional culture and a profound refection on the power of perspective.


From the Inside Flap
Twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Julian Barnes continues to reinvigorate the novel with his pyrotechnic verbal skill and playful manipulation of plot and character. In Love, etc. he uses all the surprising, sophisticated ingredients of a delightful farce to create a tragicomedy of human frailties and needs.

After spending a decade in America as a successful businessman, Stuart returns to London and decides to look up his ex-wife Gillian. Their relationship had ended years before when Stuart’s witty, feckless, former best friend Oliver stole her away. But now Stuart finds that the intervening years have left Oliver’s artistic ambitions in ruins and his relationship with Gillian on less than solid footing. When Stuart begins to suspect that he may be able to undo the results of their betrayal, he resolves to act. Written as an intimate series of crosscutting monologues that allow each character to whisper their secrets and interpretations directly to the reader, Love, etc. is an unsettling examination of confessional culture and a profound refection on the power of perspective.


From the Back Cover
“An alarmingly perfect novel . . .. Barnes’s verbal mimicry is inventive, accomplished, revelatory, and also fun.” –The New York Review of Books

“Lively, lucid, ricocheting with wryly observed commentary on the human condition.”–Philadelphia Inquirer

“Painfully astute . . .. Barnes sharpens his insights with his penetrating wit and verbal virtuosity.”–The Washington Post

“Julian Barnes...[is an] ironist, artificer, psychologically flirtatious pool shark, a maestro who runs the table with his Rashomon variations.”–The New York Times Book Review


About the Author
Born in Leicester in 1946, Julian Barnes is the author of nine novels, a book of stories, and a collection of essays. He has won both the Prix Médicis and the Prix Fémina, and in 1988 was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He lives in London.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
i remember you

Stuart  Hello!

We’ve met before. Stuart. Stuart Hughes.

Yes, I am sure. Positive. About ten years ago.

It’s all right—it happens. You don’t have to pretend. But the point is, I remember you. I remember you. I’d hardly forget, would I? A bit over ten years, now I come to think of it.

Well, I’ve changed. Sure. This is all grey for a start. Can’t even call it pepper-and-salt any more, can I?

Oh, and by the way, you’ve changed too. You probably think you’re pretty much the same as you were back then. Believe me, you aren’t.

Oliver  What’s that companionable warble from the neighbouring wankpit, that snuffle and stamp from the padded loose-box? Could it be my dear, my old—old as in the sense of former—friend Stuart?

‘I remember you.’ How very Stuart. He is so old-, so former-fashioned that he likes naff songs which actually predate him. I mean, it’s one thing to be hung up on cheap music synchronous with the primal engorgement of your own libidinous organs, be it Randy Newman or Luigi Nono. But to be hung up on the sun-lounger singalongeries of a previous generation—that’s so very, so touchingly Stuart, don’t you find?

Lose that puzzled expression. Frank Ifield. ‘I Remember You.’ Or rather, I remember yoo-oo, / You’re the one that made my dreams come troo-oo. Yes? 1962. The Australian yodeller in the sheepskin car-coat? Indeed. Indeedy-doo-oo. And what a sociological paradox he must have represented. No disrespect to our bronzed and Bondi’d cousins, of course. In the
world’s fawning obeisance before every cultural sub-grouping, let it not be said that I have anything against an Australian yodeller per se. You might be one yourself. If I prod you, do ye not yodel? In which case, I would give you honest eye-contact and an undiscriminatory handshake. I would welcome you into the brotherhood of man. Along with the Swiss
cricketer.

And if—by some happy whim—you actually are a Swiss cricketer, an off-spinner from the Bernese Oberland, then let me just say, simply: 1962 was the very year of the Beatles’ first revolution at forty-five turns per minute, and Stuart sings Frank Ifield. I rest my case.

I’m Oliver, by the way. Yes, I know you know. I could tell you remembered me.

Gillian  Gillian. You may or may not remember me. Is there some problem?

What you have to understand is that Stuart wants you to like him, needs you to like him, whereas Oliver has a certain difficulty imagining that you won’t. That’s a sceptical look you’re giving me. But the truth is, over the years I’ve watched people take against Oliver and fall under his spell almost at the same time. Of course, there’ve been exceptions. Still, be warned.

And me? Well, I’d prefer you to like me rather than the reverse, but that’s normal, isn’t it? Depending on who you are, of course.

Stuart  I wasn’t actually referring to the song at all.

Gillian  Look, I actually haven’t the time. Sophie’s got music today. But I’ve always thought of Stuart and Oliver as opposite poles of something . . . of growing up, perhaps. Stuart believed that growing up was about fitting in, about pleasing people, becoming a member of society. Oliver didn’t have that problem, he always had more self-confidence. What’s that word for plants which move in relation to the sun? Helio something. That’s what Stuart was like. Whereas Oliver—

Oliver  —was le roi soleil, right? The nicest spousal compliment I’ve had in some time. I’ve been called some things in this sublunary smidgeon which goes by the name of life, but King Sol is a new one. Phoebus. Phoe-Phi-Pho-Phumbus—

Gillian  —tropic. Heliotropic, that’s the word.

Oliver  Have you noticed this change in Gillian? The way she puts people into categories? It’s probably her French blood. She’s half French—you remember that? ‘Half French on her mother’s side’: that ought to mean quarter French, logically, don’t you think? Yet what, as all the great moralists and philosophers have noted, has logic got to do with life?

Now, had Stuart been half French, in 1962 he would have been whistling Johnny Hallyday’s Gallic version of ‘Let’s Twist Again.’ That’s a thought, isn’t it? A pungent pensée. And here’s another: Hallyday was half Belgian. On his father’s side.

Stuart  In 1962 I was four years old. Just for the record.

Gillian  Actually, I don’t think I do put people into categories. It’s just that if there are two people in the world I understand, they’re Stuart and Oliver. After all, I have been married to both of them.

Stuart  Logic. Did someone use the word? I’ll give you logic. You go away, and people think you’ve stayed the same. That’s the worst piece of logic I’ve come across in years.

Oliver  Misprise me not about les Belges, by the way. When some jaunty little dinner-table patriot ups and demands ‘Name me six famous Belgians, I’m the one with his hand in the air. Undeterred by the words ‘Apart from Simenon.

It may not be to do with her being French at all. It could be middle-age. A process that happens to some, if not necessarily all of us. With Gill the train is coming into the station roughly on time, steam activating its beloved whistle and the boiler a tad hot and bothered. But ask yourself when Stuart became middle-aged and the only area for debate is whether it was before or after his testicles descended. Have you seen that photo of him in his pram wearing a little three-piece suit and pinstripe nappies?

Whereas Oliver? Oliver long ago decided—no, knew instinctively—that middle-age was infra dig, déclassé and generally below the salt as a condition. Oliver is planning to compress middle-age into a single afternoon of lying down with a migraine. He believes in youth, and he believes in wisdom, and plans to pass from wise youth to young wisdom with the help of a palmful of paracetamol and an eye mask from some exotic airline.

Stuart  Someone once pointed out that you can recognise a complete egomaniac by the way they refer to themselves in the third person. Even royalty doesn’t use the royal plural any more. But there are sportsmen and rock stars who talk about themselves like that, as if it was normal. Have you noticed? Bobby So-and-So’s accused of cheating, to win a penalty or something, and he replies, ‘No, that’s not the sort of thing Bobby So-and-So would do.’ As if there’s some separate figure out there, under the same name, taking the flak, or shouldering the responsibility.

Which is hardly the case with Oliver. You couldn’t exactly call him famous, could you? Yet he refers to himself as ‘Oliver,’ as if he was an Olympic gold medallist. Or a schizophrenic, I suppose.

Oliver  What do you think of North-South debt restructuring? The future prospects of the euro? The smile on the face of the tiger economies? Have metal traders exorcised the ghost of the meltdown scare? I’m sure Stuart has robust and portly opinions on all such matters. He will be not so much grave as positively gravid. I’ll bet you six famous Belgians he doesn’t know the difference between the two words. He’s the sort of person who expects the word gravid to be followed by lax, silly old fishface that he is. A billboard for probity, and all that. But a little, shall we say, lacking in irony?

Gillian  Look, stop it, you two. Just stop it. This isn’t working.

What sort of impression do you think you’re giving?

Oliver  What did I tell you? The train is coming into the station, puff puff, huff huff . . .

Gillian  If we’re getting into this again, we have to play by the rules. No talking amongst ourselves. Anyway, who’s going to take Sophie to music?

Oliver:  Gillian, in case you’re wondering, is an honorary representative of The Men Who Guess.

Stuart  Are you interested in pork? Real pork, with real taste? Where do you stand on GM?

Oliver  Six, apart from Simenon? Easy-peasy. Magritte, César Franck, Maeterlinck, Jacques Brel, Delvaux and Hergé, creator of Tintin. Plus fifty percent of Johnny Hallyday, I add as a pourboire.

Gillian  Stop it! You’re as bad as one another. No-one knows what you’re talking about. Look, I just think we ought to explain things.

Stuart  As bad as one another. That’s open to question, I think. In the present circumstances.

All right, I’d like to explain something. Frank Ifield actually wasn’t an Australian. He may have lived there, but he was born in England. Coventry, if you must know. Also, while we’re on the subject, ‘I Remember You’ was in point of fact a Johnny Mercer song written twenty years previously. Why do culture snobs always sneer about things they’re completely ignorant of?

Oliver  Explain things? Can’t we leave that until we reach the Dies Irae, until some hydra-cocked Pandaemonian prods us with his dipstick and a bat-headed lizard unwinds our guts on a windlass? Explain things? You really think we ought? This isn’t daytime TV, let alone the Roman Senate. Oh, very well, then. I’ll go first.

Stuart  I don’t see why he should. That’s absolutely typical Oliver. Besides, everyone in marketing knows it’s always the first story that sticks in the mind.

Oliver  Baggies I first. Baggies baggies baggies.

Gillian  Oliver, you’re forty-two. You can’t say baggies.

Oliver  Then don’t smile at me like that. Baggies. Baggy baggy baggy and another baggy. Go on, give us a laugh. You know you want to. Please. Pretty please.

Stuart  If this is the alternative, I’d rather be middle-aged. Officially or unofficially.

Oliver  Ah, marketing! Always my Achilles heel. Very well, Stuart can be our lead-off man if he wishes, pattering round the first bend bearing the baton of truth. Don’t drop it, Stu-baby! And don’t run out of your lane. You wouldn’t want to get the lot of us disqualified. Not this early.

I don’t care if he goes first. I merely have one request, made on grounds not of egomania, self-interest or marketing, but of decorum, art and a general horror of the banal. Please don’t call this next bit ‘The Story So Far.’ Please don’t. Please. Pretty please?


From the Hardcover edition.