"The Only Story," by Julian Barnes

It is always good news when Julian Barnes publishes a new book, whether it be a novel, a collection of short stories, a book of essays, or a memoir. I have read and posted here about several of his books. His most famous recent book is the novel “The Sense of an Ending,” the Man Booker 2011 Prize winner, which I liked very much and wrote about here. His newest is “The Only Story” (Knopf, 2018). It is a love story, but a somewhat unusual and certainly sad one. In the 1960s, a 19-year-old English university student, Paul, meets an older (aged 48) married woman, Susan, at the tennis club where Paul’s parents go. They play doubles tennis, and not long after, begin an affair. Somewhat improbably, Paul is not bothered at all by the substantial age difference, although Susan has some qualms and concerns. Her husband and his parents are, naturally, deeply unhappy about the affair. But it becomes far more than an affair; against all odds, the two move in together and have a very happy life for perhaps a decade. What finally drives them apart is not the age difference, but another serious problem, which I won't describe here, in order to let the reader discover it for her/himself. We see the arc of their story up close, and then toward the end of the book, we find ourselves listening to Paul as a much older man, looking back at the affair. Although it went wrong, he has never forgotten his “only story,” his first and greatest love. This is a very “grown-up” story. It is also a bit claustrophobic, as readers get very little sense of the context of the outside world during the affair, beyond that of the small, upper middle class community where the two lovers meet, and the apartment in London that seems unconnected to the life around it. Interestingly, Barnes chooses for his narrator (the story is told through the eyes of Paul) to vary his pronouns referring to Paul among “I,” “he,” and “you.” “The Only Story” has an unlikely weight to it, and we readers believe that Paul’s story is real and heartfelt, although he steers clear of sentimental or exaggerated language, even about his great love.