Book Review: "Talking it Over" by Julian Barnes

As you probably already know, Julian Barnes is one of my all-time favourite writers. He has written many books that I have read, enjoyed, reviewed and even studied, including but probably not limited to: Pulse, The Sense of an Ending, Arthur and George, Flaubert's Parrot, The Lemon Table, The Noise of Time, Metroland, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Cross Channel and, possibly my favourite by him, The Man in the Red Coat. This review is about one book I particularly enjoyed called Talking it Over - with all the major themes that signs it off as a Julian Barnes novel, I cannot for the life of me believe how I have not read this one in the past. But I am still glad I found it.

The story is simply this: Stuart and Oliver have been best friends since they were young and now they are adults, they need to start moving in the adult world of work and love. When Stuart falls in love with Gillian, something strange begins. It isn't really a jealousy from Oliver but more an appreciation for Gillian's existence. At the wedding of Stuart and Gillian, Oliver falls in love with Gillian and then all shit hits the bloody fan. Oliver begins to plot against his best friend, in an almost machiavellian style to gain Gillian from him, and this carries on through the course of the rest of the novel with one intending to win her over.

The book is a classic Julian Barnes novel. Not everything is as it seems and you have to be paying very close attention to see why the end of the novel happens as it does. There is something really cruel about this book and it quite possibly contains some of the most frequently used profanity in any Barnes novel I have ever read. But, the theme of power and promise probably stuck out to me the most. This is not just the love triangle story of two men liking the same woman though she is married to one of them. Instead, it is a tale of a friendship that grows tense and betrayed until the farce drops at the end and the illusion is revealed. It is a very strange set of circumstances but I like how the ending comes back on itself and turns into something completely new. You actually won't see it coming at all I don't think, you have to be watching really carefully in order to figure it out.

Julian Barnes is possibly one of the greatest writers of the 20th and 21st centuries and he definitely proves it in the short novel Talking it Over - there is a second one to this and I'm going to try to find it because though I think that we have a good ending right here, there are things I still need to be finished about the characters and their lives - I feel like I'm in for a whole new emotional breakdown soon.

Written in the classic style of Julian Barnes, filled with love, betrayal, death and the difference between illusion and reality, there is something that draws you to his books - Talking it Over may be a great example, but there was a story I read recently as well by Julian Barnes called Survivor and that too, though it is about something completely different, displays very similar themes. He is able to come up with these brilliant realist stories in which one of the characters (or ocassionally more) are obsessed with their own delusions. Needless to say, this is a brilliant way to invite tensions into the text.