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Julian Barnes’ latest book is part family memoir, part conversation with himself on death and dying. A great conversationalist, Barnes introduces us to his quiet, God-fearing father and his rather domineering mother. The resulting portrait of family life is not a charming one, affected as it was by the wide gap between his parents’ outlooks. Be that as it may, Nothing is really a book about Barnes’ fear of dying and how the questioning novelist in him tackles this fear against an overpowering wish to be comforted by the knowledge of God. One man Barnes quotes repeatedly is French author Jules Renard, who wrote movingly about witnessing the death of his father and brother. Barnes is a satirist, so his treatment often verges on the deprecatory, yet in putting forth the wide range of his scholarship, he points to the seriousness of his intention.

NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF
Julian Barnes
Knopf
256 pages, $24.95