Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.
First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn’t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he’s proud of the fact his relationship flies in the face of social convention.
As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.
Tender and profound, The Only Story is an achingly beautiful novel by one of fiction’s greatest mappers of the human heart.
“Mr. Barnes is a master of the novel that unfolds cleanly before the reader and yet interrogates itself as it is told.” —Jonathan Cape, The Economist
“[Barnes] returns to the themes of his first novel in this story, of an affair told from two vantage points, with captivating results. . . . The ending is quietly breathtaking, evidence of the subterranean magic that’s wrought by those seemingly austere sentences.” —Alex Preston, The Guardian
The Only Story by Julian Barnes - April 2018
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