- Published: 1 May 2009
- ISBN: 9780099523741
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 256
- RRP: $29.99
Nothing to be Frightened Of
- Published: 1 May 2009
- ISBN: 9780099523741
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 256
- RRP: $29.99
Intensely serious book of striking elegance: a clever, complicated reverie on last things, so full of ideas as to reveal itself quite slowly, through frequent re-reading
Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year
A maverick form of family memoir that is mainly an extended reflection on the fear of death and on that great consolation, religious belief... It is entertaining, intriguing, absorbing...an inventive and invigorating slant on what is nowadays called 'life writing'. It took me hours to write this review because each reference to my notes set me off rereading; that is a reviewer's ultimate accolade
Penelope Lively, Financial Times
It is a sincere, humble work, punctuated by moments of poignancy
Colm Farren, The Irish Times
A fantastic work of non-fiction, a showcase for his elegantly unfussy sentences and Barnes's ability to burrow to the very bottom of a subject, no matter how daunting
Colin Waters, The Sunday Herald
An essay in the best sense: speculative and precise, intimate and metaphysical, capacious and democratic in the variety of voices, alive and dead, that are invited to counsel the author as he edges his way towards the void
TLS
Julian Barnes takes on the ambitious subject of death - and succeeds brilliantly
William Leith, Scotsman
A brilliant bible of elegant despair...that most urgent kind of self-help manual: the one you must read before you die
Tim Adams, Vogue
Both fun and funny. It is sharp too, in the sense of painful as well as witty... Barnes dissects with tremendous verve and insight this awesome inevitability of death and its impact on the human psyche. He also tears at your heart
New Statesman
Intensely fascinating
The Times
An elegant memoir and meditation. A deep seismic tremor of a book that keeps rumbling and grumbling in the mind for weeks thereafter
Garrison Keillor
This year, its moving, sly, terrified grappling with the approach of extinction overwhelmed me
Andro Linklater, Spectator, Books of the Year