The Lemon Table - Softcover

Julian Barnes

3.68

3,546 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330426923 ISBN 13: 9780330426923

Publisher: Picador, 2005

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The character's in Julian Barnes' new collection of stories are growing old and facing the end of their lives - some with bitter regret, some with resignation and others still with raging defiance. The settings range from nineteenth-century Sweden and Russia to a suburban 'Barnet Shop', where the narrator measure out his life in haircuts, and a South Bank concert hall where a music lover carries out an obsessive campaign of revenge against those who cough in concerts. In 'Knowing French' a fiercely independent eighty-year old begins a correspondence with an author - 'Dear Dr Barnes' - that enriches both their lives. A woman reads elaborate recipes to her sick husband in 'Appetite'; a retired soldier in 'Hygiene' makes his annual trip to attend a regimental dinner, run errands for his wife and spend the afternoon with a tart called Babs. In a collection that is wise and funny, clever and moving, Julian Barnes has created characters who passions and longings are made all the stronger by the knowledge that, for them, time is almost at an end.

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From the Inside Flap:

Master prose stylist Julian Barnes presents a collection of stories whose characters are growing old and facing the end of their lives -- some with bitterness, some with resignation and others with raging defiance.

"Life is just a premature reaction to death," was what Viv's husband used to say. Once her lover and friend, he is now Viv's semi-helpless charge, who is daily sinking ever deeper into dementia. In "Appetite," Viv has found a way to reach her husband: by reading aloud snippets of recipe books until he calls out indelible -- and sometimes unfortunate -- scenes locked away in his brain. In "The Things You Know," two elderly friends enjoy their monthly breakfast meetings that neither would ever think of missing. Of course, all they really have in common is a fondness for flat suede shoes and a propensity for thinking spiteful, unspoken thoughts about one another's dead husbands. "The Fruit Cage" is narrated by a middle-aged man whose seemingly orderly upbringing is harrowingly undone when he discovers that his parents' old age is not necessarily a time of serenity but actually an age of aroused, perhaps violent, passions.

In these stories, Julian Barnes displays the erudition, wit and uncanny insight into the human mind that mark him as one of today's great writers, one whose intellect and humour never obscure a genuine affection for his characters.

From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author:

Julian Barnes has published either other novels, Metroland, Before She Met Me, Flaubert's Parrot, Staring at the Sun , A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters, Talking It Over, The Porcupine and England, England; a book short stories, Cross Channel; and also a collection of journalism, Letters from London 1990 - 1995. The Lemon Table is his latest collection. He lives in London.

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