Talking It Over

Description

A 'wonderfully funny..intelligent...moving' novel (Independent on Sunday) from Man Booker Prize-winning Julian Barnes. From the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction comes a novel of profound insight and comic flare. Shy, sensible banker Stuart has trouble with women; that is, until a fortuitous singles night, where he meets Gillian, a picture restorer recovering from a destructive affair. Stuart's best friend Oliver is his complete opposite - a language teacher who 'talks like a dictionary', brash and feckless. Soon Stuart and Gillian are married, but it is not long before a tentative friendship between the three evolves into something far different. Talking it Over is a brilliant and intimate account of love's vicissitudes. It begins as a comedy of errors, then slowly darkens and deepens, drawing us compellingly into the quagmires of the heart.

Julian Barnes is the author of twelve novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. He has also written three books of short stories, Cross Channel, The Lemon Table and Pulse; four collections of essays; and two books of non-fiction, Nothing to be Frightened Of and the Sunday Times Number One bestseller Levels of Life. He lives in London.

Few writers think and talk so beguilingly. This book is wonderfully funny. And intelligent. And moving * Independent on Sunday * Quicksilver clever and allusive * The Times * Scintillating... It's funny, quick on the draw, and knows when to soften the gaze. It reads so smoothly, the pages seem to flip themselves * Observer * A writer of rare intelligence. He catches the detail of contemporary life with an uncanny forensic skill... He is, as always, a superb ironist, a connoisseur of middling, muddling, modern England * London Review of Books * A wonderfully wistful and funny novel * Daily Telegraph *