Julian Barnes | The Only Story
- Copyright: © Julian Barnes 2018
"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."
One summer in the sixties, in a staid suburb south of London, nineteen-year-old Paul comes home from university and is urged by his mother to join the tennis club. There he’s partnered with Susan Macleod, a fine player who’s forty-eight, confident, witty, and married, with two nearly adult daughters. She is a warm companion, her bond with Paul immediate. And soon, inevitably, they are lovers.
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.- Language: English
- Dimensions: 22 x 14,5 cm
- Pages: 216 pgs
- Cover: hardcover
- Year: 2018