Julian Barnes, LEVELS OF LIFE

I don't know whether I would call Julian Barnes' new book a collection of linked essays or a monograph, but I do know that I admired it very much. At first I was hesitant: it begins with a decent but rather workmanlike account of early ballooning and aerial photography that only (ahem) rises to the level of art near the end, in considering how these new hobbies changed human attitudes toward religion and human endeavor. A second section, more short story than essay, recounts a love affair, of sorts, between Sarah Bernhardt and Frederick Burnaby, both of whom once went up in balloons; it's a reasonably charming evocation of devotion and desire on the part of two colorful characters, but it doesn't add up to much, and is easily the least relevant chunk of the book. Happily, the third and longest section redeems the first by tying the metaphors of ballooning into a succinct, devastating memoir of grief. Barnes grasps what so many writers do not, that death, "that banal, unique thing," is not easy to write meaningfully about, its very familiarity rendering its intensity almost impossible to capture. The brevity of this account works to its benefit (indeed, despite only running about 60 pages of large print, it may be slightly too long). Barnes moves briskly but devastatingly through his own loss, describing scattered experiences that combine to create a web of references, bringing order to the chaos of memory and allowing humor to leaven the intensity (he critiques the phrase "lost his wife to cancer," juxtaposing it with "We lost our dog to gypsies" and "He lost his wife to a commercial traveler"). The experience of the book, defined by the unexpected connections and callbacks, can't be captured in a review. It's not that Barnes has new insights into grief; I don't think there have been any of those for a very long time. But his style has a disjointed yet organized poetry that brings home the weight of grief, how it hits over and over like waves on a shore. This book will only take an hour or two to read, and at that length, it's almost certainly worth your time.