Julian Barnes is one of those writers who could put out a toaster manual and it would be worth reading. He’s talented enough to have won a Booker Prize (for The Sense of an Ending) and been short-listed for three more, and self-aware enough that his occasional detours into the obscure always make a democratic return rather than wandering off, muttering into the woods of esotericism. And he’s methodical enough to have written, in 2013, a triptych (Levels of Life) that’s part history, part nonfiction novel, and part memoir, covering everything from the history of hot-air ballooning and aerial photography to mortality and the mourning of his wife’s death. (All in the span of 118 pages, no less.)
But the same characteristics that have made Barnes a master novelist—trenchant insight, economic thoroughness, a surgeon’s poise, and the will to pan for gold in the rivers that connect the ordinary and the exceptional, the human and humanity—also lessen his capacity for surprise. The author of 16 or so works of fiction (depending on how you count), not to mention a handful of nonfiction books and translations, continues to work with the same grand themes: love, death, faith, loyalty, aging, and so forth. It amounts not so much to a flaw as it does to a limitation.
