Levels of Life by
Julian Barnes
Random House
RRP $29.99
This is a slim book. It is an
exploration of grief. The grief the
author Julian Barnes experiences and continues to feel, four years after the
death of his wife Pat Kavanagh. It
reminds me of Joan Didion’s book ‘The year of magical thinking’ which explores
her reaction to the sudden death of her husband. Barnes is one of those writers who manages
to convey expansive ideas and emotional depth in a most concise (or is it
precise?) manner. This doesn’t detract from the potency of his
words, but it prevents the writing from becoming maudlin or too
self-indulgent. He still talks to his
wife, two or three years after her death.
I reviewed ‘Nothing
to be frightened of’ a year or so ago, by the same author, as he explored his
infinity phobia, indeed his fear of death.
And now, in this latest slim book, he is exploring not his own death but
the loss of his beloved wife, Pat Kavanagh.
What I did not know, and what Julian Barnes does not mention, is that
Pat left him briefly in the nineties to have a love affair with the author
Jeanette Winterson. Evidently Winterson
went public about their affair when promoting one of her novels. I only discovered this when I Googled Pat
Kavanagh to see who this beautiful woman was, who had inspired so much
grief. It then of course, intrigued me
to know that the author writes such intimate details of his grief at her death,
but does not mention the grief when he lost her briefly to another lover.
Barnes comes to
talk about his grief from an oblique and interesting angle. Slim as the book may be, it comes in three
parts. The first part is ‘The sin of
height’. It is a wee bit piece-meal and
disjointed at the start, but nevertheless quite fascinating too. In this first section, the author looks at the
pioneering days of the hot air balloon and photography. The second part ‘On the level’ is where for
me, the book settled in, and the author re-imagines the love affair between
Sarah Bernhardt and Colonel Fred Burnaby, a hot air balloon pioneer. The author examines the life of Fred after he
loses in love to Sarah, when she moves on from him. Part
three ‘The Loss of Depth’ begins “You put together two people who have not been
put together before.” And sometimes it is like that first attempt to harness a
hydrogen balloon to a fire balloon: do you prefer to crash and burn, or burn
and crash? But sometimes it works, and
something new is made, and the world is changed.” And poignantly revealing... “Then, at some point, sooner or later, for
this reason or that, one of them is taken away.
And what is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there.”
Barnes finds
himself becoming a fan of Opera, something he had previously eschewed or not
really enjoyed – and now, in his grief, he finds the extravagance and intensity
of emotion, the cutting to the chase so to speak, where characters express
drama and great grief so evocatively, he now appreciates and understands.
It’s a strange
little book in some ways, but a compelling read too. It takes you right to the heart of
grief. At his wife’s funeral, he finds
himself reading a passage from a novel he wrote as a young man, thirty years
prior, when a character in his sixties is widowed. And of this he says “Only later did
novelist’s self-doubt set in: perhaps, rather than inventing the correct grief
for my fictional character, I had merely been predicting my own probable
feelings – an easier job.”
And, as has been
the case for the last two hardback copies of his books, this is a slim and
delicious to hold hardback – it fits snugly into one hand, the typeface is well-spaced, it’s written
almost in edible chunks, and it bears re-reading for certain. For any person recently bereaved and
dealing with not just their own reaction but too the often unpredictable and
seemingly inappropriate reaction of their friends - the strange beast that
grief is and how we respond, then this is without doubt, almost a guidebook.
About the reviewer:
Maggie Rainey-Smith is a Wellington writer and regular reviewer on Beattie's Book Blog. She is also Chair of the Wellington branch of the NZ Society of Authors.
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