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Pulse
Pulse | Julian Barnes
2 posts | 3 read | 1 reading | 3 to read
From a writer who's on a roll, fourteen stories that range freely through the historical past and contemporary life, touching on longing and love, loss and friendship, and a great many passions in between. It's the strongest collection yet from Julian Barnes. From an imperial capital in the eighteenth century to Garibaldi's adventures in the nineteenth, from the vineyards of Italy to the English seaside in our time, Julian Barnes finds the "stages, transitions, arguments" that define us. A newly divorced real estate agent can't resist invading his reticent girlfriend's privacy, but the information he finds reveals only his callously shallow curiosity. A couple comes together through an illicit cigarette and a song shared over the din of a Chinese restaurant. A widower revisiting the Scottish island he'd treasured with his wife learns how difficult it is to purge oneself of grief. And throughout, friends gather regularly at dinner parties and perfect the art of cerebral, sometimes bawdy banter about the world passing before them. Whether domestic or extraordinary, each story pulses with the resonance, spark and poignant humor for which Barnes is justly heralded.
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Anna40
Pulse | Julian Barnes
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In these short stories, set in the past and now, Julian Barnes lets his characters grapple with love, loss, grief and relationships. In 4 stories,the witty banter almost resembles a play: a group of friends discusses topics ranging from politics and life to small medical procedures. My favourite was ‘Easy Wind‘: a budding relationship between a divorced English man and a Polish waitress becomes political, current events commentary.

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litcat
Pulse | Julian Barnes

"She has always been a town person, and her interest in the countryside was largely pragmatic, a flock of sheep only signifying roast lamb."

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