Volume 38, Number 20 · December 5, 1991
Getting to Know You
By John Bayley
Talking It Over
by Julian Barnes
Knopf, 275 pp., $21.00
Odd to recall that rather more than fifty years ago fashionable persons rang each other up to gossip about The Grapes of Wrath, or to boast of having just read it. Their successors today might be ringing up to discuss the latest novel by Julian Barnes. In the interval our ideas about fiction have traveled a long way, even quite a way since Salinger's Holden Caulfield began talking to us in a voice that has never quite gone silent—it can be heard today in the accents of the three characters who between them supply a total monologue in Talking It Over.
Review, 2370 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |