Two new books: Julian Barnes and Arundhati Roy

This winter I’ve been enjoying two new books that speak to the topic of memory as one ages. Now into my 50s this topic has become more interesting than it once was.

First came along Julian Barnes’ final (?) book, Departure(s). I think I have probably read most of Barnes’ novels along the way. This one, he says in the text, will be his last. Barnes is tricky though: you never know if he is a reliable narrator, if it’s fact or fiction. This final (?) book blurs that line as he typically does. Mostly, the narrator is thinking about his life back to young adulthood, and also relationships and so forth. He’s self-consciously in dialogue with Proust, A la Recherche and so forth. It was Flaubert’s Parrot that first got my attention, maybe a little after college; The Sense of an Ending (Man Booker prize-winning) was also terrific. It is sad I think to read an author’s last work when you have read most or all of it over decades, a little like saying goodbye to someone you’ve spent a lot of time with.

Again, it’s hard to know whether to trust that this book will be Barnes’ last but I think I do. I could be proven wrong and wouldn’t be all that sorry if I were to be.

The second, which hit similar themes of memory, is Arundhati Roy’s memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me. It is getting all sorts of positive attention. The book was a kind gift from the Staff of our India office at the MacArthur Foundation. If you have time, I highly recommend reading it. It’s Roy’s first work of memoir, detailing her relationship with her mother. In Roy’s words, her mother was “my shelter and my storm.” What intrigued me most, and linked it to Barnes, was the theme of remembrance. Roy is also self-conscious about her life as an artist and writer, in a compelling way — I loved The God of Small Things, also a Man Booker Prize-winning work, amazingly enough also her first novel.