A nurse had brushed her hair, which fell straight down on both sides of her face. Almost instinctively, I reached out a hand, planning to uncover for the last time one of her elegant ears. But my hand stopped, seemingly of its own volition. I withdrew it, not knowing if my motive was concern for her privacy, or fastidiousness; fear of sentimentality, or fear of sudden pain. Probably the last.
“Susan,” I said quietly.
She didn’t react, except to continue with her frown, and the obstinate jut of her jaw. Well, that was fair enough. I hadn’t come with, or for, any message, let alone for any forgiveness. From love’s absolutism to love’s absolution? No: I don’t believe in the cosy narratives of life some find necessary, just as I choke on comforting words like redemption and closure. Death is the only closure I believe in; and the wound will stay open until that final shutting of the doors. As for redemption, it’s far too neat, a moviemaker’s bromide; and beyond that, it feels like something grand, which human beings are too imperfect to deserve, much less bestow upon themselves.
I wondered if I should kiss her goodbye. Another moviemaker’s bromide. And, no doubt, in that film, she would stir slightly in response, her frown lines uncrease, and her jaw relax. And then I would indeed lift back her hair, and whisper into her delicately helixed ear a final “Goodbye, Susan.” At which she would stir slightly, and offer the trace of a smile. Then, with the tears unwiped from my cheeks, I would rise slowly and leave her.
None of this happened. I looked at her profile, and thought back to some moments from my own private cinema. Susan in her green-piped tennis dress, feeding her racket into its press; Susan smiling on an empty beach; Susan crashing the gears of the Austin and laughing. But after a few minutes of this, my mind began to wander. I couldn’t keep it on love and loss, on fun and grief. I found myself wondering how much petrol was left in the car, and how soon I would have to find a garage; then about how sales of cheese rolled in ash were suffering a dip; and then about what was on television that evening. I didn’t feel guilty about any of this; indeed, I think I am now probably done with guilt. But the rest of my life, such as it was, and subsequently would be, was calling me back. So I stood up and looked at Susan one last time; no tear came to my eye. On my way out I stopped at reception and asked where the nearest petrol station might be. The man was very helpful.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julian Barnes is the author of twenty-two previous books, most recently The Noise of Time. He received the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending, and has also received the Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the David Cohen Prize for Literature, and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the French Prix Medicis and Prix Femina; and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur by the French government. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He lives in London.
An A. A. Knopf Reading Group Guide
The Only Story by Julian Barnes
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of The Only Story, the newest novel by Julian Barnes.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The opening line reads, “Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less?” Which would you pick? Do you agree with Paul that this isn’t a fair questions because “we don’t have the choice”?
2. Susan and Paul have a quarter-century age difference, yet he repeatedly insists throughout the novel that neither one of them was taking advantage of the other. Do you agree, or do you think there is an inherent power imbalance between them due to that gap?
3. Games and sports feature prominently throughout the story, whether tennis, golf, or crossword puzzles. How do each of these activities, and the attitudes the characters have toward them, illuminate and illustrate the nature of love as they interpret it?
4. Discuss the character of Joan and her role as Paul’s only true confidant when it comes to his relationship with Susan.
5. Point of view consistently changes throughout the novel, with part one being in first person, part two in second person, and part three in third, second, and first. Why do you think Barnes chose to do this? How did the different perspectives impact the reading experience and influence how you understand Paul?
6. On this page, Paul presents his theory that memory is like a “log-splitter.” How is the nature of memory demonstrated throughout the novel, and do you agree with Paul when he says, “Life is a cross section, memory is a split down the grain, and memory follows it all the way to the end”?
7. As Susan’s alcoholism progresses, she tells Paul she has “a moral disease” caused by her being from “a played-out generation” (this page). What do you think is the impetus for her drinking, and how do you interpret her repeated insistence that her generation is “played out”?
8. A subsequent girlfriend of Paul’s calls Susan a “madwoman” in an attic (this page), a reference to not only Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre but also the groundbreaking 1979 work of feminist literary criticism of that title by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. How does Susan fit into the broader tradition of literary housewives? Is she a transgressive feminist, a beleaguered relic of pre–sexual revolution England, or something else entirely?
9. Do you think Paul was right to “hand back” Susan to her daughters, or do you think he abandoned her? How did his decision color your opinion of him?
10. As we see throughout the novel, and as is explicitly discussed in part three, Paul is obsessed with defining love. Discuss what it means when, on this page, he posits, “Perhaps love could never be captured in a definition; it could only ever be captured in a story.”
11. How is marriage represented in the novel, and how important is it that Paul himself never marries?
12. Gordon Macleod is an extremely complex man—something Paul comes to realize only later in life. Discuss the evolution of their relationship, and Gordon’s significance as a man who subscribes to traditional British masculinity.
13. Paul and Susan’s final encounter is, on the surface, anticlimactic, but at its core imbued with deep significance. How did you interpret it?
14. After their first match, when Paul apologizes for causing them to lose, Susan says, “The most vulnerable spot in doubles is always down the middle” (this page). How does this idea reemerge throughout the novel—that our weakest spot is the space between us and someone else?
15. What is your only story?
SUGGESTED READING
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift
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