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A review by hsahay
Talking It Over by Julian Barnes
4.0
Talking it over deals with 3 characters, childhood friends Stuart and Oliver, and the lady in their lives, Gillian. From the outset it's not very hard to establish where the story is going to go, or what is going to happen, but the structure and tone that Barnes uses is what draws you in, and what indeed, seems to be the point of the book.
The 3 characters (and a few peripheral ones), take their turns in 'speaking' to the reader, with each of their 'talks' with us, the reader, helping us to picture the situation and more importantly, their characters. Such a structure of course means that Barnes can use the unreliability of his narrators, presenting the same incidents from different points of view and leaving it to us to establish what *actually* went on. Personally I felt that this was used just to the right amount, adding enough tension and intrigue to make it a page turner. However what's also crucial here is the amount of thought Barnes puts it in making these accounts from the trio pertinent to a study of their characters. Very quickly we are able to establish and place these people with certain traits into boxes that define their personality, which helps Barnes to make any 'reveals' or 'betrayals' to these traits more striking. He also handles the placing well, juxtaposing an exuberant verbose character with a contained reserved one, and again reversing this at key junctures to mark the importance of certain events, or certain ideas.
Barnes is able to very carefully add layers to all of his characters and make their interactions important towards understanding them, but also towards understanding life. Despite the peculiarity of the incident that takes place one is able to picture and place aspects of their reactions and philosophies as rooted in their experiences, one that is born organically.
What's the best part is how seamlessly Barnes is able to switch from one character to the next and occupy what are completely different narrative voices perfectly, and maintain this throughout. It seems a fairly simple thing to do, but that's only because Barnes makes it seem so.
The 3 characters (and a few peripheral ones), take their turns in 'speaking' to the reader, with each of their 'talks' with us, the reader, helping us to picture the situation and more importantly, their characters. Such a structure of course means that Barnes can use the unreliability of his narrators, presenting the same incidents from different points of view and leaving it to us to establish what *actually* went on. Personally I felt that this was used just to the right amount, adding enough tension and intrigue to make it a page turner. However what's also crucial here is the amount of thought Barnes puts it in making these accounts from the trio pertinent to a study of their characters. Very quickly we are able to establish and place these people with certain traits into boxes that define their personality, which helps Barnes to make any 'reveals' or 'betrayals' to these traits more striking. He also handles the placing well, juxtaposing an exuberant verbose character with a contained reserved one, and again reversing this at key junctures to mark the importance of certain events, or certain ideas.
Barnes is able to very carefully add layers to all of his characters and make their interactions important towards understanding them, but also towards understanding life. Despite the peculiarity of the incident that takes place one is able to picture and place aspects of their reactions and philosophies as rooted in their experiences, one that is born organically.
What's the best part is how seamlessly Barnes is able to switch from one character to the next and occupy what are completely different narrative voices perfectly, and maintain this throughout. It seems a fairly simple thing to do, but that's only because Barnes makes it seem so.