The Only Story
“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less and suffer the less?” That is, I think, finally, the only real question.” This is the opening to a quietly searching, at times comic and ultimately raw and honest investigation into how love – and quite possibly one love in particular – will inevitably dictate your life’s journey. It’s familiar territory for Julian Barnes, one of England’s most perceptive fiction writers in the realm of human emotion, relationships and the shortcomings therein, and while his observational structure is as ingenious as ever, it is the aching tenderness of his tone that really pulls at your heartstrings.
Our hero, who slips pretty quickly into anti-hero status, begins the tale as a 19-yearold student, the only child of conventional middle-class parents in the depths of leafy “stockbroker belt” England, where “hedges of privet” and a cliquey tennis club are the trademarks of this corner of conservative suburbia.
It is 1960 and Paul, home from university, is ironically amused at the conventionality of his childhood stamping ground. With a sense of insolent superiority, he joins the tennis club and meets Susan Macleod, more than twice his age. She’s not your archetypal siren, but when Paul is partnered with her for doubles, his hormones are alerted. Soon his brain clicks in as he is drawn to Susan’s sardonic sense of humour and ballsy disregard for the mores of her era. Paul and Susan embark on a flirty relationship, with Paul as Susan’s willing chauffeur home from the club. “It was a matter of some pride to me that I seemed to have landed on exactly the relationship of which my parents would most disapprove,” Paul tells us.
The narrative is largely in the first person, with Paul talking directly to the reader, but at times a slightly avuncular authorial voice slips in as a form of commentary from the sidelines.
Susan has two daughters older than Paul and her “grumpus” of a husband seems more consumed in his crossword and nightly downing of “flagons and gallons” than he is with his obviously straying wife.
But as the lovers become more brazen, tension and opposition blights their path. Eventually they run away together to live in a semi-clandestine “bliss” in London. And so Paul’s rite of passage truly begins, and his cocky bravura slips as the realities of Susan’s past life, of human frailties and the differences between them compound to a slow unravelling of their love. We start to realise that Paul’s version of events may not be “the only story” of the title and although we don’t hear her version, it’s impossible not to empathise with Susan, whose “story”, fuelled by sacrifice, ends in self-destruction. The result is incredibly thought-provoking, unpicking life’s bigger issues and, like all great novels, leaves you questioning your own “story”. At 10 years old, author Julian Barnes was told by his mum that he had too much imagination. This has proved to be a huge advantage for the now 72-year-old, who continues to be a giant of English literature. He studied at Oxford University, working first as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary and later as a literary editor and critic before becoming an author. He has written 12 novels, including the Man Booker Prize-winning The Sense
of an Ending, and along with a catalogue of other awards, in 2017 was awarded the Légion d’honneur by the French President.