Departure(s) by Julian Barnes: Last Novel Blending Memoir, Fiction, Illness and Love

British author Julian Barnes’ latest novel Departure(s) is narrated by a writer called Julian. The narrator suffers from a rare kind of blood cancer—incurable but manageable—which, as he wryly notes, could be an apt descriptor for life as well. Barnes’ narrator begins by musing on the nature of memory: its hold on us, its role in a writer’s life, the cruel tricks it plays on us as we age. Proust, Woolf, Flaubert, Baudelaire are all evoked. Because if you are speaking of memory, how can you not speak of them? The narrator, who is in his mid-’70s, makes two promises to readers at the start: one, this will be his last book. Two, he will be sharing a story, or rather a story within the story, so read on…

That story, “a story with a missing middle”, begins in Chapter Two. It revolves around a man and a woman (Stephen and Jean) who the narrator meets at Oxford in the ’60s when he is a student. He befriends both of them separately, and through him, Stephen and Jean get to meet. The two fall in love under the narrator’s benign gaze, then break up and drift apart. Later, after a gap of 40 years, Stephen contacts the narrator, and the narrator ends up arranging a meeting between the couple again. Once more, love blooms. Once more, its course refuses to run smooth.

No one would blame readers for wondering if Departure(s) is a memoir. In fact, the real-life Barnes—Booker Prize-winning author with 15 novels, three short story collections and ten works of non-fiction to his credit—injects plenty of autobiographical elements into the narrative. Barnes did study at Oxford. He was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2020 when Covid rattled the world, which he writes about with a novelist’s curiosity and a philosopher’s insight in sections of Departure(s). Barnes released Departure(s) this year when he turned 80 and announced that this would, in fact, be his last book.

So then, Departure(s) is a blend of the ‘beautiful lies of fiction’ and facts, a unique hybrid work; playful, philosophical, whimsical, verbally inventive and intellectually curious by turns. At one point in the book, Jean the straight-talker tells Julian the narrator, “This hybrid stuff you do—I think it’s a mistake. You should do one thing or the other.” Julian is quick to reply, “You are mistaken if you think I don’t know exactly what I’m up to when I write.”

Any discerning reader would agree with him. During his 45-year-long writing career, Barnes has experimented freely with literary genres. He has written novels and short stories, essays, memoirs and biography; been at ease with travel writing and translation; and also penned crime fiction (under a pseudonym). Conventional forms have never corralled him. In Levels of Life (2013), he wrote about ballooning, photography, love and grief; specifically, the grief he was reeling under after the death of his wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanah. Disparate elements, fused together by the fire of his imagination, created a book that was like no other, an exploration of a deeply personal experience with immense universal resonance.

His Nothing to be Frightened Of (2008) is a meditation on the fear of death, mortality and faith, and a celebration of art. In Departure(s), too, death—the final departure without a subsequent arrival—looms large. But this awareness is shot through with a sense of perspective and doses of wry humour so that looking back at the past doesn’t turn into a morbid exercise and gazing into the future doesn’t petrify the ageing writer. In some sections of the book, the real-life Barnes draws readers into the heart of his experiences after his cancer diagnosis. He makes careful notes about his illness, observing his own life with a novelist’s interest, and then shares his observations with readers, inviting them to be part of his story. He is not afraid to be vulnerable. Neither does he mind the prospect of readers having a laugh at his expense at times. For instance, at one point he jokes that one way to get overworked doctors to pay attention to him at the hospital would be to wear a badge that announces: ‘But I Won the Booker Prize’!

Barnes has delved into the themes of ageing, illness, death and grief in many of his previous books. The return of the past, the pivot on which Stephen and Jean’s love story rests in Departure(s), is the driving engine of Barnes’ Booker-winning novel The Sense of an Ending and his novel The Only Story (2018). In his novels Talking it Over and Love, Etc, three characters are caught up in the swirling tides of life, love and friendship. It’s a pleasure to hear these echoes in the pages of Departure(s) as Barnes muses on the mysterious ways in which life works. Julian, the narrator, watches Stephen and Jean from up close. Both confide in him and as their relationship falters for the second time, Julian wonders how much of the blame should fall on him. What role does he play exactly: facilitator, friend, marriage broker, deluded fiction writer? Looking back, he says, “I thought I knew what made people tick; I even thought of myself as an advice centre. But I had treated Stephen and Jean as if they were characters in one of my novels, believing I could gently direct them towards the ends which I desired. I’d been confusing life with fiction.”

Candid admissions like these and the keen insights on illness, death, grief, love, friendship and writing that Barnes has gleaned over the years make the book sparkle. Plenty of wisdom is on offer but this is no sermon on the mount. Barnes turns philosophical quite often, steadfast in his belief that “life is a light comedy with a sad ending”. He senses that soon he will exist as a “shelf-ful of books” and a bunch of “biographical anecdotes”. He hails readers for delighting him with their steadfast presence and giving him a chance to share his observations with them. His aim has never been to instruct readers or to tell them what to think. He signs off by saying, “I’ll just rest my hand briefly on your forearm… and then slip away,”

His absence will be keenly felt.