The novels Whistler and What We Can Know (McEwan)

 I absolutely loved the entire experience of reading Whistler by Ann Patchett. I read it slowly, savoring every page-ful, every episode, every inch of type. I also loved the relationships among characters. And who couldn't or wouldn't love Eddie Triplett? And I admired all of his imperfections, but they weren't many and weren't terrible, not to my mind, because I couldn't help but see him only through step-daughter Daphne's eyes. 

So, about Ian McEwan's latest novel, What We Can Know, published in the fall of 2025: The book is divided into two parts. I enjoyed the keen inventiveness supporting the world McEwan creates in the 22nd century in the first 200 pages of the novel. I was into it all the way. 

Then Part II reared its head. I am loathing it, and laughing to myself in spite of it, because I recognize  that the last time I was this angry at a book and its author was when I read Ian McEwan's novel Atonement!! 

Mind you, in the interim (since 2003 or so) I've read many of McEwan's books and admired them all. I read On Chesil Beach, Saturday, Amsterdam, The Children Act, Sweet Tooth and more, BUT, [and this should probably be considered a spoiler comment here, so stop reading now if you have plans to read What We Can Know], I have to ask, why oh why is McEwan so hung up on cursing a major character with bottomless, unredemptive, punishing guilt and then wax on and on about it? Part II forms the last 100 pages or so of What We Can Know. I would really appreciate being able to finish the book, but I can see that I have 60 more pages of dragging this character through the bogs of hell. 

So rather than drag fellow bloggers through hell, I will try to get a grip on myself and either stop reading or just finish it. 

And now I am very curious: Have you ever been incensed by a book and its author? It has happened very rarely to me. The only other time was when I read The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm. In that book, really a very long essay, Malcolm was being deliberately provocative and she succeeded in provoking me. It actually was very well done, but I've never quite recovered, and I read it in the late 1990s. 

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes, the acclaimed British writer of fiction and non-fiction, has announced that Departure(s), his “novel” published in 2026, is his final book. He is now 80 years, and has some significant health issues. As a writer, though, I’m in awe that he (or any writer) can know for certain that the most recently published book is the last. Unless, of course, an illness is so severe that one knows and has received the news that the stamina needed to write a book has absolutely no chance of returning.

This is the fourth novel I’ve read by Barnes. My absolute favorite was The Sense of an Ending (2011), which won the Man Booker Prize. From the moment I finished it, I promised myself I would reread it, although I haven’t yet. I’ve also read Elizabeth Finch (2022) and The Only Story (2018).

So what is Departure(s) about? I know what I think it’s about, and I’m bamboozled (!) and utterly mystified that some blurbs declare it’s a novel about a couple named Stephen and Jean, who met while studying at Oxford. Maybe AI skimmed the book and thought that? I dunno!

Yes, Stephen and Jean crop up from time to time, but they do not figure in any prominent way. In a way, they exist as props for the narrator’s consciousness, like a mirror.

This novel is about the narrator and his reflections on memory throughout life, aging, the prospect of death and what that means at various points in life. Everything is revealed through this narrator, whom one reviewer suggested is unreliable. I can imagine Barnes answering, “Yes, of course he’s unreliable, because that’s what the essence of human memory is.” The narrator’s self-reflections dominate the novel, and to me, they are fascinating. I feel the need at times to re-read each chapter, which is no hardship because it’s a slim volume. To what extent the narrator is autobiographical can never be definitively answered. It certainly is in some respects, especially the final chapter, when the narrator addresses himself as “Barnes.” There are many facts and many parallels between the author and the narrator, so I suppose aspects of the work appear as fragments of memoir. I think.

In the 5^th and last chapter, he writes,

“As for me,…this will definitely be my last book—my official departure, my final conversation with you. Finishing my last book in my own time and then going silent at least has this useful consequence: it means that you will not be cut off…in the middle of writing. In this way you are denying agency to death. Though in a very minor way, admittedly.”

Extremely thought-provoking!  Highly recommended if you like that sort of thing in a book, which I do.