Levels of Life: A Memoir (Vintage International) Paperback – July 1, 2014

Yes, it's an odd little book - partly a long New Yorker-style essay, partly self-serving emotional catharsis - but I enjoyed it. Reading it felt like listening to a good friend in a casual, smart conversation. The simple reason: Barnes writes so very well.The opening half, about the balloonists, is unquestionably pleasant though somewhat baffling. Where is this all going? you wonder. What's the point? Then, when it switches to a grief memoir, wow! Kaboom! The book becomes much more involving, for me. By the end he's tied the whole thing together well enough, all right. It becomes a sort of miniature jewel, yet it's just the right size for the territory it's covering. (Okay, that's mixing metaphors.)At times sad, it is mostly romantic and somehow simultaneously thought-provoking. Can't help wondering, though, how different his story would have been if he had children, which are never mentioned.Do read this book. It won't take you long, but its effect will be long-lasting.

I have mixed feelings about this short book - described in the blurb as a 'triptych of history, fiction, and memoir'.Julian Barnes is a truly great writer - one of my favourites -and I did enjoy Levels of Life but I'm not as enthused as some of the other reviewers appear to be.Anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one will relate very well to the last section of the book where Barnes describes the grief he experiences with the death of his wife. It is written with great feeling and encapsulates the depth of his terrible loss - but there is nothing new here. His experiences are no different from any other person in the throes of grief. He has no spiritual affiliation so perhaps this makes the journey all the harder but I was not moved enough to agree with the Huffington Post - 'This is the most inventive and honest portrayal of grief we've read....'Perhaps the strength of this story lies in the simplicity of the telling.

Having lost my 6-year-old son to cancer, I've read plenty about grief. And, as a Christian, I've read plenty about faith and grief. Leave it to an atheist to write the best book I've read yet. Julian Barnes is a highly respected novelist and essayist who wrote "Levels of Life" after his wife, Pat Kavanagh, died after nearly 30 years of marriage.This is not a typical book about grief. In fact, much of it does not look like it deals with grief at all, which is where the genius comes in. Barnes splits his short book into three sections. The first section, "The Sin of Height," is about early adventurous folks and their foray into ballooning. "You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed." Such is the world of people and balloons, or photography and balloons, or two people together. So, what is the sin of height? Is it our desire and willingness to rise about ourselves? What else is love other than the rising above yourself by being with another. "Together, in that first exaltation, that first roaring sense of uplift, they are greater than their two separate selves." Put together two things and you have something new and, in love, better than what you had before. So what is the sin? The desire to be more than we are?We come down to "On the Level," the second section of the book. Back on the ground, we deal with life as we find it. We can fly above the world, but we most come down. "But when we soar, we can also crash. There are few soft landings." So, why when we are on the ground do we constantly aspire to more? Because love is where truth and magic meet. It may be photography (truth) and ballooning (magic), but it may also be two people. And even though we are aware of the dangers of combining truth and magic, or rising in a basket below gas and hot air, we seek to rise above ourselves. But that goal to rise above our ground level leads us to a new level, "The Loss of Depth."In this final section, Barnes finally directly addresses the loss of his wife and the resultingbarnes-and-kavanaghJulian Barnes and Pat Kavanaghgrief. The first two sections lay the groundwork to help people understand better the loss of depth or the depth of grief. Some of the writing in this section could not be more accurate to the experience of grief. He opens. "You put together two people who have not been put together before. Sometimes it is like that first attempt to harness a hydrogen balloon to a fire balloon: do you prefer crash and burn, or burn and crash?...Then, at some point, sooner or later, for this reason or that, one of them is taken away. And what is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible."These stunning last two lines are written by Barnes in relation to his wife, but they apply to any relationship. My son has been taken away from me and my wife, but what is taken away is greater than what we had. Our relationship is greater for the loss, a mathematical impossibility. But love is not confined to our mathematical structures. Later he returns to this apparently illogical formula. "Grief is the negative image of love; and if there can be accumulation of love over the years, then why not of grief?" Everyone expects loss to diminish over the years, but can it not increase? Note that he does not say grief is the opposite of love. It is the "negative," like a negative of a photo. It is the other aspect we do not see except in special circumstances."This is what those who haven't crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn't mean they do not exist." Barnes tells about friends who refuse to talk about his wife, even when he repeatedly raises her name. Others encourage him to move on, but he has no interest in moving on from the memory of his wife. He keeps her alive by remembering her. Why would he stop? However, Barnes does not offer space for people to hide in their grief. "There are many traps and dangers in grief, and time does not diminish them. Self-pity, isolationism, world-scorn, an egotistical exceptionalism: all aspects of vanity.Look how much I suffer, how much others fail to understand: does this not prove how much I loved? Maybe, maybe not....The griefstruck demand sympathy, yet, irked by any challenge to their primacy, underestimate the pain others are suffering over the same loss." Or, perhaps, any loss.So, what does Barnes offer to overcome all of this? Nothing. Instead, it is a call to understand those in the midst of grief. A challenge for people to look at death, which we avoid, and the loss others can have for people. His only nod to Christianity is a sharp jab at a Christian who notes that Christ also suffered. He responds, is that all your God has to offer? But here Barnes slips because he assumes that Christianity offers an answer to suffering. Instead, it offers a model. And, it respects the grief we experience, just as Barnes is seeking from others. Perhaps he has considered this since the book -- he is more recently called agnostic.

A part of me appreciates the clear-headed precision of Julian Barnes, but sometimes I do get annoyed with his fussiness – for instance in this book, in the final section dealing with the grief, he also takes time out (twice!) to complain about people misusing words like, pass, and when he wrote, “I bridle at the misuse of the adjective “uxorious,” I almost had to give up on the book right there. I mean, who cares (also, never in my entire life, and I’m forty-nine years old, have I ever heard a person even say the word uxorious).The final third of the book, the autobiographical section on the author’s grief over the death of his wife overpowers the rest of the book. It’s insightful and deeply felt, though occasionally reads as if Barnes thinks he’s the only person in the world who has really experienced grief, when really we all have. The book’s three sections area all fine on their own, the first third is sort of a journalistic essay on the balloonatics of the 1800s and the mid-section is a sort of historical fiction of something like a romance between balloonist/soldier, Frederick Burnaby and actress Sarah Bernhardt, but in my mind, I’m having a hard time figuring out what binds the three sections together, other than that they follow each other in the same book. I’m sure it’s not the case, but it feels like Barnes wrote some very intense stuff on grief, but not enough for a full book, had a couple of other pieces he was thinking about, and realized if he could just kind of stuff them between the same cover, and bam, new novel would be out the door. So even though all three sections are interesting, put together, it doesn’t quite come off, and the last, deepest third, really unbalances the whole thing.

This is my second Barnes book.This book has taught me so much about life and beyond. Barnes' prose is crisp and the stories are immaculately constructed.I came off wanting more of it yet thoroughly satisfied with what it managed to tell in the few hundred pages of endearing literature.

One of the most powerful pieces of writing on the nature of love, loss and grief that I've ever encountered. It ranges from stories of Sarah Bernhardt, ballooning and the French photographer Nadar to the author's reflections on the death of his wife and his life without her, yet not without her. Extremely moving.

"Levels of Life" ist ein Triptychon über die Liebe. Auch wenn man's nicht gleich merkt, denn Julian Barnes' Einstieg führt in die abenteuerliche und skurrile Welt der Ballonflugpioniere, jener risikofreudigen Männer und Frauen, die versuchten, was niemand vor ihnen je versucht hatte, die in atemberaubende Höhen aufstiegen und so die Welt mit neuen Augen sehen durften, und die dafür manchmal, Ikarus gleich, einen hohen Preis bezahlten. Die Symbolik erschließt sich erst auf den zweiten Blick. Von zweien dieser "Balloonatics" handelt auch das zweite Bild, vom todesmutigen Colonel Barnaby, der der unvergleichlichen Sarah Bernhard verfällt und dabei ebenfalls der Sonne zu nahe kommt.Und dann kommt ein heftiger Schnitt, ein Ende mit Schrecken, das auch Julian Barnes' eigener Liebesgeschichte zuteilwurde, als seine Frau nach fast 30jähriger Ehe an einem Hirntumor starb, kaum mehr als einen Monat nach der Diagnose, ähnlich den Ballonfahrern, die, als ihr Ballon in Flammen aufging, aus höchster Höhe zur Erde stürzten. Er fragt nach dem Sinn des Lebens, das er ohne seine - ich benutze diesen abgenutzt-heiteren Ausdruck, weil er es eben doch trifft - bessere Hälfte weiterleben muss. Er geht, fast ein bisschen zu heftig, ins Gericht mit all den Menschen, die ihm und seiner Frau nahestanden, und die sich trotzdem in seinen Schmerz nicht hineinfühlen können, und ihren gut gemeinten, aber mitunter bodenlos dummen Versuchen, ihm Trost zuzusprechen. Selbstmord wird erwogen und, aus einem sehr bedenkenswerten Grund, wieder verworfen. Es ist eine verzweifelte, wunderschöne posthume Liebeserklärung, vielleicht sogar eine Art Lebenshilfe zum Umgang mit Verlust und mit denen, die Verlust erleiden mussten.

I had lost my partner just over a year ago.i find so many people cannot comprehend what this is like as they have not experience it. After reading an editorial in the Globe &Mail by Leah McClaren about the book...I knew I needed to read this book. I found it very comforting and recommend it to anyone that has lost a life-long partner

Per chi ama la scrittura e profonditá narrativa dell'Autore,è un libro prezioso denso di sentimenti e percezioni.Si legge in un fiato.