Reading Departure(s) felt a little like settling into a long conversation with someone who has lived a full life and is finally ready to speak plainly. Julian Barnes moves between memory, fiction, diary, and reflection with such ease that I often forgot where one mode ended and another began. The book opens with musings on involuntary memory and the strange ways the mind stores and reshapes experience. From there, he folds in the story of two friends he introduced at Oxford. That story becomes a quiet thread running through the book, but it is never the whole tapestry.
What gives Departure(s) its emotional weight is Barnes’s frankness about his own diagnosis of incurable blood cancer and the knowledge that this may be his final work. His reflections on mortality, the loss of friends, the fading of memory, and the slow winding down of a life are written with a clarity that is both unsettling and comforting. I found myself unexpectedly moved by the final section, where he speaks directly to the reader with a tenderness that feels earned rather than sentimental.
The book explores neurological quirks, the slipperiness of memory, the ways our brains shape our reality, and the inevitability of endings. At times it reads like a philosophical essay, at others like a memoir, and occasionally like a novel that keeps stepping out of its own frame to comment on itself. I didn’t enjoy every element equally and there were moments in the early chapters where the philosophical digressions felt a little heavy. But once the departure theme took hold, the writing became so touching that I found myself reading more slowly, letting the ideas settle.
What worked best for me was the tone. Barnes is sly, self-aware, and often very funny. Even when he is writing about death, there is a lightness to his voice that kept the book from feeling bleak. His conversational style made me feel as though I had spent an afternoon with him, listening to stories, memories, and the occasional sharp observation about the absurdity of being human.
Readers who enjoy reflective, hybrid works that blur the line between fiction and memoir will find a lot to appreciate here. It will resonate with anyone drawn to books about memory, ageing, friendship, and the strange business of being alive.
In the end, Departure(s) felt like a graceful farewell. It left me emotional, hopeful, and grateful to have spent time in Barnes’s company. If this truly is his last book, it is a beautiful one. And it certainly won’t be the last of his that I read.
With thanks to Penguin Random House SA for the opportunity to read this book.
