But its focus is more intellectual, as Anthony considers how much of his past history he’s failed to face up to, how willing he is to confront his mistakes and to what degree his own moral failings affected others. The novel has a love-triangle structure-one of its mysteries has to do with where Veronica’s affections resided. But a letter he receives years later complicates the story. Anthony dashes off a bitter letter to Adrian, and when Adrian kills himself soon after, Anthony is willing to credit it to depression. After the breakup, Adrian and Veronica begin their own relationship. He’s focused on two people in particular: Adrian, a brilliant but gloomy schoolmate who routinely questioned the certainties of his history teachers, and Veronica, a harridan with whom he has a brief and tempestuous affair. The novel’s narrator, Anthony, is in late middle age, and recalling friendships from adolescence and early adulthood. The author’s slim 11th novel (and fourth to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize) shouldn’t be mistaken for a frivolous one: It’s an intense exploration of how we write our own histories and how our actions in moments of anger can have consequences that stretch across decades. A man’s closest-held beliefs about a friend, former lover and himself are undone in a subtly devastating novella from Barnes.
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