A review by anneofgreenplaces
The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes

4.0

Julian Barnes's style is impeccable; both comic and poignant moments in these stories come off with ease and every character has a robustly individual voice. Having said that, the shared theme--aging--leads to some feeling of repetitiveness (e.g. men dealing with their lost virility and mourning lost love), but I was very rarely bored, and every story has body. I'm also always impressed by the ease with which Barnes inhabits times and places not his own, seemingly with just as much resonant detail and biting insight into those lives as he has for modern English society. (hard to say how much of this is based on research and how much a very successful illusion!)