(From the publisher):
Master prose stylist Julian Barnes presents a collection of stories whose characters are growing old and facing the end of their lives—some with bitterness, some with resignation and others with raging defiance.
"Life is just a premature reaction to death," was what Vivís husband used to say. Once her lover and friend, he is now Vivís semi-helpless charge, who is daily sinking ever deeper into dementia. In "Appetite," Viv has found a way to reach her husband: by reading aloud snippets of recipe books until he calls out indelible—and sometimes unfortunate—scenes locked away in his brain. In "The Things You Know," two elderly friends enjoy their monthly breakfast meetings that neither would ever think of missing. Of course, all they really have in common is a fondness for flat suede shoes and a propensity for thinking spiteful, unspoken thoughts about one anotherís dead husbands. "The Fruit Cage" is narrated by a middle-aged man whose seemingly orderly upbringing is harrowingly undone when he discovers that his parentsí old age is not necessarily a time of serenity but actually an age of aroused, perhaps violent, passions.
- A Short History of Hairdressing
- The Story of Mats Israelson
- The Things You Know
- The Revival
- Knowing French
- The Fruit Cage
- The Silence
Original title: The Lemon Table
Genre: Fiction→ General Fiction→ Literary Fiction/classics
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