Pulse

Pulse Synopsis

The stories in Julian Barnes' long-awaited third collection are attuned to rhythms and currents: of the body, of love and sex, illness and death, connections and conversations. Each character is bent to a pulse, propelled on by success and loss, by new beginnings and endings. In East Wind a divorced estate agent falls in love with a European waitress, but is tempted, despite his happiness, to investigate her past; in The Limner a deaf painter discovers his patron's likeness after spending time among his staff. Anchored off the coast of Brazil, Garibaldi spies his future wife through a telescope, and in Marriage Lines , a widower returns to a remote Scottish Island to relive a favourite holiday. These are also lives in flux - in the 'stages, transitions, arguments; incompatibilities which grow' - as in the title story, where a man reflects on the break-up of his marriage, brought into new perspective by the actions of his parents; two writers, a 'good team', return from an event rehearsing familiar arguments; in Gardener's World , a couple bond, fall out and bond again over flowers and vegetable patches. Positioned in between are a series of evenings at Phil & Joanna's , where among the topics of conversation - the environment, politics, the Britishness of marmalade, toilet graffiti and the perils of smoking - we witness the guests' lives shift in sections over the course of a year.

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