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The Only Story audiobook cover art

  • The Only Story

  • A Novel
  • By: Julian Barnes
  • Narrated by: Guy Mott
  • Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 110
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 101
  • Story
    3.5 out of 5 stars 105

One summer in the 60s, in a staid suburb south of London, Paul comes home from university, aged 19, and is urged by his mother to join the tennis club. In the mixed-doubles tournament he's partnered with Susan Macleod, a fine player who's 48, confident, ironic, and married, with two nearly adult daughters. She is also a warm companion, their bond immediate. And they soon, inevitably, are lovers. Clinging to each other as though their lives depend on it, they then set up house in London to escape his parents and the abusive Mr. Mcleod.

  • 2 out of 5 stars

  • Disappointing

  • By the baz on 05-08-18
Talking It Over audiobook cover art

  • Talking It Over

  • By: Julian Barnes
  • Narrated by: Steven Pacey, Alex Jennings, Clare Higgins
  • Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 68
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 60
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars 59

Introducing Stuart, Gillian and Oliver. One by one they take their turn to speak straight out to the camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.

  • 5 out of 5 stars

  • The Narrative Gimmick Works

  • By Alan on 11-22-11
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters audiobook cover art

  • A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

  • By: Julian Barnes
  • Narrated by: Alex Jennings
  • Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 159
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 112
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars 113

This is one of the defining novels of English writer Julian Barnes. An entertaining melange of stories starting with a contemporary account of the launch of Noah's Ark takes us into unexpected areas of human foibles, activities, and tendencies.

  • 5 out of 5 stars

  • More Great Julian Barnes

  • By Richard on 02-11-13
The Lemon Table audiobook cover art

  • The Lemon Table

  • By: Julian Barnes
  • Narrated by: Timothy West, Prunella Scales
  • Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 47
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars 43
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars 43

In a collection that is wise, funny, clever and moving, Julian Barnes has created characters whose passions and longings are made all the stronger by the knowledge that, for them, time is almost at an end.

  • 3 out of 5 stars

  • A Real Downer

  • By Cariola on 07-03-12
Arthur and George audiobook cover art

  • Arthur and George

  • By: Julian Barnes
  • Narrated by: Nigel Anthony
  • Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
  • Abridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 76
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 56
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars 57

Julian Barnes' Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel is based on Arthur Conan Doyle's extraordinary real-life fight for justice. Arthur and George grow up worlds and miles apart in late nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh; George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age; George remains in hardworking obscurity.

  • 4 out of 5 stars

  • Well-told unknown story

  • By LitLover on 02-19-16
Levels of Life audiobook cover art

  • Levels of Life

  • By: Julian Barnes
  • Narrated by: Julian Barnes
  • Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 100
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 84
  • Story
    4.5 out of 5 stars 83

'You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...' Julian Barnes's new book is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded him the 2011 Man Booker Prize described him as 'an unparalleled magus of the heart'. This book confirms that opinion.

  • 5 out of 5 stars

  • Every love story is a potential grief story.

  • By Darwin8u on 09-27-16

Publisher's Summary

Man Booker Prize-winning author Julian Barnes' debut novel.

The adolescent Christopher and his soul mate Toni had sneered at the stifling ennui of Metroland, their cosy patch of suburbia on the Metropolitan line. They had longed for Life to begin - meaning Sex and Freedom - to travel and choose their own clothes.

Then Chris, at thirty, starts to settle comfortably into bourgeois contentment himself. Luckily, Toni is still around to challenge such backsliding.
©1980 Julian Barnes (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Critic Reviews

"Barnes writes like a dream." ( Village Voice Literary Supplement)

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  • Matthew
  • Singapore, Singapore
  • 01-14-14

Gosh I love Julian Barnes

Yes, I’ve been living under a rock—I only recently discovered Barnes through his most recent novel, "The Sense of an Ending" (2011). I couldn’t wait to dig into his back catalogue, and thought a sensible place to start would be the very beginning i.e. "Metroland".

Thematically, Barnes doesn’t seem to have strayed too far from his sweetspot over his 31 year career… my review for "Sense" noted themes of “memory, remorse, history, philosophy, secrets and lies” and this could literally be copy-pasted into my review of "Metroland" without arousing suspicion.

For my money, "Metroland" was more of a slowburner—a little sluggish to get moving but deeply satisfying by the end. It was profoundly uncomfortable to recognise some cringey parts of myself in Chris. But even more so to recognise bits of me in the incredibly prickly Toni.

Now that I’ve experienced Barnes’ bookend novels, I’ve concluded his true gift is in creating mundane and disappointed worlds with overt lack of sympathy that—somewhat paradoxically—leaves the reader with a sense of gentle optimism. Not a small feat.

Can’t wait to throw myself into "Flaubert’s Parrot".

As for this specific audioversion, Greg Wise is fantastic and sublime.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful