"Departure (S)," Reviewed by William Winkler

Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel “The Long Goodbye” features a character based upon Chandler himself: a writer, both successful and alcoholic.

Julian Barnes’s most recent publication, “Departure(s),” could be considered the author’s last goodbye. He states, in the first few pages, that “This will be my last book.” And he repeats the statement in the book’s last pages as well, making “Departure(s) ”Barnes’s own “long goodbye.”

The book calls itself a novel, but it does not confine itself to novel form. There is a story, which may or may not be fictional, but it is nested within segments which are part essay, part memoir.

Barnes opens with a discussion of the concept of involuntary autobiographical memory (IAM), a phenomenon in which a simple act (such as dunking a bit of cake into a cup of tea) opens a flood of images recalled from one’s past life.

He proceeds to a chapter describing his days at Oxford, during which he was instrumental in introducing Stephen and Jean to one another, a relationship that blossomed, grew, then dissolved, the book’s first departure.

Barnes goes on to describe the diagnosis of a blood cancer which, he was told, was not curable, but “manageable,” a disease he would carry until another pathology took his life.

He returns to the second half of his “story,” his role in reuniting Stephen and Jean, their subsequent but ill-fated marriage, another “departure.”

Finally, the author writes of ageing, declining, and finally dying.

“Departure(s)” is a brief book with a long story. Part recollection, part introspection, and part (possibly) fiction, the book is the farewell act of an author of great repute and long tenure.

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