Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011
From the hairdessing salon where an old man measures out his life in haircuts, to the concert hall where a music lover carries out an obsessive campaign against those who cough in concerts; from the woman who reads elaborate recipes to her sick husband as a substitute for sex, to the woman 'incarcerated' in an old people's home beginning a correspondence with an author that enriches both their lives - all Barnes' characters, in their different ways, square up to death and rage against the dying light.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9780099554998
Number of pages: 224
Weight: 183 g
Dimensions: 198 x 131 x 15 mm
All [the stories] are a joy to read as Barnes glides between forms...Each story is distinct and indelible, a tribute to the form. Above all they make you think about growing old and what, if anything, can be done about it. - Glasgow Herald
All have a photographic clarity, a psychological realism that embraces extremes of feeling...with a deliciously wry streak - Observer
Barnes's steely wit finds best expression when inhabiting the anguished and angry... Their brilliance rather plays upon our petty furies and failures, embellishing them with self-deprecatory wryness...entrancing and curiously cheering - New Statesman
Masterly...his best stories have a strong air of Maupassant about them...extraordinarily effective...a compelling series of vignettes of old age, executed with great skill - Daily Telegraph
Splendid, beautiful...reads like Turgenev - Spectator
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