After the bestselling Arthur & George and Nothing to Be Frightened Of, Julian Barnes returns with fourteen stories about longing and loss, friendship and love, whose mysterious natures he examines with his trademark wit and observant eye. From an imperial capital in the eighteenth century to Garibaldis adventures in the nineteenth, from the vineyards of Italy to the English seaside in our time, he finds the stages, transitions, arguments that define us. A newly divorced real estate agent cant resist invading his reticent girlfriends privacy, but the information he finds reveals only his callously shallow curiosity. A couple come together through an illicit cigarette and a song shared over the din of a Chinese restaurant. A widower revisiting the Scottish island hed treasured with his wife learns how difficult it is to purge oneself of grief.
