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by Julian Barnes

Author:	Julian Barnes
Subcategory:	Contemporary
Language:	English
Publisher:	Jonathan Cape Ltd; First Edition edition (September 18, 1986)
Pages:	196 pages
Category:	Fiction and Literature
Rating:	4.3
Other formats:	lit doc mbr mobi

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ACCLAIM FOR Julian Barnes’s. demonstrates what a fabulous independent voice can accomplish when it keeps kicking away the crutches of contemporary fiction.

ACCLAIM FOR Julian Barnes’s. Staring at the sun. One of England’s most interesting and provocative novelist. arne. isplay a remarkable versatility, a dashing wit, and a sense of irony that keeps his wonderfully idiosyncratic creations under tight control. Philadelphia Inquirer. Not merely a dazzling entertainer.

Home Books Biography Resources Contact. "There was no courage without fear, and without admitting fear. Men's courage was different from women's courage. Men's courage lay in going out and nearly getting killed. Women's courage-or so everyone said-lay in endurance. Staring at the Sun, . 8. Staring at the Sun charts the life of Jean Serjeant, from her beginning as a naive, carefree country girl before the war through to her wry and trenchant old age in the year 2020.

Staring At The Sun book. This is a shame, as the book is beautifully written, as is always the case with Julian Barnes, and genuinely thought-provoking

Staring At The Sun book. This is a shame, as the book is beautifully written, as is always the case with Julian Barnes, and genuinely thought-provoking. However, when compared with The Sense of an Ending one can see how the mature Barnes has dealt with equally weighty issues with so much more subtlety yet directness.

Born in Leicester in 1946, Julian Barnes is the author of nine novels, a book of stories, and a collection of essays. He has won both the Prix Médicis and the Prix Fémina, and in 1988 was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The reference to staring at the sun has to do with a Biggles era RAF pilot in his Hurricane up in the clouds trying to catch Jerry bombers on their way back to Hunland afer blasting dear old England to bits but I didn't quite get what it was all about. The booklet is amusing at times and tries to be serious at others and a newcomer to Barnes may like it.

Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946 in Leicester, England) is a contemporary English writer, and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for his book The Sense of an Ending. Three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005). Barnes has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. It deals with themes of idealism, sexual fidelity and has the three-part structure that is a common theme in Barnes' work. After reading the novel, Barnes' mother complained about the book's "bombardment" of filth

Staring at The Sun is a novel by Julian Barnes published in 1986. Julian Barnes examines the ordinary life of Jean Serjeant from her childhood in the 1920s through her adulthood to the year 2020.

Staring at The Sun is a novel by Julian Barnes published in 1986. Throughout her life, Jean learns to question the world's idea of truth while she explores the beauty and miracles of everyday life.

Re jacketed re-issue A fighter pilot, high above the English Channel in 1941, watches the sun rise; he descends 10,000 feet and then, to his amazement, finds the sun beginning to rise again. With this haunting image Julian Barnes' latest novel begin. It charts the life of Jean Serjeant, from her beginning as a naive, carefree country girl before the war through to her wry and trenchant old age in the year 2020.

Staring At The Sun. Julian Barnes. A remarkable and risk-taking book, breezily philosophical and light-fingered, funny and also genuinely affecting in that it touches both the heart and the head". More from this Author. Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011. View all. The Man in the Red Coat.

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Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Very Good, 1st Edition, Cape 1980. Very good clean tight sound square, no bookplate, inscription or marks of any kind, original Jonathtan Cape review slip loosely inserted. Bound in bright gilt lettered black cloth, together with very good original unclipped (£9.95) Cathy Wood designed sunset over sea dustwrapper. Housed and protected in removable transparent wrapper.

Comments:

LiTTLe_NiGGa_in_THE_СribE

A story of a simple life lived without great expectations and the acceptance of the ordinary. The questions raised by both mother and son express a human's longing for purpose but a realization that one isn't really necessary. The author's description of parent/child relations and aging in general make this book unusual to what I have read before. I found it completely satisfying and reaffirming.

Uaha

I understand this is used but obviously there was no attempt to even try to clean the book. I bought this book to replace a library copy at college and they barely accepted it. The clerk had to clean and do some magic to make it barely acceptable. In addition delivery was later than anticipated.

Yadon

The first two thirds are the biography of an English woman who leads a drab monotonous life. She has a brief friendship during World War II with a fighter pilot who has mildly mystical tendencies (a la Antoine de St Exupery) marries a policeman, leaves him and has a child. I suspected (having read Flaubert's Parrot) that Barnes was setting out to rival Flaubert's "Un Coeur Simple" by showing us that an account of a drab monotonous life could be interesting. She eventually acquires a little sophistication and money and does some traveling and becomes philosophical. The last section switches into science fiction by having her survive into a dystopic twenty-first century.

It lacked the bite and wit and penetrating insights of vintage Barnes. The futurology was unoriginal by science fiction standards - I don't think it would have made it into publication in Asimov's.- and the mysticism was run-of-the-mill.

Not up to Barnes's standard, but that's a very high standard.

Billy Granson

Staring at the Sun read rather as if Barnes had a couple of good ideas rattling around his head, but hadn't the time to explore or refine them before the publishing deadline was up.

I wish I'd given up fairly early on, when it was clear that the main character was not someone I could engage with or care about. Then about two thirds into the book, it just got silly. Still I persevered - partly because I'd loved the History of the World in Ten and a Half Chapters & Flaubert's Parrot, partly because this book had been recommended.

Very disappointing.

Zut

Got completely sidetracked half way through by discussions about God. Not nearly as good as Sense of an Ending

Dori

All was wonderful!

Ziena

love Julian barnes but was disappointed in this book.

Delightful, fictional portrait of Jean Sarjeant (b. 1923) from childhood to old age and still alive, even now, because the book ends somewhere around 2022. So it contains a few sci-fi elements, esp. towards the end. Key events in her long life are called Incidents. Her first Incident is her carrying the sand iron whenever her eccentric uncle Leslie went golfing and the magic of these sessions. The second Incident is changes at home caused by WW II. The third Incident is Tommy Prosser, a pilot whose flying antics led him to see the sun rise twice, billeted in her family home. Readers are advised to discover and enjoy reading about Jean’s later main events themselves, which include a policeman, an improbable child and the Seven Wonders of the World.
Young Jean is curious and naïve, but hopeful she will one day find answers to things she does not understand, or at least be able to ask the right questions. Once, Jean asked her dad, ‘Why is it three o’ clock?’ Whereupon Dad turned to her and said, ‘That is not a real question”. ‘Why is the mink so excessively tenacious of life’ is another of many such early questions that return later in the book.
Towards the end the book becomes philosophical and preoccupied with questions that can or cannot be answered, the existence of God and death. When one of the characters seeks the aid of a government computer system purported to contain all known knowledge, called GPC (General Purpose Computer). It has masses of data about the mink, but no answer to Jean’s old question.
Julian Barnes has crafted almost every paragraph into a small piece of joy to read and it is unmistakable that he enjoyed writing this quirky book full of English humor, erudition and ideas. Old memories and images rear their heads again and again in the most unexpected circumstances. And Jean and the other characters are very well drawn.

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