Pulse

Available beginning May 3rd from Random House Canada and Alfred A. Knopf. The stories in Julian Barnes' long-awaited third collection are attuned to rhythms and currents: of the body, of love and sex, illness and death, connections and conversations. Each character is bent to a pulse, propelled on by success and loss, by new beginnings and endings. Ranging from the domestic to the extraordinary, from the vineyards of Italy to the English seaside in winter, the stories in Pulse resonate and spark. You may order a copy at Jonathan Cape, Random House Canada, Alfred A. Knopf, Waterstones.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, or a variety of Independent Booksellers. An unabridged audiobook is also available from BBC Audiobooks or Amazon.co.uk. 'All the stories in Pulse have the absolute completeness and density of the very best short fiction.' -- Kate Saunders, New Statesman From Knopf: After the best-selling 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 Garibaldi’s 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 can’t resist invading his reticent girlfriend’s 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 he’d treasured with his wife learns how difficult it is to purge oneself of grief. And throughout, friends gather regularly at dinner parties and perfect the art of cerebral, sometimes bawdy banter about the world passing before them. Whether domestic or extraordinary, each story pulses with the resonance, spark, and poignant humor for which Barnes is justly heralded.

Editions

Pulse. London: Jonathan Cape, 2011.

Pulse. London: Jonathan Cape, 2011 [Signed edition in slipcase, limited to 500 copies].

Pulse. Sofia: Obsidian Press, 2011. Pp. 272. ISBN: 9789547692565 [Published on the author's birthday].

Pulse. Random House Canada, 2011.

Pulse. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.

Reviews

Smith, Sarah. The Literary Review, December 2010.

Massie, Allan. 'Book Review: Pulse'. The Scotsman, 01 January 2011.

Adams, Tim. 'Pulse by Julian Barnes -- Review'. The Observer, 2 January 2011 ['This perfectly weighted collection feels like a companion volume to his erudite and profound meditation on death, Nothing to be Frightened of.'].

Kemp, Peter. The Sunday Times, 2 January 2011 ['[An] emotionally sombre, intellectually keen and sensuously celebratory book.'].

Martin, Tim. 'Pulse by Julian Barnes: Review'. The Telegraph, 2 January 2011 ['Barnes’s precise, acerbic novels and stories are a million miles from the state-of-the-nation stuff that tends to dominate modern writing about “Britishness”: but in the fictional works about the psychology of these isles, they’re very near the top.'].

Felsenberg, Ben. 'Pulse's beauty is in the detail'. Metro, 5 January 2011.

Saunders, Kate. 'What death has taught him'. New Statesman, 6 January 2011 ['All the stories in Pulse have the absolute completeness and density of the very best short fiction.'].

Moore, Caroline. 'The gentle touch'. The Spectator, 8 January 2011.

Roberts, Michèle. 'Pulse'. Independent, 7 January 2011.

Cusk, Rachel. 'Pulse by Julian Barnes'. The Guardian, 8 January 2011.

Sanai, Leyla. 'Pulse, by Julian Barnes'. The Independent, 9 January 2011.

Goering, Rosemary. 'Stories from the Heart'. The Herald Scotland, 9 January 2011.

Shilling, Jane. 'Pulse by Julian Barnes'. The Telegraph, 9 January 2011.

Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review).

Quamme, Margaret. 'Stories of relationships mired in mundanity at times.' The Columbus Dispatch, 1 May 2011.

Childers, Doug. 'Fiction review: Pulse.' Richmond Post-Dispatch, 1 May 2011.