The Bookshelf

Julian Barnes has written his final book.

Departure(s) (Knopf, 176 pp., $27) is supposed to be a novel. There’s a story with a beginning and an end — two beginnings and two ends, really — but not much besides. Jules is the reason Stephen and Jean meet as students at Oxford, and he’s the excuse for their remeeting 40 years later. The in-between is a matter of memory. What we choose to remember and how, yes, but also what Mnemosyne decides to inflict on us and when.