A review by rosekk
The Only Story by Julian Barnes

3.0

I am struggling to express my opinion of this story - I have formed it, but it's not lending itself to articulation at the moment. I liked that it followed a relatively unconventional situation (or at least different from the kind of relationships I am used to reading in stories), and I appreciated it's handling of memory and judgement of people... but I did not love this story. Something about the narration struck me as off. I don't really have an adequate reason as to why, because I quit liked some of the obvious weird things about it - the change from 1st to 3rd person (although I didn't like the way it was alluded to and explained a few paragraphs into the change), and the shifting of tenses. Occasionally I read a book whose tone doesn't quite agree with me. I think here is a case of that, although usually I wind up hating those books, and I don't hate this one. Either it's it's a better book, for all it rubbed me up the wrong way, or I'm becoming more tolerant of books that don't sit right with me.