During the time I worked as a therapist, one philosophical issue that kept presenting was the conundrum between determinism and free will. How much are we owned by our circumstances, and to what extent if any can we break loose? In the space of twenty-three pages, Julian Barnes, a writer I revere, explores this dilemma with all the precision and humanity you might expect from such a profound chronicler of the human spirit.
The story is set in a small industrial town in nineteenth century Sweden. The community is self-enclosed, inward looking and stiflingly conventional. Standards of propriety are rigid and enforced by prying and gossip. In this unpromising setting two people, both, by their own admission, unimaginative and in many respects unremarkable, fall deeply and unexpectedly in love. They are each married to other people. As Scott Fitzgerald once remarked, there is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and Barnes tells their story with a simplicity of style that both reflects the tone of their inner turmoil and belies the minute subtleties he manages to tease out in their conflicted situation. It’s intensely clever writing in which all the cleverness is hidden, so that what remains is the tragedy of ordinary lives offered a glimpse of the heavens, but predestined to be nothing other than ordinary.
Strangely, Barnes’s short stories seem rarely to find their way into anthologies. Can’t think why.
Published in The Lemon Table,Jonathan Cape, 2004
A Personal Anthology 