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Jun 15, 2015gendeg rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
ulian Barnes does melancholy and grief with such beautiful restraint, and not the kind that comes off as self-denying or repressed but, instead, feels sacred. There is distance and privacy. He writes: "I look at my key ring (which used to be hers): it holds only two keys, one to the front door of the house and one to the back gate of the cemetery.” Just a glimmer into his life is enough. Barnes never rips open his heart for us, and yet there's no doubt about his pain and the trauma of his wife's death. But for Barnes's meditative essay on his personal grief, what gives Levels of Life such power and incandescence for me is his weaving of history, fiction, and personal diary. Each mode by itself is solid, but together the writing becomes elevated, incendiary and moving. Flickers of historical account (the days of ballooning) are mixed in with personal anecdotes and reflections in this marvel of intertwined prose. And yet the writing never gets baggy. It is plain and never deflects or obfuscates. Barnes gives us an honest look at what grief does. Barnes also never breaches the privacy of his wife's memory and yet she hovers in the book, the driving force of his words. Barnes begins with the observation that “you put two things together that have not been put together before. And the world is changed.” Economic progress, artistic expression, scientific advancement, and even the heart and life of a man. The inverse of that: that those two things can be separated and the world can fall apart, is a shadow on the rest of the book, and there is a great, yawning journey before we reach that wrenching realization.