Nine To Noon Book review: Departure (s) by Julian Barnes
May 6, 2026
Jane Westaway, a sharp book reviewer and literary commentator, gives a personal, elegiac take on Julian Barnes's Departures. She praises its intimate voice and finality. The conversation covers Barnes's blending of fiction, memoir and philosophy, his wit and memorable anecdotes, and the haunting central tale of Gene and Stephen.
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Barnes Blends Genres Into Intimate Conversation
- Julian Barnes blends fiction, memoir, philosophy and observation so smoothly that genre boundaries disappear.
- Jane Westaway finds the mixture delightful and intimate, saying Barnes reads like someone talking beside you at a café with intelligence and warmth.
Illness Shapes The Book's Elegiac Tone
- The book's context—Barnes's diagnosis with a manageable but lifelong blood cancer—informs its elegiac tone and framing as possibly his last book.
- Westaway felt the final paragraph especially affecting, making the book feel like a valedictory conversation with readers.
Novelists As Cafe Companions Inventing Lives
- Barnes compares novelists to cafe companions watching people pass and inventing stories, highlighting fiction's conversational, speculative nature.
- Westaway links that to the book's intimacy and the idea that good fiction 'feels true.'
