The whole package is a culmination of sorts, shimmering with his silky, erudite prose; beneath the suave surface is an earnest investigation into the mysterious ways of the human heart ... Absence itself—absence of love, absence of the beloved—becomes a crucial locus of meaning.
The final part of Departure(s), in which Barnes examines the struggle to find happiness and accept life’s ending, is unexpectedly funny ... The intermingling of non-fiction and fiction could have been confusing, but Barnes really does know exactly what he is up to and his control of the narrative makes it enthralling and affecting ... Brief but it is not slight and, each time I read it, I thought about it for days afterwards.
The habit of self-correction is among the defining characteristics of this book, which is at once confidently authoritative and tentatively questioning. Barnes assumes a personal relation with his readers, built on the kind of intimacy that cancer’s company doesn’t provide. His voice is informal, confiding, sometimes playful ... Don’t expect too much ... Cool and analytical detachment – that has always been his style. But it is not altogether true that he does not tell us how to live. His vigilant attention to the world demands an answering thoughtfulness from his readers, and that is a way to live.
If this proves to be the real Barnes’s final work, it will be a fitting coda, but the novella’s acuity and cleverness will have readers hoping that this particular aspect of the plot is fictional ... Barnes remains in top form.
