Pulse

After the best-selling Arthur & George and Nothing to Be Frightened Of, Julian
Barnes returns with fourteen stories about longing and loss, friendship
and love, whose mysterious natures he examines with his trademark wit and observant eye.From an imperial capital in the eighteenth
century to Garibaldi's adventures in the nineteenth, from the vineyards
of Italy to the English seaside in our time, he finds the 'stages,
transitions, arguments' that define us. A newly divorced real estate
agent can't resist invading his reticent girlfriend's privacy, but the
information he finds reveals only his callously shallow curiosity. A couple come together through an illicit cigarette and a song shared over
the din of a Chinese restaurant. A widower revisting the Scottish
island he'd treasured with his wife learns how difficult it is to purge
oneself of grief. And throughout, friends gather regularly at dinner
parties and perfect the art of cerebral, sometimes bawdy banter about
the world passing before them.Whether domestic or extraordinary,
each story pulses with the resonance, spark, and poignant humor for which Barnes is justly heralded.