A hilarious correspondence about growing old and the difficulty of not looking back.
Sylvia Winstanley, the youngest and most competent resident in a home for the elderly and self-labelled maverick, begins a written correspondence with the author of Flaubert's Parrot. We are treated to one half of the confused and hilarious dialogue between the two. Sylvia's bout of 'epistolomania' offers a charming perspective on growing old, and the associated difficulty of continuing to look forward rather than back.
Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection The Lemon Table.
Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and The Man in the Red Coat, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Duff Cooper Prize. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.
