Nothing to be Frightened Of

A superb new book... a disquisition on death that addresses religion, philosophy, literature, identity, memory, evolutionary biology and the nature of the universe. It is his funniest and frankest work yet

Daily Telegraph

It is entertaining, intriguing, absorbing and so expansive that I was startled on finishing, to note its brevity....a text that is populous, so bursting with voices that it seems almost to be a novel... elegance that makes a sombre subject irresistible reading... it is an inventive and invigorating slant on what is nowadays called 'life writing'. It took me hours to write this review because each reference to my notes set me off rereading; that is a reviewer's ultimate accolade

Penelope Lively, Financial Times

Barnes dissects with tremendous verve and insight this awesome inevitability of death and its impact on the human psyche. He also tears at your heart eye. Although there is something invigorating about his scholarly meditation, overall the mood of the memento mori is of spirited stoicism tempering the dread - a reminder that, within this successful, sophisticated, erudite writer in his sixties, there still lives an anxious little boy'

New Statesman

The grim reaper slinks through every page of Julian Barnes's compelling memoir-cum-meditation...he is consistently interesting and entertaining

Daily Mail

It is witty, poignant and allusive, deals with the problems of memory and bristles with asides on poetry, penguins and religion...This preoccupation with death takes Barnes on a journey that meanders as delightfully as the topic is melancholy.. what surprises me most about Nothing To Be Frightened Of is how funny it actually is.. For all the wit, a vein of irony runs through the book... there is nothing glib or facetious about this book despite its overwhelming sense of the massive absurdity at the heart of being alive

Scotland on Sunday

An essay in the best sense: speculative and precise, intimate and metaphysical, capacious and democratic in the variety of voices, alive and dead, that are invited to counsel the author as he edges his way towards the void

TLS

Intensely serious book of striking elegance: a clever, complicated reverie on last things, so full of ideas as to reveal itself quite slowly, through frequent re-reading

Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year

A fantastic work of non-fiction, a showcase for his elegantly unfussy sentences and Barnes's ability to burrow to the very bottom of a subject, no matter how daunting

Colin Waters, The Sunday Herald

Julian Barnes takes on the ambitious subject of death - and succeeds brilliantly

William Leith, Scotsman

It is a sincere, humble work, punctuated by moments of poignancy

Colm Farren, The Irish Times