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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780679736875
ISBN number: 0679736875
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: October 27, 1992
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: October 27, 1992
Sale Popularity Level: 353178
Studio: Vintage
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Product Description:
In this powerfully affecting Flaubert's Parrot gives readers a brilliant take on the deceptions that make up the quivering substrata of erotic love. 'An interplay of serious thought and dazzling wit. . . . It's moving, it's funny, it's frightening . . . fiction at its best.'--New York Times Book Review.
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Rated by buyers 
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This is a book where a simple story of a love triangle is made more interesting by allowing the reader to view it from the perspectives of everyone involved (or everyone even remotely associated with the main three characters). However, the book seems to lack momentum may be because the unfolding of events is delayed when characters take their turns to talk about them.
Rated by buyers 
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Julian Barnes's Talking It Over is told from the perspectives of three first-person narrators: Stuart, who is pedantic and slightly nerdy; the reserved, conflicted, and lovely Gillian; and Oliver, a flamboyant show-off in love with his own cleverness. Stuart marries Gillian, Oliver is their best friend who tags along with them all the time, and I'm willing to bet that you guess what happens next.
The plot is conventional, the characters never quite escape their stereotypical roles, yet somehow the book succeeds. Don't get me wrong; it's not Great Literature, nor is it Barnes's best work, but it's an engaging read nonetheless. Barnes does a good job of playing his three narrators against each other, and despite the fact that they never quite rise above their types, he eventually manages to show us the humanity that lies beneath the type. There are some nice lines and a few very well-written scenes. I like the way Barnes captures the feeling that exists between Gillian and Oliver as they sit in her attic studio day after day, and I love the moment when Gillian sees the secret flower petal on the shelf and swallows it--such a wonderfully subtle way of letting us know that she's crossed a line within herself, before she even knows it.
The book lost steam a bit towards the end. It seems that Barnes is better when is writing is fueled by the crackling sexual tension that exists in the very first half of the narrative; once the tension is resolved, the story seems to go astray.
It was a compelling read, and very quick, but anyone seeking Barnes best work would be better of with A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters.
Rated by buyers -
For a start, for readers of Martin Amis's success, Barnes' novel seems like such an obvious rip off that it is hard to believe it wasn't intentional. The central tenets of Amis's novel - one successful dilletante male, the other hard working and mundane, a woman who doesn't say much, characters speak directly to the reader - are all followed in Talking it Over.
In addition, the structure of the book is weak. The narrative rests on the reader being drawn into Gillian very first falling in love with Stuart (which you don't - how often does an attractive woman sign up for a dating agency then fall for a dull, needy, insecure man?) then Oliver (which is also unconvincing - he bungles the seduction, but she falls for him anyway). Barnes pads out this narrative with some interesting comment from the characters on love, life and sex, and some trademark humour, but pasting some wry social observation onto the page does not in itself make a good novel.
Actually, I found the sequel, Love etc. rather better, and far more convincingly done. You would have to read this novel as a stepping stone to that book, which picks up the lives of the characters after the cliffhanger at the end of Talking it Over.
Rated by buyers 
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Steady nerdish Stuart and his best friend, flamboyant loser Oliver, are both in love with Gillian, who solves her dilemma by marrying both of them. It is set in 1980's London
It is told very cleverly (rather too cleverly) from the point of view of each of a cast of characters who write as if trying to get their own points of view across to the reader and analyze each others motives and criticize each other. Normally I dislike these fancy narrative devices (sometimes called post-modern, although you can trace them back to eighteenth century epistolary novels, and addressing the "dear reader") but Barnes does this so well that I was captivated.
The style becomes too fancy when Oliver is the narrator. He is fond of elaborate witticisms and bits of French. The best narrators were Val and the girl in the flower shop.
Barnes wrote a sequel "Love Etc" ten years later, which is set ten years later in the characters' lives. It is even better.
Rated by buyers -
Not until I came to the end did I check the publication dates of this novel and John Mortimer's Dunster. Barnes has it. Talking It Over dates from 1991 and Dunster from 1992. Whether there was any communication between the authors regarding their stories, or whether the muse visited them independently, I have no idea at all. If the latter, the resemblance between the plot-lines is nothing less than startling. Safe and slightly dull financial professional has a showy and erratic best friend. Dull professional marries well, and wife deserts him for erratic and showy best friend, whom she then marries. The second marriage fails, partly through Aristotelian hamartia of best friend. The b/f gets his deserved comeuppance, this providing some cold and partial consolation to the wronged dull professional.
Julian Barnes is talented in the extreme. Not only is the book as well written as those familiar with his other work would expect, the plot gives him the opportunity to parade some of his own prejudices regarding the proper use of English, these prejudices being of course voiced by the characters in the book and not directly by the author (as if we would be fooled). In fact it is the persons of the drama who talk from very first page to last, never the author for himself, and it is not just the three protagonists but the minor supporting cast as well. This device is very cleverly and adroitly used, again as we would expect, but I myself am sometimes inclined to find Barnes just a little too smart for his own good or for my appreciation as a reader. The start of the book is completely brilliant, for example, with the two lonely-hearts falling for each other, and the talkative Oliver playing gooseberry. His own discomfiture at being in this position and the way he talks too much in compensation are ultra-perceptive observation by the author, and I have the strong impression that he knows that himself. How the story then develops until the ousted Stuart finally becomes the unwanted presence that brings Oliver's downfall about is clever, original and convincing, or clever and original at least.
The whole book shows a sharp eye for character and situations, and an even sharper ear for how some kinds of people talk when they are forced to come to terms with their real thoughts and motivations. What I found very successful was the way Barnes keeps his distance from his characters and ensures that they are really talking for themselves rather than for himself. Every incident and every situation in this book challenges us to be judgmental, but if any judging is going to be done the author makes sure that we are left doing it. His style is also light, graceful and in the last degree skilful, and you will get through the book's 270 or so pages before you think.
Very readable, very persuasive and I suppose very recommendable. I gave Dunster 5 stars when I reviewed that, so I have no other option here.
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