Julian Barnes, author of the Man Booker Prize–winning novel The Sense of an Ending, gives us his most powerfully moving book yet, beginning in the nineteenth century and leading seamlessly into an entirely personal account of loss—making Levels of Life an immediate classic on the subject of grief.

Levels of Life is a book about ballooning, photography, love and loss; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded Barnes the 2011 Booker Prize described him as “an unparalleled magus of the heart.” This book confirms that opinion.

“Spare and beautiful...a book of rare intimacy and honesty about love and grief. To read it is a privilege. To have written it is astonishing.” —Ruth Scurr, The Times of London

“A remarkable narrative that is as raw in its emotion as it is characteristically elegant in its execution.” —Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Booklist
Barnes, who won the Man Booker Prize for his most recent novel, The Sense of an Ending (2011), is a stealthy essayist. His tone is urbane and wry, his style pared and sure, but his emotions are stormy. As in his previous essay collection, Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008), death is Barnes’ theme. Though one wouldn’t think so at the outset as he describes three nineteenth-century balloon flights in England and France enjoyed by three intriguing, eventually interconnected “balloonatics.” There’s rascally Colonel Fred Burnaby; Félix Tournachon, better known as Nadar, the pioneering aerial and portrait photographer; and the “Divine” Sarah Bernhardt. Barnes muses on why being airborne is exhilarating, in spite of one’s being at the mercy of “wind and weather.” The profound metaphorical resonance of Barnes’ fascination with ballooning emerges as he addresses the sudden death of his wife of 30 years and his painful plunge into mourning. This bright wand of a book is testimony to Barnes’ commanding artistry, delving intelligence, and high imagination as he writes of being “griefstruck” with stunningly vital and tonic perception. --Donna Seaman

Review
“An unforgettable book…Visceral, exquisitely crafted, thoughtful and heartbreaking.” —Ellan Allfrey, NPR Best Books of the Year

“Deeply stirring....The metaphoric intensity of what has come before gives Barnes's account of his grief a fierce and fiery kind of momentum.” —John Freeman, The Boston Globe

“Stunning. . . . Levels of Life is deceptively compact but takes us deep. It is as intimate a book as Barnes has ever written, but its beauty—and art—comes from elegant restraint [and] a perspective never seen before.” —Ellen Kanner, The Miami Herald

“A moving tribute to a love and lifelong partner, an examination of grief that personalizes universal emotion effortlessly and beautifully.” —Alexandra Primiani, New York Daily News

“Barnes has distilled his grief—refined and compacted it—and the result is a powerful dirge and slender but shapely work of art.” —Adam Begley, The Daily Beast

“A powerful meditation on things that lift us up—literally, as in hot air balloons, and emotionally, as in love—and things that bring us crashing to earth.” —Heller McAlpin, NPR
“Searching, angry, plangent and beautiful. . . . Only a writer of Barnes's stature could sublimate personal pain into something artistically exquisite.” —Malcolm Forbes, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Biography

Julian Barnes is the author of nine novels, including Metroland, Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, England, England and Arthur and George, and two collections of short stories, Cross Channel and The Lemon Table