Nothing to be Frightened Of

Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes is a major departure from most of the memoirs I have read recently. It's got to do with his own family life but not in the usual way. He speaks of his parents' personalities and their attitudes towards death, as part of his own musings on the fear of death, and the influence of his own atheism (and more recently in his life, agnosticism) on his fear or lack thereof.

He brings in the stories and thoughts of many other famous writers: Flaubert, Renard, etc. What distinguishes this memoir is that it is not the usual litany of sorrows, the typical dysfunctional family or terrible disease that generally crops up in these books. It's about ideas first and the circumstances of his life second.

I've gotten so tired of the typical "my life was dreadful but I have triumphed" story line. That doesn't mean I am boycotting memoirs but I'd like to see more variety in them. Nothing to be Frightened Of isn't a light book, in fact it is so dense that I am reading it much more slowly than usual. Yet Barnes has a sense of humor about it all and manages to say something funny on almost every page. He's also talking about a subject that haunts us all but almost no one ever speaks about. I appreciate that.