Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

Published by Knopf on January 20, 2026

Julian Barnes is both the author and narrator of Departure(s). As narrator, Barnes tells us that he was in his mid-seventies during the pandemic. At some point in the story, he says “I’m writing this at the age of seventy-seven, and it is now my generation’s turn to die off.” The author turned 80 this month. It seems clear in the novel’s early pages that Barnes has cast himself as the narrator (he thinks about wearing a badge that says BUT I WON THE BOOKER PRIZE when he visits the hospital so that exhausted doctors, choosing which patients to treat and which to let die, will put him the “treat” column), but authors often give their doppelganger characters a different name. When a character later addresses the narrator as Mr. Barnes, all doubt about the narrator’s identity disappears.

As people get older, it’s natural for them to think about death. As novelists get older, they naturally write about death. It seems death is on Barnes’ mind when he proclaims, early in the story, “This will be my last book.” Barnes later reveals that he is living with (but probably won’t die of) a rare blood cancer. He notes that he has “had a lifelong engagement with death, both theoretical and actual, and have written about it many times.” Near the novel’s conclusion, he repeats that “this will definitely be my last book — my social departure, my final conversation with you.” He sounds like a man saying goodbye to literary life, if not to life itself. By assuring that he will not die in the middle of writing his last novel, Barnes is “denying agency to death.”

Barnes connects memory to death when he writes: “I have found myself thinking a lot in recent years about how we remember the dead, about how quickly memory becomes myth and once-living people are turned into a set of anecdotes (but how could it be otherwise?).” The novel touches on his memories of dead friends, as well as his uncertainty that his selective memories of them are accurate.

Barnes tells us that the novel will tell a story, or a story-within-the-story, but “not just yet.” First, he discusses involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs). The phenomenon was displayed by a man who, after having a stroke, tasted a pie and remembered — in order — every pie he had ever eaten. This is not quite like Proust’s famous madeleine that, when dunked in tea, set Marcel on a long journey of remembrance, because that journey was “a very leisurely, semi-voluntary, semi-automatic memory.”

Barnes is not flooded with memories (he imagines it would be a disagreeable experience, although he would be willing to try it), but he devotes careful thought to the nature of memory (“memory is identity”), including the inability to control memories, and particularly the tendency toward forgetfulness that accompanies old age. He suggests, with considerable merit, that the fullness of memory might be dreadful: “If humankind cannot bear very much reality, I suspect it also cannot bear too much knowledge about itself.”

The middle of the story begins with the question, “How to tell a story with a missing middle?” It focuses on his promise not to write about his friends Stephen and Jean, who became a couple after Barnes introduced them, then broke up and reunited forty years later, after Stephen conspired with Barnes to orchestrate a chance meeting. Julian writes that, at their wedding, his own unsuccessful sexual encounter with Jean “burst into my head with all the force of an involuntary autobiographical memory as I was double-checking that I had the ring safely in my pocket.”

Of course, Barnes breaks his promise by making Stephen and Jean characters in the story, but only after they die. They supply the “story within a story” that Barnes promised. It is both a love story and the story of a failed relationship. Jean complains that Stephen loves her too much or expresses his love in ways that annoy her — he drew her a bath after reading in the newspaper that women regard bath-drawing as the most romantic thing a man can do — while Stephen can’t understand why Jean would be upset that he loves her so much. Jean tells Barnes, ‘Love, in reality, Mr Novelist, isn’t how you and your breed depict it,” a comment that inspires Barnes to write about them, if only to create the kind of novel she seems to desire. Ultimately, Departure(s) is about the familiar topics of love and death (and the death of love) as experienced in memory.

Barnes discusses literature and name-drops without savaging his contemporaries, including Philip Larkin’s “Poetry of Departure,” John Updike’s writing about “flight and dreams of leaving,” Ismail Kadare’s death without winning the Nobel Prize, and Martin Amis’ refusal to continue treating his throat cancer (a choice also made by “another member of our band, Christopher Hitchens”). He also offers insight into less contemporary literary figures, from Proust to Baudelaire, from T.S. Eliot to Shakespeare. All of this is interesting to readers of contemporary fiction, although I was more taken with his discussion of a dog who, like dogs in general, doesn’t realize he’s a dog. Nor does the dog know that he will eventually die, allowing him to live in the moment without fear of the future or the torment of memory, a trick that mere humans have not mastered.

In one discussion of death, Barnes talks about the common perception that it is unfair for good people to acquire cancer while bad people live into old age — a perception that “comes, most probably, from a residue (or even a fullness) of religious belief.” He is moved by the innocence and puzzlement of people who experience that anguish, “but we have surely lived enough millennia on this planet to have noticed that life is not fair or just, and that bad things often happen to good people, and good things sometimes happen to bad people, and that sudden chaos lurks constantly beneath each placid surface.” That’s just the way life is, which might serve as an alternate title for the novel. And while he sometimes rages about death, he is comforted by the phrase “It’s just the universe doing its stuff” because ultimately, that’s all it is. One of his final points — “life is not a tragedy with a happy ending, despite what religion promises; rather, it is a farce with a tragic ending, or, at best, a light comedy with a sad ending” — is a bleak but honest assessment of the cycle of life and death.

Barnes writes about the elusive nature of happiness (“It may be that we each mean different things when we speak of love and happiness, within a couple, as well as within society”). He might be seen as fatalistic, or fatalism might be another word for acceptance of reality. He no longer believes that great art will endure. “Either we shall blow up the planet, and all art with it, or else we shall survive but evolve into something we cannot even imagine– but nothing like what we are now, with our simple longings for god and love and happiness and art. We shall develop into some life form as distant from us as we are from an amoeba.”

Departure(s) often reads more like a long essay than a novel, but a Booker winner has probably earned the right to write his last novel as he pleases. Like it or not (mostly not), we’re all going to die. Barnes made a difference, probably in many ways, but certainly as a novelist. His final book is part of a legacy that few can match. In the end, he looks back on his life and realizes it wasn’t so bad. That’s probably all that any of us can hope for.

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Detour by Jeff Rake and Rob Hart

Published by Random House on January 13, 2026

The first thing to know about Detour is that it ends with a cliffhanger. The novel is the first in a series. I have no idea how many more books it will take to conclude the story.

The good news is that the first installment does not have the kind of padding that writers sometimes use to boost the word count of books that do not tell self-contained stories. The action moves quickly and, while cliffhangers are frustrating, Detour left me looking forward to the next installment. I appreciated the fact that I never knew where the story was going. Now, unfortunately, I need to wait to find out.

Detour begins as a story of space flight, with the intriguing element of a voyager being asked to take a mysterious envelope on the journey. The flight itself, while eventful, occupies a small part of the story. The last third of the novel sees the space travelers return to an Earth that has changed in ways both subtle and dramatic during their absence. Or is it the travelers who have changed?

A key character in Detour is the richest man in the world. He owns a company that engages in space travel. Sound like real-world person who has been in the news? I don’t know if Jeff Rake and Rob Hart intended to model the character on a real-world figure, but his rich man — John Ward — is not a good person. He’s also running for president as an independent.

Ward wants to colonize Saturn’s moon Titan. He has constructed a spaceship in orbit around the Earth. Its first voyage will transport six people to Titan, where they will deploy a satellite to gather data about Titan. The ship’s ion drive will let them make the trip and return in about two years.

Ward chooses three civilians to crew the ship, along with three astronauts from NASA (Mike Seaver, Alonso Cardona, and Della Jameson). The civilians have no experience with space flight. Padma Singh is a doctoral candidate who wrote a paper about Titan that persuaded Ward to colonize it. Ryan Crane is a cop who saved Ward from an assassination. Courtney “Stitch” Smith, a graffiti artist, won a lottery to join the crew. Ward is paying them each at least $20 million to take the trip.  Ryan is paid a bit extra to carry (but not open) an envelope for Ward.

It might seem odd to send three civilians into space with three career astronauts, particularly when the civilians are expected to learn enough in a short period to function as astronauts in an emergency. The early story is about team building, although it’s really about character development.

The characters are carefully defined. Some gain depth through their various family issues. Stitch will leave behind his domineering mother; Mike says a tearful goodbye to his children (and to a  wife who is on the verge of divorcing him because of his drinking problem); Della is leaving her two kids with her mom because she only trusts her cheating ex with supervised visits twice a month; Alonso is leaving behind his wife and the gay man he secretly loves; Ryan is leaving behind his disabled son but wants to believe Ward’s promise to find a neurologist who will help his son walk. Padma’s personality is shaped by her PTSD; Stitch’s by his disdain for the conventional; Ryan’s by his drinking.

The trip to Titan begins to go wrong when the ship departs from its programmed course. The travelers think they have corrected the problem when more issues arise, including explosions. What exploded? The answer is unclear.

When the crewmembers are back on Earth, they find that their problems have only begun. Ward does his best to keep them separated after they return. What is it he doesn’t want them to discover?

The story’s central mystery concerns the events that happened in space — an explosion has apparently been erased from the ship’s logs — and the reasons for the changes that the characters observe after their return. Before the mission, each principle character made choices, good or bad, that defined their lives. When they return, choices they made are different. Those choices alter who they are. Perhaps that is the novel’s deeper point.

The big reveal needs to explain the changes that the characters experience, the hidden report that Ward wants to keep buried, and the contents of the envelope that Ryan carried into space. Unfortunately, the reveal will await a future installment. The first was sufficiently entertaining that I’m looking forward to reading the next.

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Happy New Year!

The Cyclist by Tim Sullivan

First published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Grove Atlantic on January 13, 2026

It isn’t easy being George Cross. It’s easy enough for him to perform his investigative duties as a Detective Sergeant — in fact, he excels at them — but interacting with other people requires supreme mental effort. Cross is on the spectrum. He doesn’t make small talk and is distracted from his thoughts when others do. He is often perceived as rude because he doesn’t recognize and respond to social cues. He doesn’t want “to have to deal with social interactions and be on his best behaviour” because it takes too much energy.

Yet the same condition that impairs his ability to socialize contributes to his intense focus, his ability to organize and compartmentalize, and his obsession with detail. The same skill he brings to jigsaw puzzles — recognizing patterns — helps him identify clues to murders. When people depart from their patterns, they must have a reason. If their departures coincide with a crime, Cross looks for a connection.

Tim Sullivan is far from the only author who has used autistic behaviors to create intriguing characters, but George Cross is one of the best in crime fiction. It would be easy to exploit Cross's social ineptness for laughs. While Sullivan gives his readers the opportunity to laugh, he does so with sensitivity. He looks at Cross through the eyes of his colleagues, helping the reader understand Cross’ autism from different perspectives.

Cross is exasperating to others (he would be a handful to work with) but he’s tolerated because of his success as a detective. His current partner, DS Josie Ottey, is sticking around because she’s starting to understand Cross. By being patient, she’s also helping him recognize social cues and respond appropriately — a task that Cross sometimes and only grudgingly appreciates.

For the sake of maintaining a cordial work environment, most people go out of their way to avoid offending co-workers. They tell white lies. They might say, “Oh, she just stepped out for coffee” instead of “She’s avoiding you because you criticized her.” Cross will have none of that. He doesn’t care if he offends others and his feathers aren’t ruffled when other workers share unpleasant observations. In his words: “If only more people just told the truth instead of hiding behind badly concocted, feeble excuses. Everything would be so much more straightforward.”

Cross’ gruff personality is the hook that sets this series apart from others. Cross has no tact because he doesn’t understand the need for it. In his view, tact is a barrier to honesty. Others might see him as rude and blunt; he sees himself as getting to the point with maximum efficiency. While he isn’t endearing to others, the window that Sullivan opens to Cross’ life makes it possible to sympathize with his struggle to interact socially. And even if Cross is socially awkward, it is easy to understand some of his peeves, including his disdain for social media (“I don’t know how people find the time, and why on earth do they think their lives are of such interest to other people?”).

As the title suggests, this installment's murder victim is a cyclist. George rides a bicycle to work and follows the sport of competitive cycling. He instantly recognizes the corpse on an autopsy table as a cyclist, given his low body fat, muscular thighs, and distinct tan lines just above the knee. The murder victim — found in a garage that is scheduled to be demolished — turns out to be Alexander Paphides. Alex worked in his family’s Greek restaurant, but he was an avid cyclist who, when last seen by his family, was planning to depart for a competition with the other members of his amateur cycling club.

George’s investigation follows clues related to performance-enhancing drugs, as well as a pharmacist and fellow cyclist who denies knowledge of Alex’s doping. But could the murder have been related to Alex’s sixteen-year-old girlfriend? Alex was 32 but his relationship with Debbie was more than platonic. Alex was at odds with his brother and father about the future of the family business, while Debbie seems fearful of Alex’s mother.

Ongoing issues in Cross’ life all focus on relationships, particularly with his father, his co-workers, and a local priest. Cross dutifully has dinner once a week with his father but is disturbed to the point of panic when his father wants to change the dinners from Wednesday to Thursday. Cross has no religious beliefs (his analytic mind demands evidence to support any belief) but he enjoys playing the organ. A local church allows him to practice on its organ if he keeps it tuned, but Cross resists the priest’s effort to coax him into performing a recital for the parish. This all contributes to an unusual but welcome degree of characterization for the series protagonist.

When all the clues point to a particular suspect, most police detectives are happy to declare victory, arrest the suspect, and move on to the next case. Even if all the clues don’t point in the same direction, most detectives will pick a suspect and ignore the clues that are inconsistent with the detective’s theory of guilt. Not Cross. He infuriates his boss by insisting that the investigation continue until every detail fits into the puzzle perfectly. With Cross, if one fact doesn’t fit, either the fact is untrue or the puzzle hasn’t been solved. And so, just when it seems that one suspect is guilty, Cross discovers that the crime is not quite as simple as the detectives imagined.

The mystery of Alex’s murder is multi-faceted. While a reader might solve part of the puzzle, it may take a reader who is as focused as Cross to spot all the clues that lead to a full resolution. I am grateful to Grove Atlantic for bringing this entertaining British series to American readers.

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Merry Christmas!