The document provides a summary and analysis of Julian Barnes' novel The Only Story. It discusses the author, main characters, narrative structure, and themes of memory and love. The narrative is told from the perspective of the main character Paul Roberts and uses flashbacks and reconstruction of memory to recount his love affair with Susan MacLeod. The third and final part sees Paul reflect on the relationship and his understanding of love in older age, realizing memories are fallible but the experience of love remains profoundly impactful.

1. Reconstructed
Memory of Love in
Julian Barnes’s The
Only Story

2. Prepared by: Sneha Agravat
Semester : 04
Batch : 2020-22
Paper : contemporary Literatures
Enrollment no. : 3069206420200001.
Email id : snehaagravat2000@gmail.com
Submitted to : Department of English,
MKBU

3. Table of contents
Introduction of
author and novel
Introduction
Reconstructed
Memory of Love
Conclusion
01
03
02
04

4. “Most of us have only one story to tell. I
don’t mean that only one thing happens to
us in our lives: there are countless events,
which we turn into countless stories. But
there’s only one that matters,only one
finally worth telling, this is mine”.
(Barnes,The Only Story)

5. ● Born: 19 January 1946 (age 76)
● Leicester, England
● Pen name: Dan Kavanagh (crime fiction),
Edward Pygge
● Writer
● Genre: Novels, short stories, essays,
memoirs
● Literary movement: Postmodernism
● Notable awards:
● Prix Femina 1992
● Commandeur of L'Ordre des Arts et des
Lettres 2004
● Man Booker Prize 2011
● Jerusalem Prize 2021
● Died: 2008
● Julian Barnes-Official Websight
Julian Barnes

6. The Only Story
● Title:- The Only Story
● Author:- Julian Barnes
● Type of work:- Novel
● Genre:- memory novel
● Published:- 1st February 2018
● Publishers:- Jonathan Cape
● Setting:- "stockbroker belt"
outside London, 1960s
● Narrator:- Robert Paul
● Parts:- Three
● Pages:- 213

7. ● Paul Roberts, a 19-year-old Sussex University undergraduate is
the protagonist of this short novel.The setting is the early 1960s,
with a few allusions to present events. Paul joins the tennis club,
which is one of the few social activities available in such settings.
He is paired with Susan MacLeod, a 48-year-old married woman
with two daughters older than Paul, in a mixed doubles match.
Surprisingly, Paul and Susan fall in love, and Susan finally
abandons her family to live with Paul in South London.
● Susan quickly slides into drunkenness and dementia due to a lack
of activities other than housekeeping. Paul sets out on a journey
around the world, picking up jobs and ladies as he goes. Paul is a
character who epitomises alienation. He has no interest in politics
or religion, and no specific aim, so he just goes with the flow. He
freely confesses that recollection is unreliable and that he may not
be telling us the truth when he recounts his life in this book.

8. Introduction

9. ● The Only Story is largely concerned with the nature of love and
how it affects those who are involved.
● The story begins with a quotation from Dr. Samuel Johnson, an
eighteenth-century poet, essayist, and literary critic. Dr. Johnson
identifies the newly emerging genre of the novel as "[a] little tale,
typically of love" in A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
(qtd.The Only Story). Barnes' remark, unlike Dr. Johnson's
sarcasm, does not seem to question the novel as a form or love as
its central focus. The only story of the so-called "little tale," as
Barnes demonstrates in his novel, is, or should be, love.
● Barnes challenges us to question our traditional idea of love
by concentrating on the intricacies of the concept of love from
a constantly changing perspective. The narrator starts his
narration with a broad statement in this case. On the first page,
he engages in an imaginary dialogue with his ideal
hypothetical audience.

10. Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or
love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally,
the only real question.You may point out – correctly –
that it isn’t a real question. Because we don’t have the
choice. If we had the choice, then there would be a
question. But we don’t, so there isn’t. Who can control
how much they love? If you can control it, then it isn’t
love. I don’t know what you call it instead, but it isn’t
love.
(Barnes, 2018, p. 11)

11. Narrative Technique
● The Only Story is a courtly tale experienced and narrated by its central character-
narrator called Paul Roberts.The Only Story's narrative events and situations are
portrayed in an achronological order. The first part is told in first person, the
second in primarily second person, and the third in third person. The author uses
this method of narrative to present the nature and definition of love from several
angles. Part one of the story is about love's birth, part two is about love's death or
test, and part three is about love's aftermath or effect. Similarly, the different
chapters of the novel are recounted in varied modes and formats depending on
their substance.
● In other words, the narrative discourse combines the perceptions and reports of
the experiencing and the narrating.
● As Guignery points out, "in each novel Barnes seeks to explore a new area of
experience and plays with different narrative modes," hence presenting the plot in
a number of modalities is regarded a Barnesian element of narration (2006, p. 1).

12. Reconstructed Memory of Love
● The narrator in part three is haunted with some particular moments of his
unforgettable experience in the past. By reviewing some of the events that
finally led to his separation with Susan. shareable. He tells us how in the last
part of their relationship he gradually could replace his need for Susan with
other satisfactions such as his job which provided him with the “sexual
companionship, the social life, the daily warmth he needed”. (The Only Story).
More than in the two previous parts, the narrator in part three relies on the
constructive role of memory in coming to terms with his traumatic past.
● Part three of The Only Story can be read separately from the previous two
parts.
● Part three, in comparison, accurately reflects Barnes' taste and interests.

13. In Cornelia Stott’s words:
Barnes is “very interested in answering questions concerning memory, finding ways of
making the past accessible, and dealing with the tendency of wanting to change the view
of the past to fit the present” (2010, p. 12).
According to Childe’s argument, Barnes’s “novels can sometimes seem like
conversational forays that develop a line of thought about society and culture into
all kinds of fictional avenues but they are also often formally unusual and almost
perversely experimental” (2011, p. 5).
In this part, Paul recounts his memories of his one and only narrative, which he
considers to be the most significant event in his life. The narrator relates his third
person reflection on their amazing encounter five decades later, believing it will
help him "evaluate" his life "more accurately" (The Only Story). Part three of
Barnes' story depicts Paul as a wise elderly man in his seventies.

14. ● The third part starts with a note in Paul's notepad. For him, finding a
definition of love has become an unhealthy fixation. After meditating on the
meaning of love for a long time, he has discovered that love is an illusive and
illusory idea that is continually being erased. He considers truth to be a
"transient" and multifaceted concept (The Only Story).
● He has realised, however, that love, even awful love, never goes away. "Bad
love yet held a sliver, a memory, of good love — somewhere, deep below,
where neither of them wanted to dig" (The Only Story). Many of his strict
ideas about concepts and people are revised, but he cannot forget his
encounter with Susan. It's the only story he's ever told.
● Part Three is a make-believe reconstruction of the narrator's previous life
based on his memories. This section, out of the three, has the most in
common with the overall qualities of Barnes' works.

15. ● According to Guignery, the "important concerns developed in his
[Barnes'] prior works" include "the evasiveness of truth, the
fabrication of history, and the elusive nature of memory" (2006, p.
105). In this scene, Paul seeks solace in his own memories. Despite his
awareness of memory's unreliability, Paul makes an effort to
reconstruct his life with Susan accurately.
● According to Childes:
Ironic comedy and false memory are two of the poles around which
Julian Barnes’s work revolves ... If the past is alive for us in the
present because we remember it, Barnes’s fiction would suggest that
it is not necessarily the past that we remember. The versions and
details that inhabit memories are mutable and changeable.
Recollections fashion a current sense of identity and arguably vice
versa, but for Barnes the most important aspect to memory is that it
is imaginative. (2011, p. 6)

16. ● In the third part, Paul uses his imagination to rebuild his
recollection. As a result, he is able to transform his memories into
the things he desires. He encounters a unique form of love based
on shared singularity. He accepts his and Susan's differences at
long last.He realises his own inadequacies and ignorance in
terms of love, sex, and his connection with Susan as he goes
over his memories. Aside from that, he attributes his unfulfilled
life to the village's communal life structure. His problem went
unnoticed by everyone. Paul tries to reorder his beliefs on love
and his early twenties' life as a result of his memories. In other
words, as he gets older, he becomes more adaptabel.
● Paul's introspection laids him in discovering new parts of his own
personality. He discovers, for example, that he has been a coward
for the majority of his life. Despite the fact that he had no
"obligations" as a result of the village's "religious, patriarchal,
hierarchical" framework, he confesses that his "freedom" (The
Only Story) has had some ramifications.

17. Part three concludes with the narrator's deep intellectual thinking
on love. He's now primarily concerned with a reasonable
definition of love as well as the nature of his own experience with
it. Love, he concludes, is a painful experience because no one
can experience love without being injured. He favours this
definition of love among his many others: "'In my opinion, every
love, happy or unhappy, is a real tragedy once you give yourself
over to it completely'" (The Only Story). He ultimately admits that
his love "had turned out to be a complete disaster for him...
Perhaps he had been squandering his time all along. Perhaps
love could never be defined; it could only ever be defined in a
picture.in story.(The Only Story).

18. The narrator does not seek forgiveness or redemption, despite his cognitive
and emotional development. He just resolves to confront the reality of his own
past life, a minimalistic version of which swiftly goes through his shifting
mind. As a result of his drastic shift of perspective regarding his past life and
experiences, his greatest concern in the end is the prospect of his future life;
I looked at her profile, and thought back to some moments from my own
private cinema. ...But after a few minutes of this, my mind began to wander. I
couldn’t keep it on love and loss, on fun and grief. ... I didn’t feel guilty about
any of this; indeed, I think I am now probably done with guilt. But the rest of
my life, such as it was, and subsequently would be, was calling me back. (The
Only Story)

19. Paul finally discovers a method to resolve a lengthy and
ongoing inner struggle that has tormented his soul for nearly
five decades. He acknowledges the decisive role of extra-
personal elements like as time, social institutions, individual
differences, and the illusory and manufactured character of
memory when it comes to human relationships and
emotions. He finally subdues his probing, judging, and
tediously repeating perspective on his first love experience
and subsequent perceptions about it later in life. Such a shift
in perspective propels him into a new era of his life.

20. Conclusion
Through the reconstructed nature of memory, The Only Story reveals the
illusion of love and shared oneness. His narrator is able to recognise that
his love affair with his lover was mostly founded on certain mutual, unmet
expectations. They couldn't seem to keep up with each other's egoistic
expectations. Their relationship ended because their love, according to
Lacan's interpretation of the notion, could not free them from their terrible
sense of lack. The narrator portrays his romantic experience as an unique
occurrence in European culture during the 1960s. Paul was born during
the sexual revolution of the last ten years. In his society, he was a
forerunner of the low amount generation.He couldn't make the connection
between his values and those of others, including Susan's and his own
family, while he was in his twenties. Even in his act of storytelling, there is no sense
of sharing between his reality and the other characters' represented worlds.

21. References
Barnes, Julian. The Only Story. Penguin Random House UK. 2018. Book. 24 January 2022.
Childes, P. (2011). Julian Barnes. Manchester University Press.
Guignery, V. (2006). The fiction of Julian Barnes. Palgrave Macmillan.
Julian Barnes: Official Website, http://julianbarnes.com/
NAYEBPOUR, Karam, and Naghmeh VARGHAİYAN. “Reconstructed Memory of Love in Julian
Barnes’s the Only Story.” Hacettepe Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, vol. 38, no. 2,
2021, pp. 336–347., https://doi.org/10.32600/huefd.693265.
Stott, C. (2010). The sound of truth. Constructed and reconstructed lives in English novels
since Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot.
Marburg: Tectum Verlag Marburg.

22. Thank You