Book description
With her husband descending into the advanced stages of dementia,
Vivian discovers that reading from his favourite cookery books can
call forth a temporary alleviation and a flash of happiness. But her
husband's fading memory compromises her own recollections and brings
about disappointments, in both the connections she wants to believe
and those she'd rather ignore.
Part of the Storycuts series, this story was previously published in
the collection The Lemon Table.
Julian Barnes is the author of ten previous novels, including
Metroland, Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in
10½ Chapters and Arthur & George; three books of
short stories, Cross Channel, The Lemon Table and
Pulse; and also three collections of journalism, Letters
from London, Something to Declare, and The Pedant in the
Kitchen.
His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. In
France he is the only writer to have won both the Prix Médicis (for
Flaubert's Parrot) and the Prix Femina (for Talking it
Over). He was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European
Literature in 2004, the David Cohen Prize for Literature and the Man
Booker Prize for Fiction in 2011. He lives in London.
