Negative Positive
Title: Dear Reader
Review: Steady nerdish Stuart and his best friend, flamboyant loser Oliver, are both in love with Gillian, who solves her dilemma by marrying both of them. It is set in 1980's LondonIt is told very cleverly (rather too cleverly) from the point of view of each of a cast of characters who write as if trying to get their own points of view across to the reader and analyze each others motives and criticize each other. Normally I dislike these fancy narrative devices (sometimes called post-modern, although you can trace them back to eighteenth century epistolary novels, and addressing the "dear reader") but Barnes does this so well that I was captivated.The style becomes too fancy when Oliver is the narrator. He is fond of elaborate witticisms and bits of French. The best narrators were Val and the girl in the flower shop.Barnes wrote a sequel "Love Etc" ten years later, which is set ten years later in the characters' lives. It is even better.
Is the review positive or negative? 