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Before She Met Me
 
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Before She Met Me (Paperback)

~ (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

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More from Julian Barnes
Odd, inventive, and wickedly funny, Julian Barnes is known for his intricate and often satirical books on literature and culture. Visit Amazon's Julian Barnes Page.

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

At the start of this fiendishly comic and suspenseful novel, a mild-mannered English academic chuckles as he watches his wife commit adultery. The action takes place she met him. But lines between film and reality, past and present become terrifyingly blurred in this sad and funny tour de force from the author of Flaubert's Parrot.


From the Inside Flap

At the start of this fiendishly comic and suspenseful novel, a mild-mannered English academic chuckles as he watches his wife commit adultery. The action takes place before she met him. But lines between film and reality, past and present become terrifyingly blurred in this sad and funny tour de force from the author of Flaubert's Parrot.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage (October 27, 1992)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0679736093
  • ISBN-13: 978-0679736097
  • Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #348,825 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #16 in  Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( B ) > Barnes, Julian

More About the Author

Julian Barnes
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Visit Amazon's Julian Barnes Page

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Before She Met Me
57% buy the item featured on this page:
Before She Met Me 3.6 out of 5 stars (17)
$12.82
The Lemon Table
12% buy
The Lemon Table 4.6 out of 5 stars (18)
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Talking It Over
11% buy
Talking It Over 4.1 out of 5 stars (21)
Flaubert's Parrot
10% buy
Flaubert's Parrot 4.4 out of 5 stars (33)
$10.20

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Customer Reviews

17 Reviews
5 star:
 (4)
4 star:
 (7)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (3)
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 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Great British Humor, April 19, 2001
Before She Met Me is a book filled with the great British humor of Julian Barnes. It has its flaws, to be sure, but they are minor ones. One of the characters is truly reprehensible, but his appearances are so few and far between that I think his horrid behavior can easily be overlooked.

What bothered me more, with this book, were the female characters. One of them seems quite true to life but the other one did not. She seemed wooden, a cardboard cutout. Barnes is a terrific writer, but in my opinion, he has yet to create a believable, good, female character.

The writing in this book is really first rate British humor (I expect it may be too British for some). It is an escapist book but I don't think that should lessen its importance. After all, don't we all need to escape now and then?

If you want to laugh and have a little fun, if you want to forget your troubles for awhile, then try Before She Met Me. It might do you a world of good. It did me.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Postmodern Othello, May 4, 1999
By A Customer
Barnes's novel is yet another instance postmodern intertextuality (like A Thousand Acres, Mary Reily, Wide Sargasso Sea); here, the novel, on a subtle level, appears to revise Shakespeare's Othello in its emphasis on pathological male sexual jealousy. Here, however, the Iago is not another character, but the protagonist's own "reptile brain" that drives him to sexual obsession and violence. A fascinating and engaging but bruising book.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Appreciating the Present..., August 10, 2002
By Space (Different Planet) - See all my reviews
Some people just like to go and dig the stories of the past, they just seem insecure of how well the present is behaving, and they need to find something wrong in it. I wonder if that has to do with trying to maintain that worrying factor that they got used to...

anyways, Graham is one of those guys, after believing that he has it all going the way he wanted, his wife (Barbara) deliberatly starts building some doubts in him. These doubts grow and he loses the touch of enjoying his present, he keeps on wondering about a past, that really is not clear to him, but he never fails to build his own conculsions...

Ann tries her best to keep Graham living the present, make him see what he has and not to be carried away with his emotions and how that would impact the future.

The end of the story is stunning, and leaves no doubts about what the future holds...

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Obsession
Julian Barnes must be one of the most various of English novelists writing today. FLAUBERT'S PARROT is virtually a piece of literary history in novel form. Read more
Published on August 31, 2007 by Roger Brunyate

1.0 out of 5 stars i have read almost all of barnes
and this is a vicious, silly, revolting book with an
obsession over sexual jealousy that will make you
reel. Read more
Published on July 8, 2005 by bobaloo

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting ideas, but not so interesting of a book
The topic of exploring the sexual jealousy of a man regarding his wife's past lovers is, in my opinion, a largely unexplored aspect of life in litereature. Read more
Published on April 29, 2005 by A Reader

5.0 out of 5 stars Brightning Work
A look at the heart of jealousy - how it can rise from improbable circumstances to become a gripping nightmare world. Read more
Published on September 19, 2004 by Blusuede

4.0 out of 5 stars How quickly does sexual culture change?
A novel about sexual jealousy and manners that made me wonder whether the world was really a different place 20 years ago. Read more
Published on December 13, 2003 by Matt

5.0 out of 5 stars Barnes's best
No, really. I've read most of his books, and, of course, "The History" rocks, and "Talking It Over" has loads of sentimental value for me - I was musing about translating it - but... Read more
Published on July 6, 2002 by subornator

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant, nearly flawless
I more or less disagree with the other reviewers here. The protagonist, a candidate for obsessive-compulsive disorder if ever there was one, is easily pegged as eccentric from... Read more
Published on April 14, 2002 by Greg Whitman

3.0 out of 5 stars No One Escapes
I am well into reading a sixth book by Mr. Julian Barnes, so while I may have yet to complete his entire body of work, I do think I can say this is not only a dark exception to... Read more
Published on December 11, 2000 by taking a rest

3.0 out of 5 stars Funny but not believable
Julian Barnes' second novel, from 1982, is _Before She Met Me_. It's about a 40ish academic, who falls in love with a slightly younger woman, and leaves his shrewish wife to... Read more
Published on August 30, 2000 by Richard R. Horton

2.0 out of 5 stars barnes makes it hard to care
i'm told that his latest, england, england has the same problem. the characters that barnes creates are such irritating and hateful gits that you just don't give a damn whether... Read more
Published on July 14, 2000 by Drummond Berman

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