Pulse: Stories (Vintage International) - Softcover

"Vibrant. . . . Full of life and voice. . . . As Barnes fans know, love itself is a lifeline for this playful, erudite writer." --San Francisco Chronicle

"A collection that shows a contemporary master working at the height of his ability. . . . Pulse sneaks up on you, and by the end, you cannot help but be moved." --The Oregonian

"[Barnes is a] confident literary decathlete, proficient at old-fashioned storytelling, dialogue-driven portraiture, postmodern collage, political allegory and farce, [and the] ability to create narratives with both surface brio and finely calibrated philosophical subtexts." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Outrageously witty and suave. . . . Wry, urbane." --The Washington Post

"Barnes is among the most adventurous writers--in style, versatility and narrative structure--of his Amis-McEwan-Hitchens generation." --The New York Times Book Review

"A moving and truth-telling work of fiction." --The Boston Globe

"Of our leading novelists, Julian Barnes has one of the richest historical imaginations. . . . His stories tend to be quietly observational, rather traditional in manner, and his characters are never tragic. They are inhabitants of a gray-scale world, plugging on through life chastened by the experiences Barnes recounts, but not devastated by them. That may be why we identify with them so easily." --The Los Angeles Times

"Full of the sidelong wit and intelligence that make the writer one of our most consistently deft short-form stylists. . . . [A] quietly remarkable, elegant book." --The Telegraph (London)

"A book that is almost entirely masterly. . . . These stories are acutely observational. They neither satirize the speakers, nor celebrate them. They make art out of the quotidian details of modern conversation--and they are very funny." --The Denver Post

"A collection of stories that engages the reader's intellect and heart, the best of fiction's traditional concerns." --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"In Pulse, Julian Barnes is as perceptive and intelligent as in any other of his dazzling novels and nonfiction, and, it must be said, fully as serious. . . . The reader appreciates Barnes' unflinching realism and his determination to boil life down to its essence, however disconcerting that process may be." --Providence Journal

"Sharply elegant, piercing investigations of relationships." --Vogue

"Barnes is a master at establishing the intimacies of mortality in this kind of relationship, forever testing the limits to which our faith in human connection might stretch." --The Observer (London)