Both of my parents are dead. My sister recently made good on a longstanding threat to send me some of their personal possessions, in three boxes of diminishing size, like children's stacking blocks. The boxes included a brass tea set (allegedly from Russia), a ceramic ink pot (also from Russia), some carved wooden boxes (Indonesian? - empty, but which used to hold family photos), a few odd pieces of crystal and ceramics, the smelly trunk which I always assumed my father had while in the Navy, but which, in fact, my grandfather brought over from Ireland, some photos (mostly of me at various stages of youthful development), and some assorted odds and ends: a little leprechaun statuette that my youngest son thinks looks as though it's pooping on a shamrock, some newspapers of the JFK assassination, and no less than three Bibles(!) and two Bible storybooks from the 1920s, now sadly fallen into heathen hands. The detritus of a few lives lived in the last century and a half, mostly of no monetary value, and hardly any (to me) sentimental value. Stuff that gets pass down a couple of generations, and then (all familiar associations spent) deservedly disappears without a trace.

This is the sort of thing Julian Barnes meditates upon in this book, a personal examination of family, memory, and mortality. Barnes is afraid to die. That is, he is afraid of being dead, and seems to fret about this incessantly. (The canard is that people are either afraid of dying, or of being dead. I suppose, as the prospect of total extinction has always held a certain appeal to me, I fall within the former category. But as long as there's not a lot of blood or exposed organs, I'm ok with it.)

Early on, Barnes makes generous use of insights by the likes of Jules Renard and the brothers Goncourt , Stendhal, and Shostakovich. Rachmaninoff makes a humorous appearance as a man so terrified of death that he ran shrieking from the first graveyard scene in "Frankenstein", but later became convinced, temporarily at least, that salted pistachios calmed his death fear. Stendhal is used as an exemplar of the faultiness of memory, as his diary entries of an early trip to Florence are compared to later recollections. There is a smattering of philosophical speculation and medical information, but little space devoted to religion, a perspective on death that Barnes, an atheist/agnostic, sees as little more than whistling in the dark. (Not that I disagree.)

Nothing to Be Frightened Of sustains interest for most of the first half of the book (thanks to Renard & Co.), but gets rather bogged down in the middle with somewhat unfocused meanderings and blathering frets and fears at the prospect of his eventual sloughing of this mortal coil (the title of the book, if you haven’t figured it out, has a double meaning). By the end, with a meditation on Stendhal, Barnes manages to pull it together again. If I were into ratings, I'd give this a middling one.

On page 39 Barnes writes, “Perhaps I should warn you (especially if you are philosopher, theologian, or biologist) that some of this book my strike you as amateur, do-it-yourself stuff,” and on page 165 he warns that his mind “lollops from anecdote to anecdote.” No kidding, Joolz. On the backcover Kate Summerscale claims this book is a “disquisition” on death. Uh, not quite. This book is an assortment anecdotes and quotes from a gang of Frenchmen that Barnes was unable to pull together into a coherent whole---and his “lolloping“, coincidental expository style is rather maddening (just try to follow the “argument” on pages 144-149).

A strange book. He is an unbeliever that cant stop talking about the Big G. I should have thought after reflecting on the thoughts of Newton, Darwin and Freud Barnes would have, like other intellectuals, adopted some mechanistic view of the universe, biology or the self. None apparent here.

Of course neither Barnes nor the parade of Frenchmen have an answer about death or God. How could they?

Since there is nothing conclusive to say about death other than it concludes life as we know it, Barnes brings in other subjects to discuss: his family, memory (curiously he makes no mention of Proust) and some observations on writing that I will delve into a little further. “Fiction...balances precise observation with the free play of imagination.” Nice. “Literature can tell us best what the world consists of. It can also tell us how to live in that world, though it does it most effectively when appearing not to do so.” Interesting, although it would be better to say that some literature makes suggestions of how one might live in the world; but keep going, tell me how. (I end disappointed). “...[the novelist] wants to tell the one true story.” Losing interest, there isnt one true story. “....novelists conspire to present human life as a story progressing toward a meaningful conclusion” Okay, I’m done. I would argue Chekhov and Joyce, for instance, are counterexamples to that statement. In any event, it is pretty silly to try to say what “the novelist” is attempting to present, it would seem to be as varied as there are authors.

Oh! He did write a very funny bit about his last reader. I should like to extend my arms across the years and embrace that man as my brother. ( )

It went on a little too long, and got a bit too flip at the end, but for the most part I very much enjoyed Barnes' thinking, writing, and sensibility. Musings on death and consciousness and philosophy, intermingled with personal stories. ( )

I liked this book, Julian Barnes, near my age early 60's, is reflexing on dying, death and the existance of God. Does our life have any meaning that trancends time. He doesn't know, he doubts it. I agree ( )

I bought this based on my positive experience with Barnes' fiction over the past twenty or so years. ‘Flaubert’s Parrot’ and ‘The History of the World in 101/2 chapters delighted me at the time of reading – highly intelligent, incisive, and unconventional forms of the novel.

I assumed that I was buying a memoir, filled with anecdotes and witticisms. The brief skim through in the store opened the book at a page talking of his mother, when she recounts both her son’s writing. She says in a characteristic ‘Barnesian’ epigram:

'One of my sons (a philosopher) writes books I can read but can't understand,' she said, 'and the other (Julian) writes books I can understand but can't read.'

However, Barnes quickly tells us he is not writing a memoir. He says emphatically:

“This is not, by the way, ‘my autobiography'. Nor am I ‘in search of my parents'. Part of what I'm doing ... is trying to work out how dead they are.”

The book is all about DEATH and the writer’s fear of death. He explores memory in all its unreliability and describes his nostalgia for theistic elements in his life, stating that ‘I don’t believe in God, but I miss him’, as his opening line of the book. His explores the barrenness of atheism, a belief he cannot shake off. His obsessive and daily thoughts on death seem a great torment. This book provides an enormous collection of musings, ideas, recollections and reinterpretations on the subject of death, fear of death and belief systems around death.

He made me laugh out loud in some places. In the first few pages he illustrates the questioning of God’s presence:

“ Here is an extreme, action-man version. In June 2006, at the Kiev Zoo, a man lowered himself by rope into the island compound where the lions and tigers are kept. As he descended, he shouted across to the gawping crowds. One witness quoted him as saying, “Who believes in Go will be unharmed by lions’; another, the more challenging, “God will save me, if he exists.” The metaphysical provocateur reached the ground, took off his shoes, and walked towards the animals; whereupon an irritable lioness knocked him down, and bit through his carotid artery. Does this prove a) the man was mad; b) God does not exist; c) God does exist, but won’t be lured into the open by such cheap tricks; d) God does exist and has just demonstrated that He is an ironist; e) none of the above?

Barnes manages to deliver ideas in a fluid, crystalline prose that can seem condescending, humorous, self-indulgent and very thought provoking. His style is irreverent and deadly serious, all at the same time. All this makes it very good.

In fact it is really an excellent example of ‘pit gazing’, one that I enjoyed for the purely intellectual ride, but which I am glad to say I have now finished. It was getting my brain tired out, and I was really wishing to move onto something more positive and life affirming. His writing is nevertheless still wonderful. I will undoubtedly pick this book up again – if not to read right through, then to filch a few lines for a witty aside. ( )