Michel Courtois-Fourcy Book order (chronological)

Polly, Dennis, Angela, Adrian and their peers were bound to lose their spiritual innocence and their virginities on the way from the 1950s to the '70s. On the one hand there was the traditional Catholic Church, on the other the siren call of the permissive society. It was inevitable that things would change radically. But how far could it go?

Graham was an he was meant to be an expert on the past. But there were aspects of it, he discovered, that couldn’t be subdued, that simply carried on, lively and painful, as if they were the present. He began to mind. He minded very much indeed. While those around him look on – with concern, with contempt, with amusement – Graham’s meticulous passion gradually begins to run out of control. Julian Barnes presents an unnerving version of sexual jealousy and shows it to be not just living, but reasonable, ordinary, funny, dangerous and consuming.