Levels of Life, Paperback/Julian Barnes

An NPR Best Book of the Year In this elegant triptych of history, fiction, and memoir, Julian Barnes has written about ballooning and photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and tearing them apart; and enduring after the incomprehensible loss of a loved one. Powerfully rendered, exquisitely crafted in Barnes s erudite style, this searing work confirms the author as an unparalleled magus of the heart. "