Metroland, Paperback/Julian Barnes

Only the author of Flaubert's Parrot could give us a novel that is at once a note-perfect rendition of the angsts and attitudes of English adolescence, a giddy comedy of sexual awakening in the 1960s, and a portrait of the accommodations that some of us call "growing up" and others "selling out." About the Author: Born in Leicester in 1946, Julian Barnes is the author of nine novels, a book of stories, and a collection of essays. He has won both the Prix M dicis and the Prix F mina, and in 1988 was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He lives in London.