In the earlier novels, Barnes is given a fictional identity; in the new one, the author speaks to us directly, blithely confident that a skeptical realist with a restless mind probing familiar yet essential experiences—how the brain works, what happens as we age—is all the entertainment we require. He shrugs off the romance: “Couple fail to make one another happy, well, turn the page.” But one should never disregard the way love works (or doesn’t) in his books. In the words of Philip Larkin (a Barnes favorite), love is the “element / That spreads through other lives like a tree / And sways them on in a sort of sense.”