Old Age and Wisdom Part III Book Review: Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes

250721 Old Age and Wisdom Part III

Book Review: Nothing to be Frightened of by Julian Barnes,

One my current pet projects is read books about dying and discover if there is anything helpful to someone who is 80.  This is book #3.

BTW Barnes is 79 so if age is important is a discussion about death this book is right in the zone.

Nothing to Be Frightened Of is a memoir disguised as philosophy; and a philosophy disguised as memoir. Its key message is not that we should stop fearing death, but that acknowledging our fear, and examining it honestly, is itself a meaningful human act.  Julian Barnes believes that death is both inevitable and deeply personal, and that our attempts to understand, avoid, or rationalize it reveal more about how we live than how we die.

Barnes, a self-described atheist with “funereal tendencies,” explores death not as a clinical end, but as an existential mystery. He wrestles with what it means to be conscious of our own extinction, acknowledging that while he doesn’t believe in God, he does fear non-existence.

The title is ironic—Barnes is clearly frightened of death, and the book is partly a literary attempt to work through that fear.

Barnes reflects on how identity, memory, and selfhood are tied to mortality. If we are defined by our consciousness and memories, what happens when that vanishes?

He compares different cultural and philosophical attitudes toward death, from Pascal and Montaigne to his own family’s views.

There is a tension between his rational knowledge that death is natural, and his emotional resistance to the idea of personal extinction.

Much of the book is a meditation on his parents’ deaths and his relationships with them, particularly his brother—a philosopher who takes a more stoic, detached view of mortality.

Barnes uses these comparisons to explore how background, beliefs, and temperament shape our confrontation with death.

He is both skeptical of religious consolation and nostalgic for the comfort it can offer.

Barnes suggests that literature and music are some of the few lasting bulwarks against the fear of death. He draws on quotes and examples from writers like Flaubert, Tolstoy, Jules Renard, and others.

Barnes believes Storytelling becomes a form of immortality, or at least a means of coping.  His own memoir is an attempt to “talk to death,” and in doing so, domesticate it.

Death is frightening not because it’s unknown, but because it’s certain and inescapable—and no amount of reason, religion, or art can fully negate that fear. But talking about it, writing about it, and even laughing at it, helps.

“I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him,” is one of the book’s most quoted lines.  It sums up  the book perfectly.  And is a good example of the wry humour if Barnes that pervades the book.