When I finished this book, I felt like I needed to start it over immediately to figure out what I had missed the first time. I was confused, but in that wonderful way you sometimes are when you finish a great novel—did the author purposely add an element of mystery so that his protagonist, too, had to figure things out as the book progressed? Did he give him memories that betrayed him in the end? Do memories always betray us? Or do we change our memories to fit our notion of who we want to be? The writing is exquisite in this short novel—you’ll want to read passages out loud. Barnes won the prestigious Booker Prize for this novel, and I think he totally deserved it. - Gayle