Books like Metroland

I first discovered Julian Barnes early last year &, yup, he's pretty major. Thunderbolts radiate from his novellas, for they read masterfully, all angles are explored in radical ways--even small or hypothetical tales carry with them the intensity of a Faulkner, Waugh or Woolf. In this one, we get another adolescent angst-filled portrait. Sentences in anything by Barnes take a while to simmer... not until you finish an entire paragraph does the discerning reader stop, look at the uppermost edge of the page with something like disdain in his face, then go "Ah-huh!". The instant he gets it, his life's forever changed.