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The latest (and purportedly final) novel by the Booker-winning Julian Barnes is short, but filled with the humor, philosophical musings, and sharp observations characteristic of his previous works. While reflecting on his diagnosis with an incurable blood cancer, a narrator also named Julian Barnes sets out to tell the story of his relationship with two friends who dated as college students and were reunited with Barnes's help 40 years later. Yet in telling this story, the narrator cannot help but get distracted by thoughts of grief, old friendship, how memories get distorted by time, and how life experiences get changed by storytelling. Barnes provides a poignant capstone to his illustrious career as both a fiction and nonfiction author concerned with aging, memory, and loss, and playing all the while with readers' expectations of reliability.