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Staring at the Sun
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

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Published:
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2011
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description
The bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending traces the life of a seemingly ordinary woman with an extraordinary disdain for wisdom in this “marvelous literary epiphany” (The New York Times Book Review).

In this wonderfully provocative novel, Barnes follows Jean Serjeant from her childhood in the 1920s to her flight into the sun in the year 2021, confronting readers with the fruits of her relentless curiosity: pilgrimages to China and the Grand Canyon; a catalogue of 1940s sexual euphemisms; and a glimpse of technology in the twenty-first century (when The Absolute Truth can be universally accessed).
Elegant, funny and intellectually subversive, Staring at the Sun is Julian Barnes at his most dazzlingly original.
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More Details
Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
06/15/2011
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780307797797
ASIN:
B004W3IDZU
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Julian Barnes. (2011). Staring at the Sun. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Julian Barnes. 2011. Staring At the Sun. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Julian Barnes, Staring At the Sun. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Julian Barnes. Staring At the Sun. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Grouped Work ID:
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Needs Update?:
No
Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 18:57:22
Date Updated:
Jul 24, 2023 20:37:07
Last Metadata Check:
Mar 24, 2024 10:32:09
Last Metadata Change:
Nov 19, 2023 12:00:43
Last Availability Check:
Mar 24, 2024 10:32:13
Last Availability Change:
Feb 13, 2023 12:19:10
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Mar 28, 2024 02:11:39

OverDrive Product Record

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      • bioText: Julian Barnes is the author of more than 20 books, including Keeping an The Sense of an Ending, The Noise of Time, and Eye Open: Essays on Art. He has received the Man Booker Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the David Cohen Prize for Literature, and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in France, the Prix Médicis and the Prix Femina; in Austria, the State Prize for European Literature. In 2004, he was named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages. He lives in London.
      • name: Julian Barnes
imprint
Vintage
publishDate
2011-06-15T00:00:00-04:00
isOwnedByCollections
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title
Staring at the Sun
fullDescription
The bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending traces the life of a seemingly ordinary woman with an extraordinary disdain for wisdom in this “marvelous literary epiphany” (The New York Times Book Review).

In this wonderfully provocative novel, Barnes follows Jean Serjeant from her childhood in the 1920s to her flight into the sun in the year 2021, confronting readers with the fruits of her relentless curiosity: pilgrimages to China and the Grand Canyon; a catalogue of 1940s sexual euphemisms; and a glimpse of technology in the twenty-first century (when The Absolute Truth can be universally accessed).
Elegant, funny and intellectually subversive, Staring at the Sun is Julian Barnes at his most dazzlingly original.
reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        March 1, 1987
        From guileless child to implausibly innocent adolescent and young woman, Jean Serjeantthe central figure in this wonderfully imagined novel by the gifted author of Flaubert's Parrotunaccountably (and perhaps a mite too easily) becomes a mature woman who, without losing her endearing, wide-eyed qualities, acquires a wisdom that lies beyond reason. The narrative of her unremarkable life would otherwise seem drab: she marries the village policeman and stays unhappily married for 20 years, whenseemingly beyond childbearingshe brings forth a son and thereupon leaves her marriage to enter the wider world. A grounded RAF pilot (who cracked under the strain of combat) tells her that he "stared at the sun'' flying a combat mission in 1941, on the day it had risen twice in what he calls an ``ordinary miracle.'' What is astonishing and moving about Jean's life is its very conventionality and ordinariness; it is as though the author had challenged himself to make poetry out of dust. At the venerable age of 100 in the year 2021, Jean is able to give her son definitive answers to the ultimate questions about death (it is ``absolute''), religion (``nonsense''), suicide (not ``permissible'') while retaining an undiminished sense of awe in the face of a mysterious universe, as she herself, with the fitting grandeur of her unspoiled simplicity, flies up and up into the sky, staring at the sun.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        February 1, 1994
        This "gentle novel" ( LJ 4/1/87) by the author of the acclaimed Flaubert's Parrot follows the life of protagonist Jean from childhood to age 100. Throughout, Jean searches for truths in her life, eventually finding the answers she seeks. For all fiction collections.

popularity
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shortDescription
The bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending traces the life of a seemingly ordinary woman with an extraordinary disdain for wisdom in this “marvelous literary epiphany” (The New York Times Book Review).

In this wonderfully provocative novel, Barnes follows Jean Serjeant from her childhood in the 1920s to her flight into the sun in the year 2021, confronting readers with the fruits of her relentless curiosity: pilgrimages to China and the Grand Canyon; a catalogue of 1940s sexual euphemisms; and a glimpse of technology in the twenty-first century (when The Absolute Truth can be universally accessed).
Elegant, funny and intellectually subversive, Staring at the Sun is Julian Barnes at his most dazzlingly original.
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