1,2,3,2,3,1,3,2,1

1,2,3,2,3,1,3,2,1

by Liliana Terradas

You can find love triangles in a lot of novels, in different languages and in all the centuries but surely the way Julian Barnes writes is unusual. Having characters alternately speaking about their lives to the reader make this novel fascinating. Stuart, Oliver and Gillian, the main figures are shown in different situations accompanied by other small characters as Gillian’s mother. Stuart and Oliver, Gillian and Stuart, Stuart, Oliver and Gillian, Stuart and Gillian again, Oliver and finally Oliver and Gillian and Stuart alone, two, three, two, one. In numerology number one is the most individualist of all the numbers. It points to independence, adventure, and new beginnings. Number two is kindness, balance, tact, equalization, and duality. Two has many properties in mathematics: two is the smallest and the first prime number, etc. God ordered Noah to put two of every animal in his ark. Number three is a really interesting number. It symbolizes completeness or the entirety of something. Another example is our divisions of time as past, present and future. A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a polygon with three corners and three sides or edges which are line segments. This specific triangle, this lovely novel shows how the angles can vary, how relative lengths of their sides can make the relation among them different, for example Stuart and Oliver had been close friends since childhood, as close as the angles in an isosceles triangle. Later the relation of friendship included Gillian, Stuart’s girlfriend, the three sides of the triangle had the same length, and therefore such triangle was equilateral, good friendship among the three.

Stuart and Oliver became rivals when Oliver fell in love with Stuart` s wife, Gillian. Two different personalities who fell in love with the same woman. Two different ways of living the life, Stuart and Oliver. You love Stuart when he speaks but then you also like Oliver and his extravagant way of narrating things too . When Gillian left Stuart to marry Oliver and then Stuart decided to leave,the triangle turned out to be scalene , all sides were unequal. Stuart returned for a week and he adopted some of his old friend adictions and attitutes as smoking, alcohol and spying the new couple.The lines of the triangle try to move again . Stuart returned to America. In France a house was abandoned, a car left .Did the lines remain in the triangle or try to escape from it? As a chinese proverb says”Good things come in pairs “.Love come in pairs and triangles in this novel didnt bring happiness.

TALKING IT OVER

The complete review's Review:

SOURCE: http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/barnesj/tio.htm

Talking it Over is the story of a love triangle. Stuart and Oliver are best friends. Stuart marries Gillian. Oliver falls in love with Gillian. And then, of course, things get quite complicated. The most obvious twist Barnes adds to the story is in how he chooses to tell it: he has the characters address the reader (or at least some "you") directly. Stuart, Oliver, and Gillian each tell their own story (with a few other voices also making themselves heard), each offering a different point of view, a different spin, and, occasionally, an entirely different account of what happened. It is an interesting literary device, and Barnes -- a very fine stylist -- manages a great deal with the voices he employs. Stuart is a young banker, careful, a bit unsure of himself, without a university education. Oliver is a pedantic, unfulfilled soul, a wilder, artsy type who travelled, studied, and finally wound up as teaching at the tacky Shakespeare School of English (and eventually actually even manages to get himself sacked from this institution). Gillian trained in social work for while, but then became an art restorer. "I met Stuart", Gillian states. "I fell in love. I married. What's the story ?" There is, of course, more to it than that -- including how Gillian and Stuart met ("Gill and I agreed we wouldn't tell anyone how we met", Stuart says, though he does reveal it to the reader.) And though Barnes fills in backgrounds the meat of the tale begins with Stuart and Gillian's marriage. Barnes tells the story of the three interrelated relationships -- the unlikely but lasting (at least through the beginning of the book) friendship between Stuart and Oliver, and the changing relationships between Gillian and the two men. Much of the fun is in the details: the different ways of seeing events, the different justifications or explanations for what the characters do (or don't do), though clever Oliver is perhaps too dominant (and Gillian, for much of the novel, not strong enough). It is a neatly constructed novel -- and also an obviously constructed one, which is both a strength and weakness. Barnes writes very well, and there are many fine moments, thoughts, and asides. This is not too deep a meditation on friendship, and relationships, but it does chart an interesting threesome, a shifting (and ultimately very misshapen) triangle. An odd, and not entirely satisfying novel, but an interesting one.