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.