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"Nothing to be frightened of" by Julian Barnes

An absolute masterpiece by Julian Barnes. This is the first novel written by him that I have read. The book is about death and the way he begins to think about it after his parents pass away. He examines his belief in God and how and why people believe in God. Some of the paragraphs are simply explosive. I had to stop myself from quoting the entire book for fear of plagiarism. This was a typical statement from my mother: lucid, opinionated, explicitly impatient of opposing views. Her dominance of the family, and her certainties of the world, made things usefully clear in childhood, restrictive in adolescence, and grindingly repetitive in adulthood. It was one of those moments when your parents surprise you - not because you've learnt something new about them, but because you've discovered a further area of ignorance. Was my father merely being polite? Did he think that if he simply plonked himself down he would be taken for a Shelleyan atheist? I have no idea. He died a modern