I’ve written here before about novelists who seem unable to find a story worthy of their skills. Alan Hollinghurst is a good example.  Bags of style and all the tricks but as yet no compelling tale to tell.  Perhaps that’s the definition of a great novelist (or, at least, my favorite novelists, which I think is the same thing): telling a tale I want to read in ways that make it feel new and alive and with a voice that is unmistakable and inimitable.

Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more, or love the less, and suffer the less?  That is, I think, finally, the only real question.  You may point out – correctly – that it isn’t a real question.  Because we don’t have the choice.  If we had the choice, then there would be a question.  But we don’t, so there isn’t.  Who can control how much they love?  If you can control it, then it isn’t love.  I don’t know what you call it instead, but it isn’t love.  Most of us have only one story to tell.  I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories.  But there’s only one that matter, only one finally worth telling.  This is mine.

Isn’t that a wonderful opening to a story?  I could read those lines over and over.  In fact, I have, and so far I’ve discovered something new every time.  Who wouldn’t want to carry on reading after such a teasing, provocative, and confident tee-up?

The story that matters for Paul, the not entirely reliable narrator of The Only Story, is a story about love.  Falling in love at the age of nineteen with a much older, married woman, Paul’s life starts down a path he could not have foreseen. Narrated at different times in the first, second, and third persons, it’s a slippery tale about youth and maturity, shifting perspectives and, most of all, about how, what, and why we remember.  The Only Story is a beautiful and important novel from a brilliant writer who seems to get better with every book.  If I read this year another novel as good as this, I will consider myself very fortunate.