Before She Met Me

Written by Julian Barnes

Narrated by Simon Vance

At the start of this fiendishly comic and suspenseful novel, a mild-mannered English academic chuckles as he watches his wife commit adultery. The action takes place before she met him. But lines between film and reality, past and present become terrifyingly blurred in this sad and funny tour de force from the author of Flaubert’s Parrot.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781980082835

Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes (Leicester, 1946) se educó en Londres y en Oxford. Está considerado una de las mayores revelaciones de la narrativa inglesa de las últimas décadas. En Anagrama se han publicado sus novelas Metrolandia (Premio Somerset Maugham 1981), Antes de conocernos, El loro de Flaubert (Premio Geoffrey Faber Memorial y, en Francia, Premio Médicis), Mirando al sol, Una historia del mundo en diez capítulos y medio, Hablando del asunto (Premio Fémina a la mejor novela extranjera publicada en Francia), El puercoespín, Inglaterra, Inglaterra, Amor, etcétera, Arthur & George, El sentido de un final (Premio Booker), Niveles de vida, El ruido del tiempo, La única historia, Elizabeth Finch, Despedidas, los libros de relatos Al otro lado del Canal, La mesa limón y Pulso, el delicioso tomito El perfeccionista en la cocina, el libro memorialístico Nada que temer y los ensayos Con los ojos bien abiertos, El hombre de la bata roja y Mis cambios de opinión. Ha recibido también, entre otros galardones, el Premio E. M. Forster de la American Academy of Arts and Letters, el William Shakespeare de la Fundación FvS de Hamburgo y el Man Booker, y es Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Reviews for Before She Met Me

[mariabv2012 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Second book I have read by Julian Barnes, and he still seems like a magnificent writer to me. I was fascinated by "The Sense of an Ending" and I enjoyed this second story so much that I am already reading "Levels of Life" and I have a few more lined up to read.

This story is about jealousy, a retrospective and obsessive jealousy. Graham, a middle-aged university professor, married with a pre-teen daughter, meets Ann at a party and falls madly in love. He leaves his wife, gets divorced, and marries Ann. The early days are very happy, and nothing clouds their relationship. One day, Graham sees one of the movies in which Ann appeared years ago in insignificant roles and sees his wife "betraying" him with another man on the screen. Here begins the torment of this man as he becomes obsessed with all the films in which his wife has betrayed him on screen and with the relationships his wife had with some actors in real life.

We witness the emotional upheaval suffered by our unfortunate protagonist consumed by jealousy over what Ann did on celluloid and off it. He behaves extravagantly and spends hours in the cinema watching over and over as his wife betrays him, even watching a movie of an actor with whom Ann had a relationship long before he met her, and he dreams about it continuously.

There are passages in the novel that make you smile at the absurd things he does, and at other times, you feel pity for what he is suffering... until you reach a conclusion that surprises you. A novel that can be read almost in a breath and that captivates you. Highly recommended for a good time of entertainment.

Happy reading!
December 23, 2022 (Translated from Spanish)

[Andrea Milano · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This novel by Mr. Barnes did not convince me. Although his style is very good, at times it seemed absurd to me and I confess that in several passages I had to move ahead without paying attention to what the text was saying. A poor version of Othello that only managed to achieve its purpose (to entertain me) in the last pages. My debut with Barnes was not the best; I hope to change my mind with other works of his. ??‍♀️ (Translated from Spanish)

[JoseLuisGryffindor · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Before we met is my first book by the author, and it's worth mentioning that I have been amazed by his writing, wit, and intelligence. His style is unique.

In this story, we will meet Graham Hendrick, a bored man, married, with a small daughter, but one day he meets Ann, a girl ten years younger than him, who makes his world crumble and changes his family life for a new marriage.

But what our protagonist did not expect is that his new life would be infected by jealousy based on the past love life of his new beloved.

Years ago, I heard the phrase "The jealous suffer more from what they imagine than from what is really happening," and I think it fits this book perfectly; jealousy is irrational, yet it eats away at the soul and mutilates the heart.

The way Julian Barnes describes what jealousy can do to a person who cannot control it makes this book a gem and its protagonist a character who transcends the page and sinks into the reader's skin.

It is undoubtedly a book I recommend; despite its flashes of irony and somewhat hilarious moments, it is a story for reflection and contemplation. (Translated from Spanish)

[Rosan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Amazing book, impressive reading, I loved it, with an apparently simple plot, Julian Barnes is able to guide us to the discovery of a great treasure. This novel is that treasure.

Graham Hendrick, a historian and university professor, married, with a teenage daughter, and a routine life will be the protagonist on whom all our attention will fall as he becomes a very different character from the boring professor.

And what better reason for a great life change than love? So it will be, the change is provoked by love when he falls in love with Ann, for whom he leaves his family and fully immerses himself in a life of love, pleasure, he will divorce his wife Barbara, marry Ann, and we will accompany him.

But, some time later, what will our character become? And here is where every detail, even appearing insignificant, takes on unusual dimensions. The slope begins. Oh!

He will become a new, albeit modern Othello, who will astonishingly take us through the tangled route of jealousy, an uncontrollable jealousy that gradually arises but consumes his actions and his entire life. It envelops him and us.

Reasons? Nothing less than he will find them in cinema; Ann was an actress in insignificant, little-known films long before meeting Graham, in which she barely appears. However, be careful, this will be the trigger for Graham's new life change and the beginning of jealousy and his insecurities.

Now he transforms into a fervent investigator of everything related to Ann in her acting stage. He will be a tracker of each of the roles she played in them and of her co-stars. Delirium arrives. And what a way to live it. You can't stop reading.

And what a way to narrate it, irony, humor, elegance, which the author skillfully manages to convey to us, he takes risks, but he succeeds fully and crosses borders. Each reader receives our dose of astonishment, entertainment, and also thought and reflection.

With brilliant prose, he also reveals wonderful passages about the traumas, fears, and conflicts that we can all feel when we truly fall in love and love. And although we may also think that jealousy is part and consequence of love, be careful, never if it becomes obsession.

And here the author has offered us a great novel of jealousy and obsession.

Very interesting, it puts before our eyes how disturbing jealousy can be, especially when it becomes pathological, and we see how every little detail, seemingly unimportant, triggers compulsion and obsession. How far can it go? One must read this great work.

It is an exquisite, ironic book, it makes us laugh, but also poisons us. I want poison. (Translated from Spanish)

[marenpergamino · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Once again, I fall in love (❤️). What can I do? I am taken by intelligent men (?). And heavenly, Julian Barnes truly is. He demonstrates this perfectly in this book, which is nothing less than...CHACHANNN...a retelling of OTHELLO. Yup. The one by Shakespeare. The fool who gets duped by Iago, who convinces him that his wife is cheating on him and who ends up going crazy with jealousy. That same one (?).

Well, Barnes's greatest virtue is that his Othello is much more likeable, and unlike the original (who always seemed to me to be an alpha male making a lot of fuss but very little character), this one really evokes pity. Did anyone actually feel sorry for Othello? Not me. I only thought, "WHAT A FOOL!! HOW DOES HE LET HIMSELF BE FOOLED LIKE THAT?! ALL OVER A HANDKERCHIEF!!". In contrast, Barnes’s Othello, besides being sensible and pleasant, was a man who truly suffered.✋ I admit, nonetheless, that it doesn't take away from him being a fool. The guy goes mad one day because he discovers that his wife was an actress in her youth, and so he starts to jealously spy on the actors with whom she could have had a romance on and off the screen...but in her past (?‍♀️). I reiterate: A FOOL. But Barnes, with that strangely dual narrative style, ironic and heartfelt at the same time, and so beautifully done....manages to make one feel moved and sympathetic. We stop seeing the irrational idiot consumed by ghosts of the past, and we see a guy suffering, trapped in a labyrinth from which he cannot escape. Barnes entertains you until he breaks your heart and achieves that in the same book, you laugh and cry like a madman.

An incredible book from an author who never stops shining. NEVER (❤️). (Translated from Spanish)

[mahallett · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

well-written. uncomfortable story of a messed up mind. i didn't understand ann's choices really. someone compared it to the collector.

[suesbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked the style of writing better than the content. Much of it was rather dull writing regarding a man who exhibited severe psychiatric problems.

[nandadevi_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Although perhaps not as carefully crafted as John Fowle's 'The Collector', Barnes has achieved in this short novel (or long short story) somewhat the same effect - insinuating the reader into the mind of a madman in such a way that renders the psychotic simply eccentric until the inevitable climax. One has a sense that Barnes is taking the opportunity to make a few wry observations about writers and academia along the way, but without perhaps sufficient acerbity to make them truly interesting. All in all there is a lack of passion in the writing here, a dulling down of the sensations - as if Barnes doesn't want the madness of his character to stand out too starkly until the end. One kind of wishes he'd taken the same story and talked up the madness of the people (and the world) around his character, and posed the question 'what is insanity in a insane world?'. But for all of these criticisms this is an interesting read, and might make a much better movie one day.

[emrayfo · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This is a book with a great title and intriguing concept from a well-regarded author that just does not live up to its promise. Instead of insightful observation, it drifts along in self-indulgent adolescent argumentum ad misericordiam.

'Before She Met Me' is fashioned around a very interesting existential premise: Julian Barnes has developed a very bounded situation focused on the study of fidelity and, by extension, ownership, extending in time back to before the otherwise loving couple even knew each other. This claustrophobic little story is planted in the fertile soil of jealous obsessions that a certain type of man could fall into when he considers his very faithful partner's previous sexual relationships, real or imagined.

The protagonist, Graham, finds himself increasingly obsessed with the previous sex lives and lovers of his loving and faithful wife, Ann; an obsession which quickly spirals into a deleterious disintegration in their marriage and in the emotional welfare of both characters. This story could have been an absorbing study into jealousy, 'ownership' and relationships, but despite the compelling premise, the plot arc and characters are unconvincing. The opening chapter was clever and drew me in, but in the end I felt flat and unengaged as a reader. The whole effort just feels lazy, like Julian Barnes had a good idea for a book but couldn't be bothered with doing the work or necessary background prep. Or that perhaps the whole exercise was just an opportunity for him to exorcise any demons he himself may have been harbouring.

The cast of characters are caricatures devoid of complexity. The protagonist Graham is completely unlikeable and his best friend, Jack, is just plain unbelievable - a completely excessive and indulgent piece of characterisation. The only character I had some fellow feeling for was Ann, the protagonist Graham's wife. The other two women characters are clumsy plot devices with no substance: Graham's ex-wife Barbara is just a distant cliché and the wife of that exaggerated caricature Jack is no more than a cardboard cut-out place holder in the narrative.

Although as a reader I felt a mild intellectual and emotive interest in Graham's predicament, it was difficult to work up any sympathy for this boring, uninspiring, obsessive cartoon of a man. If anything, I felt growing annoyance and intolerance for his increasingly stupid and selfish behaviour; which becomes increasingly less plausible and more disproportionate to its causes. Barnes, for a professional novelist, does not seem to have a good grasp of emotive and motivating factors in this particular novel, as Graham's 'deterioration' is presented in an unedifying and dubious succession of incidents. Worse, there is no rewarding culmination for those readers who persevere to the end. Instead, to my mind, we are faced with a resolution that is both unsatisfying and unforgivingly lazy on the author's part.

Overall the story has trouble with maintaining plausibility. In parts it reads more like a writing exercise than a novel. The main characters are bores, and the attempts by Barnes at incorporating the terminologies and theories from the field of psychology are clumsy and amateurish. I did quite enjoy one later chapter, as a bounded situation sketch, where Graham and Ann host a party at their house. This section would almost work on its own as a short story. But unfortunately much of the novel was just too clinical and distant, which left me cold and empty - at odds with the potential richness of its underlying material.

This was my first book by Barnes and I had been looking forward to it. But upon reading I found the prose and the story indulgent, unengaging and tiresome. It took a struggle to finish even though it is quite short. The generous part of me feels that the major problems faced by this book are that it just hasn't aged well and is quite dated. But another part feels that maybe this book has always faced this problem. For starters it's not that old, but the use of language and the way the characters relate seem much older than it's publication date of 1982. It must have felt even a little out of touch to contemporary readers back then. It's more like Graham is a forty year old in 1952 England rather than a 40 year old in 1982 England.

I hope 'Before She Met Me' is exception and not a good representation of Barnes' otherwise good work, as I also have his more recent 'Staring at the Sun' waiting on my shelf to be read.

[theampersand · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A entertaining little novella that describes what happens when Graham, a lecturer in history by trade, becomes unduly obsessed with his wife's sexual past. Readers shouldn't expect "Othello" or a dour meditation on the uses of history; "Before She Met Me" has all the hallmarks of an indulgent head-clearing exercise, and that's not a terrible thing. Barnes keeps his writing witty and light, for the most part, and he's not afraid to exaggerate where it suits him. He uses Jack, a garrulous, randy, bearded show-off of a writer, to take potshots at literary culture while Graham's ex-wife Barbara plays the one-dimensional vindictive harpy. Everyone, it seems, takes swipes at mass culture, lending the novel a sort of cranky Britishness that plays well against its smuttier elements. While nowhere near as affecting or observant as "Talking It Over," Barnes still seems to have real affection for some of the characters he's created here. Though I wouldn't call it his best work, I think "Before She Met Me" will still satisfy those in search of something short, light, and well-crafted.

[esta1923 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes

Although we know blurbs can be unreliable, some are more so. The McGraw-Hill paperback edition of “Before She Met Me,” quotes the New York Review of Books: “Excellent...funny, original.” (We could have a lovely fill-in-the-blanks contest to make that accurate.)

Eleven chapters chart the downward spiral in the life of Graham Hendrick. He’s divorced, with visitation rights to a sweet daughter, married to a beautiful and charming woman. Their marriage is threatened when he becomes obsessed by her former life.

Long before she met him, Ann had starred in pornographic movies. When Graham, convinced that movie scenes are actual, seeks out these films compulsively, he loses track of reality and what this leads to is definitely not funny.

Because Barnes is a skillful writer the book is interesting, and, with some stretch of disbelief, even plausible. Original? Yes. Funny ? No.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of Graham Hendricks and his obsession with his wife's past.

After seeing his wife, Ann, in a minor role in a film, Graham becomes obsessed with her past relationships. He questions her about past boyfriends, and attends every movie she ever had a small role in. As the story unfolds, we watch Graham move from obsession to insanity.

This is a well written novel. The conclusion, while inevitable, nonetheless manages to be surprising.