Levels of Life is a cleverly crafted novella about love, grief and ballooning. Seamlessly blending history, fiction and memoir, Julian Barnes presents a raw and intimate meditation on his own experience of mourning, carefully balanced against whimsical and endearing adventures. Barnes, who won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his last novella, The Sense of an Ending, again demonstrates his mastery of the short form.

The novella is divided into three sections, each taking a different look at the ‘levels of life’. As groundlings, Barnes says, we aspire towards heights: ‘some soar with art; others with religion; most with love’. The book opens with a charming, carnivalesque portrait of the self-proclaimed ‘balloonatics’ of the nineteenth century. Images of aeronauts throwing handfuls of feathers out of their balloon to judge whether they were gaining height or losing it create a rich and nostalgic picture of the elation of ascension.

From these images of buoyancy, Barnes eases us back down to earth. The middle section tells the story of a fledgling romance between balloon enthusiast Fred Burnaby and the actress Sarah Bernhardt, an alluring woman surrounded by a flock of hopeful lovers and a menagerie of exotic pets. And yet, Barnes warns, ‘When we soar, we can crash … Every love story is a potential grief story.’

In the final part, Barnes looks inwards, presenting a raw account of his own experience of loss. Grief, he says, is love’s opposite. In wrenching detail, he describes the pain of finding himself rubbing oil into the drying oak of his wife’s grave marker, just as he used to rub oil into her back.

While each of these parts could certainly exist independently, grouping them together doesn’t feel random or artificial. By placing his own story of grief within this context, Barnes frames his mourning as something other than purely personal or indulgent. Rather, it comes across as part of the complex fabric of existence. Drawing organic links between each piece, he cobbles together a collection of ideas that is both tender and surprising.

Rebecca Howden is a freelance writer.