Nothing to Be Frightened Of, by Julian Barnes

It's not a promising premise for a book: one man's fear of death. Yet Barnes' wit and learning kept me turning pages, nodding and chuckling. The jibes are at himself; he admits to feeling competitive about the age he was first woken to death-awareness, a moment Charles du Bos called by le réveil mortel: thirteen or fourteen to his friend G.'s ridiculously early age of four "(four! you bastard!)". Throughout the book, Barnes contrasts his own approach as a novelist to questions about death...