What it's about
It looks at the arguments for and against God, and at Barnes's family bloodline after his parents died.
It asks how one can contend with the fear of death, which the book calls the most rational thing in the world.
Written in plain English by an AI model from the publisher's description; every sentence matches a passage of it.
The publisher's description
Two years after the best-selling Arthur & George, Julian Barnes gives us a memoir on mortality that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction.If the fear of death is "the most rational thing in the world," how does one contend with it? An atheist at twenty, an agnostic at sixty, Barnes looks into the various arguments for and against and with God, and at the bloodline whose archivist, following his parents' death, he has become--another realm of mystery, wherein a drawer of mementos and his own memories (not to mention those of his philosopher brother) often fail to connect. There are other ancestors, too: the writers--"most of them dead, and quite a few of them French"--who are his daily companions, supplemented by composers and theologians and scientists whose similar explorations are woven into this account with an exhilarating breadth of intellect and felicity of spirit.Deadly serious, masterfully playful, and surprisingly hilarious, Nothing to Be Frightened Of is a riveting display of how this supremely gifted writer goes about his business and a highly personal tour of the human condition and what might follow the final diagnosis.From the Hardcover edition.
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Reviews
Michael Dirda on 'Nothing to Be Frightened Of' ↗
“Barnes admits that he sometimes views life as "an overrated way of passing the time.”
The review reports that Barnes often regards life as an overrated way of passing time.
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