Terry Gross

Good, good.

It seems like a momentous couple of days next week, turning 80 and having not only your new book, but the book you call your final book published.

So how are you feeling about all that right now?

I would rather have a book published than back surgery.

You okay now?

And I should mention, you know, that you were diagnosed five years ago, I think it was, with a rare form of blood cancer.

It makes you unique.

Pills, right?

So let's get to your new book.

The main character is named Julian Barnes, and he's narrating the book and talks about his own grief through the book.

You lost your wife, your first wife, in 2008.

Yes.

And she was also your literary agent.

And it was, you know, understandably a horrible experience for you.

She died 37 days after she was diagnosed with a very aggressive brain cancer.

So part of the book is about that, but it's a character named Julian Barnes, but it's not necessarily all memoir, that part.

And then there's another story within it about how Julian Barnes helps two people get together during their college years.

They become a couple, but they break apart.

And then about 30 years later, Julian Barnes, at the request of the guy in this couple, helps reunite them.

So what's that story doing in what otherwise would have been a memoir?