Terry Gross

You don't believe in God.

Do you ever wish you could believe in a loving, comforting God who was your friend and a heaven where you'd be reunited with your wife of 30 years and, you know, things would be calm and beautiful?

After your wife died, you said that if the grief didn't stop,

you would consider taking your life, ending your life.

Did you give yourself like a border, like if you reached that border, that you would try to end your life?

So you're a new wife and you're pretty recently married.

How does she feel about you having written so much about your first wife?

I'm wondering, like, does she feel in the shadow of that?

Does she feel uncomfortable with you talking about how long your grief lasted and all, you know?

My guest is Julian Barnes.

His new book is called Departures.

We'll be right back.

This is Fresh Air.

You've written a lot about memory, including in your new book, and so has one of your favorite authors, Proust.

The opening chapter of your new book, Departures, has a lot of neurological disorders, rare ones that distort memory or cause memory to be so good you can basically watch a whole video of your childhood memory.

which can be very intrusive and time-consuming, because I don't think there's necessarily a pause button on that video that plays in your mind.

How has your memory been most of your life, and how has that figured into your writing?

Because you've taken them out so many times, distorting them in the process?

Early in your career, you were a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary, which is considered the definitive English dictionary.

So I wonder what you think of the language that we use to describe death, even the word death itself.