It is extraordinary... [It] would seem to pull off the impossible: to recreate, on the page, what it is like to be alive in the world. -- Emma Brockes * Guardian * This is a book of rare intimacy and honesty about love and grief. To read it is a privilege. To have written it is astonishing. -- Ruth Scurr * The Times * It's an unrestrained, affecting piece of writing, raw and honest and more truthful for its dignity and artistry... Anyone who has loved and suffered loss, or just suffered, should read this book, and re-read it, and re-read it. -- Martin Fletcher * Independent * Levels of Life is both a supremely crafted artefact and a desolating guidebook to the land of loss. -- John Carey * Sunday Times * While one might expect a Barnes book to impress, delight, move, disconcert or amuse, the last thing for which his work prepares us is the blast of paralysingly direct emotion that concludes Levels of Life. -- Tim Martin * Daily Telegraph *