Staring at the Sun cover art

Staring at the Sun

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Access to thousands of additional audiobooks and Originals from the Plus Catalogue.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Staring at the Sun

By: Julian Barnes
Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
Try Premium Plus free

Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $21.99

Buy Now for $21.99

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011

Staring at the Sun charts the life of Jean Serjeant, from her beginning as a naive, carefree country girl before the war through to her wry and trenchant old age in the year 2020. We follow her bruising experience in marriage, her probing of male truths, her adventures in motherhood and in China and we cannot fail to be moved by the questions she asks of life and the often unsatisfactory answers it provides.

©1986 Julian Barnes (P)2020 Penguin Audio Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Fiction
All stars
Most relevant
Poor Jean! What a tough life and such a terrible experience of sex! Was it really like that in the 1940s - sad to think of all those people missing out! Suicide to avoid old age? I have thought about it often particularly now I am in my late 60s and clearly going down hill! The author who was relatively young in 1984 might have a different view now! Everything should be on the table but I would not gamble on there being a god and/or an afterlife. We are all going to rot!

Excellent narration - I give it 5!

A good one for the oldies!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.