British author Julian Barnes has written 22 books in his career so far, including the first to reach much critical notice, Flaubert's Parrot.
This book perhaps best sums up his particular style of delight in all things French, and in humour.
His writing is informed, at times critical, even dark, but eminently readable and usually thought-provoking.
In 2011 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending and has 11 other awards for his writing to date.
While most of his books are classed as novels, several are nonfiction.
Whatever, they are always a satisfying read.
Levels of Life published in 2013, is in two parts, (another common feature of his books), and describes first of all the beginnings of ballooning, and then the most moving description of grief for his dead wife, literary agent Pat Kavanagh, that I have read for a long time.
The connection is made between the two halves of the book; Barnes is ever master of his material.
In The Noise of Time he explores the difficult life of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
From childhood a nervous, fearful child, nonetheless Shostakovich grew up through the most dangerous of times, to write great music.
It is I think, very difficult to judge the actions of those who have experienced periods of enormous political upheaval, and for Shostakovich there was the trauma of life under Stalin, especially if you wrote music that drew yourself to his attention.
It is easy to talk of cowardice, and judge it as such.
The book begins with the composer, in the middle of the night, with a suitcase of necessaries, waiting by the lift for the men to take him away to the Big House, from which few ever emerged alive.
His opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, initially very popular both in Russia and overseas had been dismissed in Pravda as "muddle instead of music''.
Viewed by Stalin himself and two of his cronies, its performance was described as "nonpolitical and confusing''and "fidgety and neurotic music''.
One of Shostakovich's colleagues has recently been taken to the Big House and shot.
It is the time of the Great Purge.
Dmitri judges himself as highly anxious, indeed a "thorough going neurotic''.
However, the call does not come, and his great friend and support, Marshal Tukhachevsky, has written a letter on his behalf to Stalin.
Tukhachevsky himself, however, is taken to the Big House, and months later, shot.
Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony is a great success and reported as "A Soviet artist's creative response to just criticism''.
Then in 1948 he is denounced again, loses his job, and many privileges.
Described by Shostakovich himself as the worst time, is his trip to America for attendance at "The Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace'', where he is cruelly and publicly humiliated by Nabokov, (apparently put up to it by the CIA).
Shostakovich died in 1975.
Barnes writes well of this unhappy man, yet great composer, but having read the book twice, I found myself a little bemused by Barnes' approach.
It is difficult to understand if Barnes found him truly a coward, or is he leaving us to decide for ourselves?
The latter, I suspect.
What is left is Shostakovich's music, which is a matter of taste.
Would any of us have managed to live a fully brave and honest life at that period in Russia history?
In the author's note, we are left with a list of other biographers, including Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life Remembered 1996 ( revised edition 2006) who he thanks for her extensive help, with the comment: "But this book is mine, not hers; if you haven't liked mine, then read hers.''
• Margaret Bannister is a retired Dunedin psychotherapist and science teacher.
