"A novelist at the height of his powers.... Quietly devastating." (Robert Douglas-Fairhurst The Times)

"Exquisite." (Kate Clanchy Guardian)

"Emotionally acute, profoundly beautiful, as droll as it is deep... this has to be one of the smartest novels that 2018 has to offer." (Hephzibah Anderson Mail on Sunday)

"A gentle, bleak, and brilliant novel." (Jon Day Financial Times)

"Immensely powerful." (Alex Clark New Statesman)

"This intense, taut, sad and often beautiful tale may well be Barnes? best novel for years." (Lara Feigel Spectator)

"A tender and heartbreaking novel." (Alex Preston Observer)

"A sensitive look at what makes lovers tick." (Robbie Millen The Times)

"Cunningly crafted and sharply observed." (Anthony Cummins Daily Mail)

"Distils some of the pandemonium, and intergenerational conflict, of our own uncertain time." (Max Lin i)

Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.

First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn?t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he?s proud of the fact his relationship flies in the face of social convention.

As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.

Tender and wise, The Only Story is a deeply moving novel by one of fiction?s greatest mappers of the human heart.