Ten years ago, Gillian turned her back on newly- wedded bliss to leave her husband, Stuart, for her lover, Oliver. One decade and one book later, Stuart returns from his absence in the US - after another marriage, another divorce and business success - to continue the drama. Oliver, in the meantime, is still writing screenplays into a void; Gillian supports him and their two daughters with her business as art restorer. Love, etc., Julian Barnes's sequel to Talking it Over, retains the format of the original: the characters in this drama - augmented by their children, colleagues and others - answer the questions posed to them by what seems to be a literary Big Brother. We discover that Stuart is still painfully and perhaps psychopathically obsessed with Gillian. Oliver apparently lapses into depression during the course of the book (his real affliction is cancer of the vocabulary, and the reader is forced to suffer through it with him). Idolised by the two men, Gillian nevertheless doesn't seem to have a personality of her own beyond alternately defending and accusing both. An intriguing way to present the storynovel, andthe story well planned out, but none of the characters are is engaging enough to sustain it.