Barnes's Books of the Year (The Guardian)

Julian Barnes (contributes). "Take a Leaf Out of Their Books."The Guardian, 25 November 2006.

From the article:

"A minimum (if rarely achieved) requirement for any novel is to make the reader think, yes, of course, it is/must have been exactly like that. Irène Némirovsky's evocation of the chaos after the fall of France in 1940, Suite Française (Chatto / Knopf), is far more than that: the work of a genuine artist, pitiless in articulating the moral faults of the French. John Updike's Terrorist (Hamish
Hamilton / Knopf) got some sniffy, snooty reviews, but is his best novel for some years: the world he has so richly evoked over decades now seen through the eyes of one who wants to destroy it. Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion (Bantam / Houghton Mifflin) should be read by everyone from atheist to monk. If its merciless rationalism doesn't enrage you at some point, you probably aren't alive."