AN EXCEPTIONAL NOVEL FROM JULIAN BARNES.

STARING AT THE SUN, by Julian Barnes. Knopf. 197 pp. $15.95. With this exceptional major novel - and there doesn't seem to be a better or more readable one from either side of the Atlantic this year -- Julian Barnes establishes himself as a writer of the caliber of Mario Vargas Llosa, Salman Rushdie and Thomas Pynchon in the making of a new generation's late 20th-century fiction. The narrative relates the life of Jean Serjeant from her childhood to the year 2021 and the eve of her 100th birthday. But this is prefaced by an episode in which a fighter pilot, Thomas Prosser, 8000 feet over the En...