Paperback, 154 pages
English language
Published Jan. 4, 2012 by Vintage Books.
By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse.
This intense new novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he’d left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he’d understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.
A novel …
By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse.
This intense new novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he’d left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he’d understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.
A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single sitting, with stunning psychological and emotional depth and sophistication, The Sense of an Ending is a brilliant new chapter in Julian Barnes’s oeuvre.
Well written and engaging but the ending didn't quite justify the drama and mystery leading to it
When I see a book that is only 150 pages, I automatically think the book won’t have much to offer, but then I remember some great novellas like, George Orwell's Animal Farm, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and now Julian Barnes’s A Sense of an Ending. Winner of this year’s Man Booker prize A Sense of an Ending is the story I always wanted an angsty book about the teenage years to be like. I think back to Catcher in the Rye and think The Sense of an Ending is everything that classic should have been, all Catcher left me with was the need to slap Holden repeatedly.
The book follows the story of Tony Webster forty years later who receives an unexpected letter which leads him to remember his life forty years ago. The obsession with girls he had, his very …
When I see a book that is only 150 pages, I automatically think the book won’t have much to offer, but then I remember some great novellas like, George Orwell's Animal Farm, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and now Julian Barnes’s A Sense of an Ending. Winner of this year’s Man Booker prize A Sense of an Ending is the story I always wanted an angsty book about the teenage years to be like. I think back to Catcher in the Rye and think The Sense of an Ending is everything that classic should have been, all Catcher left me with was the need to slap Holden repeatedly.
The book follows the story of Tony Webster forty years later who receives an unexpected letter which leads him to remember his life forty years ago. The obsession with girls he had, his very first relationship and the memories of talking about philosophy, classical music and literature with his friends. This book is beautifully written, it was a real pleasure to read; it was intelligent, witty and I’d highly recommend it to everyone.
I just finished reading this short novel and in the last push I spent two and a half hours on it, scarcely glancing up from the pages. I never do that, but this book is absorbing even though it has almost no "action" in it.
It's hard to describe it and I can't imagine how it was made into a movie, which was just released, unless it has a lot of narration.
Readers of all ages will get something out of it, but I'd imagine that the closer you are to the narrator's age—sixty or so—the more often you'll find yourself understanding his observations.
Don't judge this book by the first few chapters, it's not a coming of age story. The total sum of the narrator's life and memory will be on display if you stick with it. After about halfway I couldn't put it down.
Tightly written, memory and personal history of an unlikable man's interior view of his life.
Only a sense of an ending, because there were so many loose ends at the close of the book that the reader is left not with a feeling of completeness, but a horde of questions. Tony, the narrator, is, in a word, boring. He's flitted through life, always taking the path of least resistance and never ever taking a chance. Or has he? The 'peaceable' man that he remembers himself to have been could not have possibly written that ugly brutal letter to Adrian and Veronica. Maybe he was a truly nasty human being, but has managed to suppress those horrid memories, leaving only the washed out shell of himself in mind.
I think the book is more about memory than the slender mystery revealed in the final few pages. What we choose to remember, and how we construct the narrative of our lives. Tony's memories of his youth change, …
Only a sense of an ending, because there were so many loose ends at the close of the book that the reader is left not with a feeling of completeness, but a horde of questions. Tony, the narrator, is, in a word, boring. He's flitted through life, always taking the path of least resistance and never ever taking a chance. Or has he? The 'peaceable' man that he remembers himself to have been could not have possibly written that ugly brutal letter to Adrian and Veronica. Maybe he was a truly nasty human being, but has managed to suppress those horrid memories, leaving only the washed out shell of himself in mind.
I think the book is more about memory than the slender mystery revealed in the final few pages. What we choose to remember, and how we construct the narrative of our lives. Tony's memories of his youth change, even as he delivers them, and there's no way of knowing which set of memories lies closest to the truth.
An interesting book about memories and how what we remember as happening sometimes is not what really happened. I've often thought about how our lives are made up of memories of events and our responses to those events and memories, but that sometimes our memories are faulty or tainted by our desires, secrets and fears. So what is real? And why must we feel responsibility for another's actions? How one misstep on one's part can have repercussions for someone else. Are we guilty if we remain unaware of our transgressions? Much to contemplate. The main character, Tony, was much too hard on himself. The ex-girlfriend was a bitch, vindictive and annoying. I would have long before told her to go fuck herself and send me my property, pronto.
Well I liked it a lot more than I thought I would after the initial introduction to Tony and his pretentious friends. Full review to follow.
Now I have to discuss this with someone -- what the hell went on at the end?
I'd been avoiding Barnes because
annoyed me for some reason. I think it had seemed too deliberate.
This book didn't feel that way. It felt like a book should--like it was about real people. I wasn't on Goodreads when I finished it so I didn't review it when it was fresh in my mind. I do want to say that it had a remarkable feel of the passage of time to it. So detailed and overly important when you're young yet less clear and surprisingly formless in the present, despite it being "now." Maybe the point is that hindsight creates the cohesion of the past (there is much discussion of the validity of history in the book) but I believe it is the loss of illusion that removes the binding that held the past together. That, plus the the present's lack of …
I'd been avoiding Barnes because
Lots of good stuff in this one, but I got to the end and wasn't sure what the point had been of telling the story. I have friends who absolutely love this, though, so maybe it's just me.
Recommended by Andy. He's a great writer of course (I mean Barnes). This has a contrived quality.
This was an excellent start to the new year! I read this simply because it was the 2011 Man Booker Prize winner, and for once I wasn't let down. Beautifully written, and while slightly depressing (mostly because of the realism and how easy it would be to see myself in the same position as Anthony), the story itself was just simply wonderful. My only problem with the book might be that I didn't really understand why Anthony or anyone else involved in the "incident" would have spent 40 years dwelling on a youthful misjudgment. Admittedly, he says some very cruel things to people supposedly very close to him, but he was only 20 years old, or so. Perhaps that was the point-we do some mighty stupid things when we're young and though time should erase much of the pain attached to those mistakes, sometimes life doesn't work out that way. …
This was an excellent start to the new year! I read this simply because it was the 2011 Man Booker Prize winner, and for once I wasn't let down. Beautifully written, and while slightly depressing (mostly because of the realism and how easy it would be to see myself in the same position as Anthony), the story itself was just simply wonderful. My only problem with the book might be that I didn't really understand why Anthony or anyone else involved in the "incident" would have spent 40 years dwelling on a youthful misjudgment. Admittedly, he says some very cruel things to people supposedly very close to him, but he was only 20 years old, or so. Perhaps that was the point-we do some mighty stupid things when we're young and though time should erase much of the pain attached to those mistakes, sometimes life doesn't work out that way. Amazing book.
I hate it when I can't think of what to say about a book. The Sense of an Ending is, I think, evidence that the Booker prize is more about a body of work than the individual title being recognized. This just doesn't have the emotional heft of the other novels on the 2011 short list. Nor does this say anything more about history, relationships, or the 'human condition' than, say, Pigeon English.
This isn't a bad book. It's brief, serious, even well-written. It's also a bit of a palate cleanser, not likely to stay with you for long.
