Skip to main content

Book Review: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Title: The Sense of an Ending


Book Review: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes | The Bookish Elf

Author: Julian Barnes


Genre: Contemporary Fiction


First Publication: 2011


Language: English


Setting Place:  Bristol; Chislehurst; London, England


Major Characters: Anthony "Tony" Webster, Veronica Mary Ford, Adrian Finn, Colin Simpson, Joe Hunt, Phil Dixon, Sarah Ford.


Theme: death, regret, and reminiscence.


Narrator: Narrated in First person through a retired man named Anthony Webster.



Book Summary: The Sense of an Ending


The Sense of an Ending follows a sexagenarian 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.



Book Review: The Sense of an Ending


Imagine you’re at a cafe or taking a walk in a park and you bump into an elderly man. And let’s just say he starts to share his memories from school and the days after with you. Someone who is living all by himself after retiring and is also divorced. Now, don’t roll your eyes. Let’s just hypothetically say he offers to share his memories with you. Would you patiently sit and listen to this  old stranger? Maybe, for the sake of courtesy you would listen for a while and quickly pick a reason from your quiver to slip away. Now, imagine the same memories are shared through the pen of Julian Barnes; Well, there’s no way you would ignore. Doesn’t sound convincing? Give this a quote a glance from Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending before you read on:



“How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”

Now that I have your attention, follow me while I share my take on this literary masterpiece that’s only 150 pages long. That’s right, it’s a short read and split into two parts conveniently. The first part opens with a group of three school friends, who are joined by a fourth. All seem quite intelligent and arrogant as it’s quite “philosophically evident”. And amidst them Adrian Finn seems a lot more intelligent. The first part is strewn with scenes at school and how he reflects on each one’s reaction. Especially the suicide of a classmate named Robson leaves quite an impact.



They part ways once they finish school with a promise to sustain a lifelong friendship. At college, Tony meets Veronica Mary Ford, who becomes his girlfriend. And one weekend, she actually takes him to her house to meet her parents and a brother. Well, I’ll leave this here and let you discover what happened at the Ford’s. What happened to Veronica and Tony’s relationship after that weekend? And more importantly, what led to Adrian’s untimely death?


The second part is where Tony gets a letter from the Lawyer of Mrs Sarah Ford (Veronica’s mother). Surprisingly, the letter reads she has left behind some blood money and the diary of Adrian as a part of her will. Now, this takes the story to a whole new level. Why after all these years, Veronica’s mother had to leave him some money. How did she get the diary of his friend Adrian? Here it’s up to you, alongside Tony, to figure out why she left behind the money; and how she got the diary of Adrian. What makes the plot even more interesting? The pursuit to claim Adrian’s Diary which is now in Veronica’s custody.


To sum it up, Julian Barnes’ masterpiece, The Sense of an Ending, which was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2011, is absorbing and makes the reader think. Unlike other memoirs or novels based on nostalgia, this is split into two parts for a reason. In part one where the narrator is piecing the puzzle and displaying a picture to the reader as per his recollection. And in second part where he is slowly taking the pieces apart and forming another picture which he thinks it should have been. A curious case of construction vs. deconstruction. That said, it’s up to you, the reader to conclude what could have been “The Sense of an Ending”.





 Review by Amit Charles


Read more book reviews here.

Comments

  1. Linda5 May 2018 at 22:53

    Interesting book, interesting review. It seems there are a lot of mysteries all rolled into one. I love the title—both subtle and subdued.

    ReplyDelete
  2. jina12 May 2018 at 23:18

    sounds like an intriguing read with a touch of heartache and a lot of mystery.
    You did a great job with this review, giving us enough info to make readers curious.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Amit16 May 2018 at 03:24

    Thank you Linda and Jina 🙂

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GEORGE ORWELL

English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. Born: 25 June 1903 Motihari, Bengal Presidency, British India. Died: 21 January 1950, University College Hospital, London, England. Birth Name: Eric Arthur Blair Pen Name: George Orwell Early Life Born on June 25, 1903, Eric Arthur Blair who later decided on George Orwell as his pen name was the second child of British parents Richard Walmesly Blair and Ida Mabel Limonzin who then resided in Indian Bengal where Richard was an employee of the British Civil Services. George Orwell created some of the sharpest satirical fiction of the 20th century with such works as Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. He was a man of strong opinions who addressed some of the major political movements of his times, including imperialism, fascism and communism. The son of a British civil servant, George Orwell spent his initial days in India, where his father was stationed. His mother brought him and his older sister, Marjorie, to England about a year aft...
Post a Comment
Read more

10 Controversial Books that became bestseller Classic

J K Rowling, George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov , E L James, Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy, There is a myriad list of the authors who landed in trouble or created controversies and banned, at the time of Book launch or after release, for writing down their unorthodox and free-spirited thoughts and stories which were far advanced of their time. Here is a list of books, you must add to your reading pile, which were declared scandalous or were banned either for talking about intimacy or portraying women as strong character or blasphemy and religious affiliation, but later they were embraced and announced as path-breaking literature. 1. The Harry Potter Series by J K Rowling J K Rowling’s fantasy world of witchcraft and wizardry for children, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone - The first book of The Harry Potter Series, was landed in a controversy and criticized by many religious groups and parents for inspiring kids to try occult and witchcraft, taking them deep in the unwanted and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Most Challenging books I've ever read.

Here is a small list of the most challenging books which gave me hard time to reach last page of the book. No matter how hard your heart wants to read these books till the end but at certain point your mind will take over the will of your heart and convince it to drop the book once and for all. These books will test your patience and control over your mind. Give yourself a round of applause if you’ve also made it through any of these books. And if you get it what was written or what you’ve read then you deserve a standing ovation. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967) What makes it challenging: Few family sagas stretch as wide as that of the Buendía clan - there are seven generations depicted here. As if that's not confusing enough, names are frequently repeated (basically ever character is named Aureliano). And oh yeah, try reading it in Spanish. Excerpt: "He sank into the rocking chair, the same one in which Rebecca had sat during the early days of...
4 comments
Read more