Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
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An endearingly dense narrator searches through the strands of his life
In the novel that finally garnered Julian Barnes a much-deserved Booker Prize, one of Britain’s top authors boils down a big, fat book’s worth of thought and detail into 163 mesmerizing pages. The story follows the lovable but dense Tony Webster who, in his 60s, appears satisfied with his largely mediocre life. “Some achievements and some disappointments,” he muses, “It’s been interesting to me, though I wouldn’t complain or be amazed if others found it less so.”
Still, something isn’t quite right: As Webster begins to reminisce about his adolescence in hopes of imposing a “sense of an ending” on his life story, he wonders to himself, “What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully?” In stirring back through his memories to figure that out, Webster recalls his manipulative college girlfriend, Veronica, as well as the tragic suicide of his friend, Adrian, an all-around brain who becomes involved with Veronica after Webster. Barnes here brings to mind his countryman Kazuo Ishiguro for the way he masterfully works the idiosyncrasies of an unreliable narrator to make a common story feel new. Like Ishiguro, Barnes gives us the pleasure of being about to see Webster’s flaws before he discovers them for himself — in fact, the beauty of this fine, lean work is in how Barnes uses this to humanize his narrator. He also uses Webster’s unreliability to carefully lead us up toward a novel-spanning secret, letting us share in the moment of revelation with Webster. What Barns has done with The Sense of an Ending is craft an immensely pleasing story that shimmers with elegant elements irreducible to a single conclusion, ensuring that this book will stand up to multiple readings and lead to extended bouts of conversation with good friends.
