Title: The Sense of an Ending
Author: Julian Barnes
Release Date: August 4, 2011
Length: 150 pages
Genre: General Fiction
*** My Review ***
Time slowly passes, bringing oblivion but also memories… Meetings and events that have passed, love that has been forgotten, relationships that have been broken…
Parts of life, some permanently sealed in our hearts, some taken to oblivion… But the moment of truth is coming. It sneaks up quite unexpectedly when we least expect it. А moment that brings with it questions that we must answer ourselves… How much of what I remember is true? How can people have totally different memories of a same event?
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is a melancholic book that will make you reconsider your life. The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, we get to know the narrator who tells his story. More precisely, he begins by describing his youthful days together with his friends, his enrollment in college, his first love, and his first breakup… Relationships that ended, but carry too many memories. which still have meaning.
Meanwhile, life goes on and this is where the second part of the book begins. We see our main character as a middle-aged person. One who had a beautiful marriage, and a child, but as it always does, his marriage falls apart, but he remains on good terms with his ex-wife. Then, out of nowhere, he gets a notification, a letter from a lawyer connected to a person he’s only seen once. Needless to say, Anthony feels taken aback by the whole situation. And so he begins to search for the answers…and he finds them, and he finds more than he bargained for.
First, I must say that this is a wonderful book. It’s a short book, but there’s a lot packed into its pages. It has depth, it has humor, it has feelings. The writing style is masterful. I love Burns’ writing style because it makes you feel like the narrator is right across from you in a coffee shop telling you his story.
He keeps coming back to the concept of time and memory and his thoughts are spot on.
This is a little package of everything, emotions, betrayal, shocks, and more…at first it looks like a down-to-earth Anthony Webster story, but it’s not. It is so much more.
The characters are well-built, quite average, and normal anyway. Tony is dense and a bit pushy, he thinks he can go back and change his past and the events that happened. Veronica on the other side was truly an enigma to both Tony and me. The way she expected him to understand without being told was truly perplexing. He wasn’t the only one who didn’t have a clue until the end.
The twists in the plot are shocking especially the suicide, then the other death, and the inheritance. Honestly, all the happenings were too much for Tony to deal with. I’m not sure if I liked it or not, but it made me think for a long time, keeping me awake long after I finished the story.
But after I read the last page, my whole life flashed through my mind. Questions and answers, doubts….. Things I wouldn’t have even considered a few years ago seemed important now. That is why The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is a perfect choice for a book club. It contains too many segments that deserve to be discussed in detail. Many parts will be understood and perceived differently by different readers.
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes has everything… Youth, friendship, love, maturing, aging… imperfections in remembering and perceiving one’s history… All this in only 150 pages. Simply brilliant…