Julian Barnes

Includes poems of thwarted love and disappointment, of raw desire, of the stalking beast, 'eye-teeth/and muzzle/coated with blood'; poems that recognise 'we have too much to gain from the gods, and this is why/they fail to love us'; poems that tell of an obsessive lover coming to grief in a sequence that echoes the old murder ballads

The Sense of an Ending

Andrew John Kinney

I'm happy to have finally discovered Julian Barnes; I've been meaning to read something of his for some time. I can understand why Sense of an Ending won the Booker (though Barnes once referred to the Mann-Booker as "posh bingo"); Barnes tellingly re-creates adolescent life in England in the '60's, and it was of a sort not so different from my small town teenage years, despite my version being fifteen years later and in another country. For those of middle-class upbringing of a certain era, who has not suffered that uncomfortable weekend at the girlfriend's parents' house, being inspected for flaws? Or, for those males, again of a certain era, the almost-sex with the serious girlfriend. 

The protagonist's realizes, at last, how lucky he is to have simply arrived at sixty-something, and to have avoided the worst of the many available shipwrecks that life offers. It is an insight that feels true to me, despite the somewhat negative cast to the thought, i.e., his life is not extraordinary, but at least it is not a catastrophe. As one who has flirted with catastrophe, I understand the difference. His life may be somewhat boring and conventional, but the wolf is not at the door. And yet he learns a troubling truth about himself, forty years late, because certain words cannot be unsaid.

Barnes reminds me a bit of J.M. Coetzee, though he seems a gentler man. This book, for those of you thinking of reading Barnes, is a good place to start. It's short at 140-some pages, and is quite a page turner, or it was for me. And it's deeply felt.

heleen de boever

This reminded me of various aspects of some of my favourite books: the older, unreliable and complacent narrators of Disgrace and Waiting for the Barbarians, the skillfully crafted plot and erudite musings of The Secret History, combined with the precise yet poetic prose of something like The Tortilla Curtain. The ending hit me like a thump on the chest and left me feeling physically vulnerable. Perhaps the most important thing this book did, though, was remind me of that intoxicating process that reading can be: obsessive, absorbing, with disregard for sleep, for deadlines, as long as you can live in the narrative one page longer.

haifa

As someone who takes note of what memories I chose to forget/warp/mutate, I was hooked to the story. This short novel is an attempt to meditate on ageing, memory and loss. An attempt because somewhere along the gripping story and minimalist prose, the meditation doesn't quite materialize well.

Rohan Uddin

A wonderful, compact novel. This is an immensely powerful meditation on memory, ageing and regrets, told through the memories of Tony Webster. Written with philosophical insight, this book tells us that life can be full of secrets, but may seemingly have a clear-edged to it.

Prashanth Srivatsa

Through the eyes of the unexceptional Tony Webster, Barnes paints a rather crude picture of the colder times, tries to figure out why people kill themselves, and explores the beauty of relationships in retrospect. Tony's struggles are often compounded by recollections of an awkward weekend with his ex's family which is a gentle reminder that some incidents, despite their mundane nature, carve themselves into memory. Adrian's anecdotes during the history lessons at the beginning of the book are especially wonderful.

Midori Kobayashi

4/5stars


What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

I don't think I could have imagined a 150-page book could take me about a week to finish. But here we are. And as much as I despised the slow pacing of the book, I get why that happened. The writing style is choppy and blunt to the point where I sometimes just paused the audio and sat to think, why? just why? 

That being said, the subject matter and the actual topic of the book are very intriguing, and the way the author brought both parts of the story together was truly brilliant. The author uses strong imagery and I was very much convinced about everything the narrator said for the first few pages until I realized oh no. Oh NO! That made it even better. It was sheer brilliance on the author's part. 

It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.

Oh, and the concept of "pre-guilt". that- that was very interesting, to put it mildly. While this book answers a lot of questions, it also leaves us wondering how many Tonys are out there. Because let's be real we ALL have been in that spot and consciously or unconsciously we do, do the same thing. I'd also like to add why some people's entire reading experience might have been tainted because they couldn't look past how trashy a person the narrator was and that's I guess valid. But I loved that, I mean it made my experience even better(?)

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

natalie

i’m not smart enough to review this book

Fran Lewis

This was something that i picked up on impulse at the library. Fast read and interesting.

Aditi Verma

The last few pages saved this book for me. 
Until perhaps page 110, I would give this book 2 stars on how much I enjoyed it, even though it asked important questions. Perhaps the 2 stars were due to the questions. I didn't enjoy the book until then. The last few pages elevated it from 2-2.5 to 3.5.
I'll think about it for a long time, and may even read it again at a later date.

John Elbing

An interesting, nostalgic muse on memory.

Abhinav Choudhary

i'll never think of old age in the same way

Gulshan Hasanzada

Kitab pis olsaydı da, tərcümənin sanki orijinal dili azərbaycanca olması təəssüratı verməsinə görə yenə də oxumanızı tövsiyə edərdim. Yaxşı ki, mənim zövqüm və hisslərimcə kitab yaxşı olduğu üçün 5 ulduz verməkdə xəsislik etmədim. Həyatı sonlandırmağa doğru özümüzə bir rahatlıq rutini formalaşdırmağa başladığımız periodda əslində yenidən yaşamağa başlayırıq, həm də bu dəfə xatirələri yenidən yaşamaq, tanışları bir daha tanımaqla. Lakin yadımızda qalanlar, tanıdığımız adamlar əslində bizim bilmədiklərimiz, bizim tanımadıqlarımız da ola bilər. “Aqibət duyğusu”nda da eyni təzadlı fikirlər romanın sütununu təşkil edir.
Zaman tapıb, “read list”-nizə əlavə edib, oxuyun, lütfən 😇👌🏻

Tony Webster, now that he is older, is trying to make sense of some of the ways he has behaved towards other people. He discovers that how he remembers events may not be the same way that others remember them.

Fraser Simons

While I’m not a fan of the style of prose, I do very much prefer it when an author writes a story that communicates something of themselves. And memory is a fascinating subject. One I return to over and over again myself, and feels like a enduring question ingrained in the life cycle of amy given human. Musings like this, when I was young, probably would have seemed ludicrous. 

But the older one gets the more self evident it becomes that memory is not at all as you believe it to be when you’re growing up. So many things alter it and I have many of the same feelings about memory as are codified in this book. 

In a way, that is precisely what failed to connect for me, though. If you seek out stories about memory, as I have, for a long time, it feels like these revelations have lost their lustre. So while I connected at a meta level as like-recognizes-like, at the authorial-reader level, the story itself felt like walking a far too familiar path. The ending is similarly perfunctory if you pay attention. 

It’s interesting being frustrated with a protagonist, and I think it could have formed a better bond, had the prose not been preoccupied with concrete steam or consciousness with no time or place or anything active. And so, because Tony “just doesn’t get it”, and his perception of the world is so ineffectual, it was hard for me to care about him and his story. Other than as a warning about motivation thinking, but that’s the retread path. 

If I had to try to describe exactly why it’s not 3 stars and not 5 stars, I’d compare it to a family member—probably an uncle or a father—telling you a story you’ve heard many times, but they continue, for whatever reason, to tell the tale (perhaps without remembering who they’ve told it to) again and again and again. It’s not that it’s a bad story. It’s well told and you have new context every time you hear it, to some degree. But you do already know it, the way it will be told, and you know that at some point you’ll be hearing this story again. Possibly soon.

Amani Zaha

I picked up this book expecting a twist, a brilliantly presented revelation that would shed completely different light on everything told by the narrator thus far. Well, I had set myself up for disappointment. This is not to say that I regret reading the book; I enjoyed the writing and was quickly hooked by the story. Also, there is a twist, though which to me seemed weak and a bit unimaginative. Then again, my anticipation obviously toward the Big Reveal played a part in this. I likely would have enjoyed the book much more, had I simply focused on the story I was reading and not on trying to predict the Reveal.

Note to self: Don't read reviews on this website before reading the book.

Kwan Ann Tan

this book is one of the unique situations in which i find myself saying that the movie was most definitely better- flashback style would have worked for the novel as it did for the movie

Melody Izard

I feel like this book is standing (if books had feet) with one foot firmly planted in "Angle of Repose" which I just finished reading - with it's sense of memory and reconstructing history and suicides and such, and the other foot rooted in "The Marriage Plot" which I haven't read near enough of because I've been so caught up in the other two mentioned books. But there is that theme that all books are about sex and death and also how you never know how your actions affect those around you. And also the wish for life to be more like lives you find in literature. 

I'm looking forward to the discussion of this book later this month. And I have to decide if I will turn right around and re-read it or take it back to the library for those many people who are on hold to check it out. hmmmmmm

Jason Porterfield

Beautifully written, moving and disquieting. Julian Barnes writes novels that stick in my head, and I feel like I'll be thinking about this one for quite some time.

Tracey O’Rourke

This is another one of those "great" books of the year that I just didn't get. I feel like Tony, who just didn't get it as well. It was a quick, easy read, but I really don't know the point. What was the book trying to say about Tony? About the people in his life? About regrets and looking back at our own pasts? I'm not sure. And Tony never developed into anyone I had any feelings about, so it was hard to like the book. This was at least the fourth well-reviewed book, award-winning book I read this year that i thought was just ok. Maybe I should give up on the reviews.

Jen Estrella

What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? 


Man, hardcore existentialism/philosophical thoughts require so much concentration. I'm giving this a 3.5 for the beautiful writing. Review to follow.

Maxime van der Wal

I usually dislike character-driven books — especially ones who lack as much introspective skills as Tony does — but I also perfectly understand why Barnes chose to make the protagonist (and every other character for that matter) so unlikeable and the plot so derivative. The writing is absolutely stunning in this, despite its simplicity and occasional pretentiousness. Normally I’d have hated this book, but the prose totally made up for it. I particularly enjoyed going back to the first page and finally understanding the first paragraph — I thought that was such an interesting touch. 

This is a short, deceivingly banal read and while it may not be as philosophical as others have claimed it to be, it is thought-provoking. Finally a Man Booker Prize winner I like, lol!

Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2011 Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is in middle age. He's had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He's certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer's letter is about to prove. The Sense of an Ending is the story of one man coming to terms with the mutable past. Laced with trademark precision, dexterity and insight, it is the work of one of the world's most distinguished writers.

Elena Garcia Navarro

This is the type of novel where everthing just makes sense at the end. I think my understanding and opinion of the story on the whole would definitely improve upon re-read. Overall I enjoyed and I didn´t see the ending coming, which was surprising and satisfying.

The first part gave me strong dark academia vibes (the boarding school, the group of friends, the conversations on politics and philosophy, death and literature) and I liked how the story was told as a chain of reminiscing memories from the perspective of one of the friends, Tony. Also, I loved how the author explores the idea of buried memories and time passing and how we block and remember events in different ways throughout our life to make them match with the idea of who we consider ourselves to be. 

It was very well-written and as I said the ending was very satisfaying. I may check out other novels by the author.

Amanda Wells

Surprising book about an unassuming man who has lived an unassuming life.

The book could have been, in less capable hands, far longer; but Barnes keeps it to the point without depriving us of detail, nuance or depth. 

I personally related deeply to the main character and his obliviousness to the subtleties around him. He's bewildered by those around him, and much of his life story would be altered by him having a perceptive person in his ear giving him the low down of what he's missed. Not that I feel I'm missing whole swathes of subtext, but that I often feel the machinations and manipulations of those around me go over my head in my belief that everyone means well.

In all I feel you can't lose in giving this a go. It isn't long so if you find it isn't your cup of tea, no huge loss. If you like it, I think you'll love it.

Jade Flynn

“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.” 

An immensely powerful novel. It was simple and concise but complex at the same time. This is the type of book that makes you question things that you thought were true. Things like your memories...your past.

I had two major problems with this novel:

1) The narrator/central protagonist is a boring, lonely and uninteresting old man. Personally, I think he lacked character development. 
2) I didn't feel like there was a climax or a crescendo or even an 'Aha moment' where everything just fell into place.

This is the first Julian Barnes book I've read, but it certainly won't be the last.

Kath Lau

Still not sure how I feel about this book but my rating is final.

The Sense of an Ending

Reviews