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The Sense of an Ending
| Title | The Sense of an Ending |
| Writer | |
| Date | 2025-07-06 16:12:02 |
| Type | |
| Link | Listen Read |
Desciption
Winner of the 2011 Man Booker PrizeOne of The Atlantic's Best Books I Read This YearA novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning new chapter in Julian Barnes's oeuvre.  This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, as he contends with a past he never thought much about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony thought he left this all behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.
Review
Just brilliant. The book at first appears, right to the end, to be a rather mundane story of the life of an ordinary man who is neither perceptive about the people around him nor does he see himself in a clear light. Only at the end is it apparent that there were two different stories being written at the same time and you can perceive all the clues to the second story only in hindsight although they were so clear, you wonder how you could have missed them. You wonder how the protagonist could have misinterpreted, forgotten and ignored them as well. Or did he? Maybe it was just in reflection he could put all the pieces together.This is genius writing. This was two ways of reading a story, one written to be read in the usual way, forwards, and the other backwards, with hindsight. This is why Barnes won the Booker Prize.
