The Sense of an Ending
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER - NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about--until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A 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 achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past 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.
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A short book and a quick read that stayed with me for a while after I put it down. It's about the past and our memories of that past and how different the two can be. Definitely worth a read.
I'm truly going to try and keep up with the local book club this year. This is our first book and I really struggled reading it. The prose felt strangled and I kept getting dropped out of the actual story by the language. I read quite a bit and have a pretty good vocabulary but I had to keep asking me Kindle to define words because there was little to no context. Boom...dropped again.
I found that I didn't really want to finish this book but now I...read more
I found that I didn't really want to finish this book but now I...read more
A good book that would have been better without the tricky ending. The ending cheapened the entire book quite a bit and lessened the main character's responsibility. I would recommend all but the last few pages of the book. (3 stars)
Update from 3/2018 reread: Besides being captivated all over again by the author's amazing writing and his unreliable narrator, it seems clear to me that the entire point of the story is that there are a chain of peop...read more
Update from 3/2018 reread: Besides being captivated all over again by the author's amazing writing and his unreliable narrator, it seems clear to me that the entire point of the story is that there are a chain of peop...read more
Oct 2012 - Powered through this book in an afternoon! What started as a nice philosophical recount of Tony's life turns into a surprising and complicated examination of the part that he implicitly played in the lives of others. I'm not entirely convinced of his responsibility but perhaps we shouldn't be convinced on the whole story seeing as the book does warn about the malleability of history. Great story, really well written and some beautiful ...read more
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