Adult Book of the Month
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Published by Jonathan Cape in 2011
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at
school. Maybe Adrian, with his fondness for philosophy, was a little more
serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore
to stay friends for life.
Forty years later, Tony is leading an ordinary life. Now middle aged,
he has had a career, a single marriage and a calm divorce. But a surprise
inheritance forces him to re-evaluate his memory of the past and to re-establish
contact with a person from that past. She makes a startling revelation
at the end of the novella which leaves Tony, and the reader, reeling.
This is a novel about how, over our lifetime we believe that our version of events is the correct one and the only one, until we are forced to accept that, as the narrator states early on in the book, “what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed”.
`Julian Barnes may well have written his best novel, he has certainly told a wonderful story that is all too human and all so real.' Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
‘Without overstating his case in the slightest, Barnes's story is a meditation on the unreliability and falsity of memory; on not getting it the first time round - and possibly not even the second, either. Barnes's revelation is richly ambiguous.’ The Evening Standard
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester in 1946. The Sense of an Ending has been shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. He has written nine novels – Flaubert’s Parrot was shortlisted for the 1984 Booker Prize, England, England, for the 1998 prize and Arthur and George for the 2005 prize.
By the same author
Arthur and George
England, England
Flaubert’s Parrot
The Lemon Table
Love, etc.
Pulse
Something to Declare
Talking it Over
