The Sense Of An Ending
by Julian Barnes
Award: Booker 2011
Nomination: Carnegie Longlist 2012
Date Read: April 4, 2012 & May 26, 2019
The Sense Of An Ending is a quiet and haunting novel that explores how actions of the past can have everlasting consequences. Narrated by Tony Webster, the ghosts of the past are resurrected when Tony receives a letter from an attorney, offering documents from his deceased friend, Adrian, who had taken his life just after finishing college.
From the beginning when they meet in high school, Tony and his group of friends are aware Adrian is different, smarter, perhaps more sensitive. They treat him with a deference and respect they do not afford each other. After Tony's lukewarm and largely non-sexual relationship in college with Veronica, Adrian reaches out to inform Tony that he is now dating her. What seems too short a time later, Adrian takes his own life, mirroring an event in high school when a schoolmate took his own life after impregnating his girlfriend.
As the events of the past become entangled with events of the present, Tony, as an older man in retirement, realizes how similar Adrian's story has played out. Tony reassesses his relationships and finds answers to questions that had been left unanswered and his forced to confront who he was in the past and how he behaved.
Barnes is brilliant in arguing both sides of an argument, knowingly twisting language to play with meaning and intent. He further explores the fundamental argument that suicide, rather than being an act of selfishness, is a final act of decisiveness and power. "'He took his own life' is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands - and then out of them."
Throughout, The Sense Of An Ending develops characters that are full of contradictions and regrettable behavior. Tony is truly selfish - betraying Jack by telling Veronica that he got her email address from him, the vicious letter he sent to Adrian, condemning his relationship with Veronica, asking Veronica if she thought he was in love with her. He acts recklessly, without regard for anyone's feelings.
Veronica is also completely immersed in her own suffering. How she expects Tony to understand or know what her experience has been like is beyond me. She expects Tony to inherently know what transpired, without giving him a shred of knowledge. Whether she holds Tony accountable for everything that happened is unclear as well.
The story ends abruptly, yet I can't help but wonder how Tony proceeds with the information he has gained. Does he try to reconnect with Veronica? Does he try to forge a relationship with Adrian Jr.? Since the reader is left to their own imagination, I suspect that nothing actually comes of his newfound knowledge and he is left mourning a past he had been blithely unaware of.
Looking Forward: Arthur & George, England England, Flaubert's Parrot
Date Read: April 4, 2012 & May 26, 2019
The Sense Of An Ending is a quiet and haunting novel that explores how actions of the past can have everlasting consequences. Narrated by Tony Webster, the ghosts of the past are resurrected when Tony receives a letter from an attorney, offering documents from his deceased friend, Adrian, who had taken his life just after finishing college.
From the beginning when they meet in high school, Tony and his group of friends are aware Adrian is different, smarter, perhaps more sensitive. They treat him with a deference and respect they do not afford each other. After Tony's lukewarm and largely non-sexual relationship in college with Veronica, Adrian reaches out to inform Tony that he is now dating her. What seems too short a time later, Adrian takes his own life, mirroring an event in high school when a schoolmate took his own life after impregnating his girlfriend.
As the events of the past become entangled with events of the present, Tony, as an older man in retirement, realizes how similar Adrian's story has played out. Tony reassesses his relationships and finds answers to questions that had been left unanswered and his forced to confront who he was in the past and how he behaved.
Barnes is brilliant in arguing both sides of an argument, knowingly twisting language to play with meaning and intent. He further explores the fundamental argument that suicide, rather than being an act of selfishness, is a final act of decisiveness and power. "'He took his own life' is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands - and then out of them."
Throughout, The Sense Of An Ending develops characters that are full of contradictions and regrettable behavior. Tony is truly selfish - betraying Jack by telling Veronica that he got her email address from him, the vicious letter he sent to Adrian, condemning his relationship with Veronica, asking Veronica if she thought he was in love with her. He acts recklessly, without regard for anyone's feelings.
Veronica is also completely immersed in her own suffering. How she expects Tony to understand or know what her experience has been like is beyond me. She expects Tony to inherently know what transpired, without giving him a shred of knowledge. Whether she holds Tony accountable for everything that happened is unclear as well.
The story ends abruptly, yet I can't help but wonder how Tony proceeds with the information he has gained. Does he try to reconnect with Veronica? Does he try to forge a relationship with Adrian Jr.? Since the reader is left to their own imagination, I suspect that nothing actually comes of his newfound knowledge and he is left mourning a past he had been blithely unaware of.
Looking Forward: Arthur & George, England England, Flaubert's Parrot
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