How much can you believe?
Julian Barnes’s novel looks at how we process memory
I’ m late to the party on this book, which won the 2011 Man Booker prize. But The Sense of an Ending is so exquisite, so complex, I wanted to make sure readers didn’t miss out on it. It’s one of those mysterious books that leaves you guessing, and wondering how much of what you’ve read you can believe.
The narrator in this case is Tony Webster, who meets a new friend, Adrian Finn, in secondary school. Webster leads readers through the boys’ last few years of secondary school and their first few years of college in a classic coming- of- age tale, masterfully written by author Julian Barnes.
The boys are funny, yet serious. They talk about philosophy and history and, of course, girls. Barnes shows us Finn as a young man wise beyond his years, ready to take over teaching the boys’ senior history class. He reveals Webster, through the narration, as a nice, but somewhat insecure, average young man.
As the boys move out of high school and into various different colleges, they grow apart. Webster shares the story of his first girlfriend Veronica with readers, along with Finn’s suicide. Webster knows about Finn’s death, but doesn’t reflect much upon it, possibly because they’ve had a falling out and have lost touch.
The second half of the novel is again narrated by Webster, but now he is middle aged. He’s had a career, a marriage and a friendly divorce. He’s surprised to be left an inheritance of 500 pounds and Finn’s diary when Veronica’s mother dies. The bequest brings him back to his teenage days, and makes him curious about why a woman he has only met once many years before would leave him money, let alone remember him. And he wonders how she possibly came to possess Finn’s diary, which for some reason Veronica refuses to hand over.
From there, the book is largely a look at memory and how we process our own lives as we reflect back upon our youth. It’s a study in perspective, and how things can appear vastly different from one person to the next.
The universality of some aspects of the story give it its strength: We’ve all had youthful friendships, first loves and misunderstandings with long- lasting effects. This book takes a look at how those misunderstandings and falling outs shape our view of ourselves over and through time.
Barnes, who lives in London, is the author of several novels and books of short stories and essays.
He has won too many awards to list, most recently the 2011 Man Booker Prize, a prize he was shortlisted for three times previously: for Arthur and George ( 2005), England, England ( 1998) and Flaubert’s Parrot ( 1984).
The Sense of an Ending is just 160 pages long; when you start it, be prepared to read all 160 in one sitting.