I read The Sense of an Ending pretty much in one sitting. From this, you can deduce two things. First, it's a reasonably short book (150 pages)... though don't let that fool you into thinking it's a short story. There's a whole lifetime in these pages, fully realised and touchingly real. Secondly, it's damned near unputdownable.
The novel involves Tony Webster, a student in the 60s who has a clumsy relationship with a complicated and frustrating girl called Veronica. When they finally break up, Veronica takes up with Adrian, one of Tony's old school friends, and tragedy soon ensues. But just what really happened between Adrian and Veronica, and the part he himself unwittingly played in their ill-fated romance, is something Tony does not discover until many years later. Julian Barnes has created a compelling mystery that deals with growing old, the unreliability of memory, and the unknown consequences of our actions. There are some terrible revelations contained in the latter pages of this book, yet Barnes makes the reader work hard to piece them together - he doesn't just hand you the answers on a plate. It's a brilliant example of restraint and respecting the reader's intelligence that makes you keep reading long after you should have turned out the light.
I was a huge fan of Julian Barnes when I was younger but this is the first book I've read by him in some years. It's also one of his best, a deserved Booker winner, peppered with the kind of incisive observations that make you nod, smile and sigh at that crazy, sad, tragic and amazing thing called life. But unlike so many other critically adored prize-winners, it's got an actual plot too. What more could you want?*
Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.
(*I'm waiting for somebody to say "zombies".)
