Julian Barnes’s Booker Prize winning novel The Sense of an Ending is a bit of a conundrum. Comprising of the recollections of a man growing old, it gradually becomes something more than a retrospective. More than anything it is about the narrative we invent for our own lives. When we look back at episodes from out past, what does our memory leave out, and is to what extent can forgetting be a conscious act?
The first part of this slim book consists of recollections of Anthony’s school and university days, and of his relationship with Veronica. The second part involves him reconsidering some of the past events as a result of being left some money and a diary unexpectedly in the will of Veronica’s mother.
It is Anthony’s school friend Adrian who first raises the issue of perspective and of distance when examining past events. He is a precocious young philosopher in the mold of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys.
The Question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.
By the end of the book we know quite a lot of the history of this particular historian, the narrator Anthony. The question remains, however, of whether we know enough to draw a definitive version of events. There appear to be several lacunae in his memory. What else has he forgotten to mention?
Issues with An Ending
The finish to the book comes with a twist, swiftly followed by another twist. However, there is something quite unsatisfactory about the way in which the story finishes. Without wanting to give anything away, the ending only seems to tie up if certain events are considered to have taken place in the forgotten past. Forgotten is the key word, as these events don’t seem to be the type of thing that a young Anthony would have neglected to mention in his narration, and yet they are not mentioned at all. Maybe Anthony is just an unreliable narrator, but it felt a bit contrived to me.
Was it worthy of the Booker Prize? I can’t decide. The writing is extremely smooth and fluid, but something doesn’t sit right with me about the ending in particular.
Very nice analysis. I loved the writing in this book, but not necessarily the story or the characters. Barnes does have a beautiful way with words.
Thanks Susan. He is an excellent writer, and his prose is always beautiful, but the ending didn’t quite work for me.
I agree with you about the ending and the narrator being unreliable. I enjoyed the first part of the book, even though we had an unreliable narrator – it added to the appeal for me. But the second half of the book didn’t work for me, and the multiple twists with their connection to the forgotten past as you put it (good analysis there), didn’t work for me at all.
Absolutely. It was one twist too far for me at the end.
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