The Sense of an Ending (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

"The Sense of an Ending" is almost more of a novella - it's a slim volume but exquisitely written, as you might expect from Julian Barnes. It starts off describing the relationships between four friends at school, narrated by one of the friends, Tony Webster, but quickly it becomes clear that this is written many years later. Barnes has long been a terrific observer of the English middle classes and his style invariably contains satire and dry humour. And this being Barnes, this school clique is intellectual in interest, as the narrator recalls English and History teachers and student philosophising.

Tony is a middle class everyman. He's unexceptional and his subsequent life has been so conventional as to border on the dull, unlike the catalyst for the story Adrian Finn who is intellectually gifted and a natural philosopher of the human condition. However the friendship falls apart after the friends leave to go to university and Adrian enters into a relationship with Tony's ex-girlfriend. And that would have been that, except that many years later a mysterious letter opens up the past causing Tony to reconsider the actions of his youth.

It's a book about history and how we recall events. Tony has his memories but without evidence or corroboration, how sure can he be? Do the lessons learnt in the History classroom apply to the individual? What starts off in the manner of Alan Bennett's "History Boys" soon turns into a darker mystery as Tony is forced to face up to the actions of his younger self.

It's a joy to read. Thought provoking, beautifully observed with just enough mystery to keep you turning the pages to find out what happened. Books that involve the narrator examining their own actions can get too easily bogged down, but by keeping it brief, this never happens with Barnes. There's insight into the human condition and gentle philosophy without it becoming too introspective. It's very readable literary fiction.

Older readers in particular will relate to Tony's struggle with the modernities of the current day.

It's a terrific little book and is highly recommended.

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

This first person narrative is a study in obsessive guilt. Tony Webster looks back to his first encounter with Adrian Finn, the new boy at school. Adrian is obviously a cut above the rest of the lads; he is serious, logical and inquisitive, destined for great things at Cambridge University. Years later Tony hears of his suicide, a carefully arranged affair, with appropriate notes to family, friends and authorities. He had once told Tony that Camus maintained that suicide was the only true philosophical question. The subject arose when a fellow student, Robson, hanged himself after getting his girlfriend pregnant. What possible connection could there be between the fatal decision of the mediocre student Robson, whose last words read simply `Sorry, Mum' and the signing off of the genius Adrian?

The clue - to that part of the novel at least - lies in the relationship both Tony and Adrian have with a rather classy and prickly girl known as Veronica (later Mary) Ford, whose parents Tony visits for a disastrous week-end in Chislehurst, where he is treated rudely both by Veronica's father and her brother Jack, but kindly by Mrs Ford, Veronica's mother. Only in his later years, which absorb most of the second part of this slim novel, does Tony - and possibly the reader - begin to `get it' as Veronica continually puts it about her family situation. By then we have learned of an insulting letter Tony had written to the unhappy pair, Veronica and Adrian, which may or may not have been the trigger that caused his demise. The reader will need to read the novel a second time to pick up on the clues Barnes plants regarding the abortive love affair with the hostile Veronica. In fact the whole book is about unravelling mistaken notions, discovering hidden meanings in past conversations, finding new clues to understanding the self, its delusions and unintended slights with their unforeseen consequences.

I found the book both fascinating and frustrating, as was no doubt the author's intention. It is undoubtedly a clever book, but to me, as with the same author's Flaubert's Parrot, rather too cerebral, lacking the warmth of real human relationships. There are so many things the narrator and reader do not `get'. Why, for instance, should Tony continually pursue a girl, then the girl as woman, who was only using him as a plaything? It makes no sense to him or the reader. Is it sufficient to say that it is the donnée on which the whole book rests, just as other obsessives, like for instance Kemal in The Museum of Innocence or Charles Arrowby in The Sea, The Sea, expend vast energies in pursuit hopeless causes? The difference is that both Pamuk's and Murdoch's novels delve deep into the psyches of their narrators. We understand, sympathise and forgive them, even when they are boring us. At least Barnes's novel is too short to be boring. It is indeed, extremely readable and. in its own way, strangely haunting,

A masterpiece of story-telling by one of our finest novelists, rich in period atmosphere and revealing some totally unexpected and disturbing twists towards the end. For readers in the same (or slightly earliuer) age category as the narrator Tony, much of the first part will have powerful resonances - the earnest bookishness of Tony and his friends, the constant search for the meaning of life, and relationships with girls that hovered around the boundaries, but (at that stage) did not 'go all the way' - as Tony himself remarks in retrospect, the spirit of the repressed 1950s still lingered, despite the image of the swinging 60s. Brilliantly caught in this narrative is the fraught ritual of the young man staying at the home of his girl friend's parents, with a reciprocal visit following.

Barnes works in the theme of time passing, and of sudden change - not always in expected directions, as conveyed in the important symbol of the Severn Bore reversing the natural flow of water in the Bristol Channel. But the most important agent of change is Tony himself, who is guilty of that common phenomenon, 'the insenstivity of the sensitive'. The consequences of his actions only became apparent in their true awfulness much later: they explode like a bombshell just over half-way through the book. The rest of the story explores the themes of remorse and forgiveness as Tony tries to come to terms with his past. This process inevitably involves memory, the other main theme of the book, and the way the human mind summons up forgotten incidents while erasing others. Tony's attempts to dredge up the past have the added effect of shaking up his rather smug and comfortable existence since graduation, a life which he now dismisses as 'average': in short he has played safe and shied away from any real commitments.

The audiobook is an ideal medium for what is a short novel, providing an evening of compelling listening and presented by an excellent reader. Highly recommended.