The Sense of an Ending by Julian BarnesI'm not sure I'm qualified to review this, as it has already been mused over by many real critics both because it is by Julian Barnes and because it was the winner of a slightly controversial "Booker". I think the controversy was more to do with the quality of the rest of the shortlist than any doubts of Barnes' worth though. I must admit I felt that it was perhaps a one-horse race given Barnes reputation for literary fiction against a genre shortlist of relative unknowns. Of the quality of those others, we shall see, but I am now convinced that this was a worthy winner, not just as a consolation for losing in previous years with better books.
I started reading him because I was intrigued by the title of Flaubert's Parrot, (having at the time just read Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education) but I went on to read several others. However, when History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters was stolen, with everything else I was carrying, in Amsterdam many years ago, I never replaced it and did not return to JB for some years.
Sense is a slim volume but actually took a while to read, not because the writing is difficult but because it is a thought-provoking. At least, it is certainly thought-provoking for someone of my age and sex because there are so many things here that resonate with my own experiences of life and love. It is full of observations which merit turning over in the mind, exploring and examining. Its themes are big ones: memory, guilt, redemption or its lack, desire for closure or absolution.
Beautifully written, it is a polished little gem of regret, melancholia and acceptance. It was a reminder to me of one of the powerful reasons for reading: Our strangely intimate, and sometimes supportive, relationship with the author, who may talk of things to us that we would not speak of to anyone else or of which we are perhaps no longer able to speak to the people who would understand.
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