

Loading... The sense of an ending (original 2011; edition 2011)by Julian Barnes
Work detailsThe Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (2011)
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Ook 5 sterren bij herlezing: indrukwekkend op literair vlak, op emotioneel vlak en inhoudelijk. Straf boek, meer daarover nu dinsdag 27 oktober 2020 op Tussen de Letters in CC Zwaneberg te Heist-op-den-Berg ;) weest welkom ( ![]() I'm usually not much of one for that great literary subgenre of (SB)SBBB -- that's (Sometimes British) SchoolBoys Behaving Badly -- see Lord of the Flies, Old School, A Separate Peace, etc. etc. I did make an exception for Donna Tartt's The Secret History which had me completely enthralled from start to finish and now I think I'll make another, slightly lesser one for The Sense of an Ending. The structure is hard to describe -- I guess it's what would be filed under "stream of consciousness" -- and largely consists of an older man reflecting on a failed relationship in his youth. Barnes is achingly right about so much of what he writes about memory, pain, and love (or at least, I think he's right) that I felt like I had to take a walk or do some kind of breathing exercises when I finished the book, I was so wound up. It's a short gallop from start to finish, and well worth your time. Turns out I can’t be bothered finishing this. Clever writing but I wasn’t engaged with it much. Urgh. The Sense of an Ending is a wonderfully written, introspective, philosophical, deckle edge paperback that fits neatly in a purse. I should have loved it, and plenty of people did—it got the Man Booker prize, for goodness' sake—but, alas. The myopic, "middle-aged" Tony reviews the important relationships of his early adulthood. He struggles for every morsel of insight he gets, but mostly, as former girlfriend Veronica says: "You just don't get it, do you? You never did, and you never will." The unreliability of Tony's memory is his constant companion:...our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life.But not only is Tony's memory faulty, he doesn't have all the facts, and fitting the missing pieces into place provides the action of the novel. In the end: There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And... There is great unrest. No transcendence. I think that's why I put the book down feeling depressed. I picked up the gorgeous trade paperback (I already mentioned the deckle edges) at Goodwill. Around the year in 52 books challenge notes: #51. A book with an "-ing" word in the title I liked this so much, with Tony, the unreliable narrator--as I suppose many of us are, thanks to time and memory, and trying to make sense of our lives.
By now, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes has gained itself a reputation for being the novel you must read twice..... Nearly every paragraph in this book has multiple interpretations. Once all the questions are answered, the reader is left in the same state that Tony is in the book’s final pages—floored at life’s essential mysteries, and frustrated that they cannot be relived. Fortunately for us, we can just read the book again. Barnes' work is one in which, event-wise, not a whole lot happens. Unless we’re talking about the events of the brain and the tricks of time and memory. If that's the case, then Barnes has impressively condensed an undertaking of biblical proportions into a mere 163 pages. A man's closest-held beliefs about a friend, former lover and himself are undone in a subtly devastating novella from Barnes. It's an intense exploration of how we write our own histories and how our actions in moments of anger can have consequences that stretch across decades. The novel's narrator, Anthony, is in late middle age, and recalling friendships from adolescence and early adulthood. What at first seems like a polite meditation on childhood and memory leaves the reader asking difficult questions about how often we strive to paint ourselves in the best possible light. Has the adaptation
Follows a middle-aged man as he reflects on a past he thought was behind him, until he is presented with a legacy that forces him to reconsider different decisions, and to revise his place in the world. No library descriptions found.
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