The Sense of an Ending [Deckle Edge] (Vintage International) (original 2011; edition 2012)

I didn't get it. I listened to this short book in two stints, but this is a book that doesn't work -- for me -- in audio. In print I flatter myself that I would have stopped here or there to consider and maybe realize Barnes was having me on. All I got was that he was an unreliable narrator; Barnes was obvious enough about that with history being the delusions written by the victors and everything being philosophically self-evident and I did see that his relationship with his daughter isn't as good as he claims. But whatever clues I was supposed to pick up from his initial account of the crucial weekend and then his later added memories, I did not. But I enjoyed the writing throughout, the tone, and how my sympathy for characters flipped and ebbed.

[Nothing Daunted] by [[Dorothy Wickenden]]

[Nothing Daunted] tells the story of two well-to-do Smith graduates who ventured west to rural Colorado in 1916 to teach school. The beginning of the book includes information about their families and their travels and education as girls but the bulk of the book describes their life in the mountains in northwest Colorado where a well-educated young attorney had organized a school district and built a two-room school house to provide "winter school" for the children in Routt County. Although the two were well-educated they had no training or experience as teachers nor had they ever lived in rustic circumstances. They did have cheerful, accepting natures and a thirst for adventure which made them embrace the hardships they would encounter in the coming year. The book is a charming description both of the young women and of life in the early 20th century rural west. ( )

This short but very powerful novel has a casual and easy flow, that is packed with a depth of insight laid out so effortlessly that Barnes gives a sense that he didn't just come to these life-lessons and dwell on them, but rather moved on quickly and without fanfare.

Tony Webster, the protagonist of the story reflects on his life with a sort of dulled sense of connection. That is he is objectively able to be critical about his own behavior, but without the sort of omnipotent understanding that objectivity often brings in novels, which is what I found so rewarding. The discoveries he's made about himself is revealed quickly, and densely scattered throughout the story, some flattering, some critical, but all very nuanced, bearing the weight of maturity and a life-lived imperfectly.

The story, though mostly a character study, has a decent amount momentum to the plot, and enough action that drives it along like a scenic train ride through the alps. A Corvette it is not, nor should it be.

Barnes's language and comfort within his own voice reminds a lot of Nabokov, with some contemporary phrases like "Skype" thrown in to shake you out of your ivory-tower projections, which was a nice surprise. The pace was great, and the subtlety that he conveys is so rich and understated that it makes you at once nod your head and say, "yes, yes," and other times shake your head and say the same. It's definitely a novel that you want to read through in one sitting, and when you're done, read again to catch all the morsels you've dropped the first time. ( )

I don't do this often, but as soon as I finished this s.im volume, I went directly back to the front and reread it in its entirety. All the answers are there, practically from the beginning. And one can see how Tony Webster slowly makes sense of an ending. ( )

A gem of a novella which I avidly read in one sitting (after the first few pages which seems slow, but then you really get into Tony's story and memories). ( )