Just Brilliant piece of work, worthy of the boo High on intellect, high on emotions and memories which most of us will relate to, at least parts of it if not all. The book is written in two parts. The first part is straight forward in terms of what it is trying to say and easy to digest. It is likely to give a sense of nostalgia and it completely succeeds in doing so.
The second part is where the book gets heavy, the plot starts moving fast and the ending leaves you in a daze. It is something you would not be expecting. It ends in such a Zimit Bhagat Certified Buyer. I just finished "The Sense of an Ending" and was left stunned. There are books that leave the reader thinking about it for weeks, this is one of those. The mystery unfolds slowly, and we as readers are given the same facts as protagonist is.
Everything is filtered through Tony's fractured memories. This is a book that will stay with me a long time. The story is in two parts. First, the protagonist's English schoolboy experiences with friends, love, debate, and doubt. Then second, his agonies Jayesh Singh Certified Buyer , Bangalore. Everything was great about this book. First ,the sincere on- time delivery of the book at the doorstep. Next ,the creative book cover design by Suzzane Dean. Then the well written story by Julian Barnes which talks of the tricks and surprises memories can play on a person.
More so as you grow old , when elusive memories are all you have to rely on, for recollection of the past actions and their consequence- the present. Shruthi Certified Buyer. She is the voice of reason—the one connected to the outside world, a force Tony clearly still needs in his life. The arrival of a certified letter disrupts his routine. It turns out the mother of his first love, Veronica, a vivacious young woman he met in college, has died.
As Tony tries to track it down, he shares with Margaret the story of this young romance, as well the friendship with a fellow classmate that came to a tragic end. Working with cinematographer Christopher Ross , Batra shoots these flashback scenes warmly in contrast to the crisp cloudiness of contemporary London.
That film also followed the domestic destruction caused by a letter with news from the past. Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor.
Does this make any sense if we apply it to our individual lives? To die when something new is being born--even if that something new is our very own self? Because just as all political and historical change sooner or later disappoints, so does adulthood. So does life. Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.
View all 32 comments. Mar 29, JV semi-hiatus rated it liked it Shelves: , curiouser-and-curiouser , audiobooks , contemporary , brit-lit , literary-fiction.
You might be flummoxed as to why I have decided to define the word "stupefy" first. Fortunately, it has something to do with this narrative as it left me gobsmacked or stupefied after reading this short novel. Apparently, the two aforementioned definitions did work their magic through me! And speaking of magic, the spell that we Hogwarts students cast are rather worth mentioning, because it also left me stunned and it absolutely knocked me out!
Incantation : Stupefy Purpose : To stun an opponent, rendering them unconscious Yes, that picture above is me! Not the standing one because that's freakin' Harry Potter! He "stupefied" me because yours truly is a puny absent-minded Ravenclaw who forgot how to deflect those bloody spells! I urge you to replace Harry Potter with "book" and you'll have the same effect after reading this, thank you very much!
Pardon me for such digression and do know that this narrative delves into memory, history, and one's own responsibility in the timeline of events that have occurred in the forgotten years and it also explores how the power of words can utterly shatter and upend the lives of others.
How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.
The floodgates of yore open and his peaceful life are thrown once again into chaos as he struggles to confront the restless and vengeful ghosts of the past and one of them from beyond the grave, thereby, re-examining history and recollecting significant events that had occurred as well as his proverbial role in it. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches.
If nothing goes wrong, the tape erases itself. Our memory allows us to reconstruct events and recreate scenarios to fit what we perceive as acceptable and reasonable while excising or expunging parts we deem as spiteful, malicious, painful, and even distressing.
Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of. This novel wasn't enthralling for me and I couldn't see myself in any of the characters. Some parts of this novel were quite dull. I also find Tony Webster, our an unreliable narrator, such an unkind arsehole!
You never did, and you never will. Thankfully, I've reached the end, and yes, I was indeed stupefied! Harry Potter knocked me out in a duel! But then again you could replace Harry Potter with "this book" to know the intensity of the damage that dear Harry has given to my Ravenclaw brain, but luckily I solved the problem nevertheless thank you scratch papers, clues, and equations!
If you fancy connecting the dots, then this novel might be for you! Otherwise, you might want to make some sense out of this book's ending or your life, philosophically, for that matter.
Perhaps, this is a lens to be worn later in life and not now at my current age. View all 82 comments. Tony Webster is a shallow douchebag. As Tony divulges the circumstances surrounding a pivotal juncture in his youth, he would have you believe that his best friend was a disloyal SOB, his girlfriend a Cutthroat Bitch , and he perfectly justified in telling them both to fuck off.
And perhaps he was. Again, that is not the problem I have with Tony Webster. Even that he holds on so tightly to warped memories as reasons for his past behavior which are really justifications is something I do not hold against him—we all do that to a certain extent. If his reasons were sincere, if he actually felt like he needed to atone for something, then I might understand.
It does make you reconsider his life details in a new light, though: his failed marriage, the distant relationship he has with his daughter, his pathetic lack of friends. History is not just the lies of the victors; it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. Yes, email. And he considers this an appropriate form of closure? Seriously, Tony, go fuck yourself hide spoiler ]. This book does present an interesting supposition, though—that past events are easier to understand from the historical perspective, the fact that one can see an event in its entirety, more objectively, and from various angles with the passage of time, which allows for a more accurate account of that event.
Although the narrator uses this to justify his own shallow behavior, I thought it was a pretty enlightening concept nonetheless. View all 27 comments. Shelves: literary-stuff , made-me-think. This enigmatic literary fiction novel does a great job of playing with perceptions. I pulled out this short Booker Prize novel one night, thinking I'd just read a bit to get a feel for it, to know what to tell my book club about it, since I needed to suggest a choice of 4 or 5 books to my book club the next day for their vote.
A few hours later I finished the book, moved but a little bewildered. In the first fifty pages the narrator, Tony, tells of some events in his high school and college days: a group of rather pretentious friends who, for the most part, play at being intellectuals , a relationship with a girl, Veronica, that didn't work out, a friend's suicide, marriage, divorce, retirement Then the next hundred pages happen: a bequest in a will.
A short, enigmatic note from the woman who died. A renewed acquaintance with Veronica. More surprises. And everything that Tony—and I as the reader—thought got upended. How often do we tell our own life story? Some readers dislike Tony enough that it dampens or ruins their enjoyment of the book, but I had a great deal of sympathy for him.
I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded — and how pitiful that was. But time We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but we were only being cowardly. I've felt those feelings. This blog has one writer's explanation of what was really happening, and an extremely long but intensely interesting comment section where various readers chip in with their theories and insights, which gave me a lot of food for thought.
Can we even trust what he says in the end? I tend to think so, at the very end, but I think it's clear that, at the least, he's still oblivious about some things, like how Veronica felt about him when they were dating. The comments that gave me the most food for thought were the ones that suggested he, too, had a fling with Veronica's mother, and was the actual father of her child.
I don't think I buy it, ultimately, but Content notes: Scattered F-bombs and some sexual content. View all 4 comments. Feb 04, Teresa rated it it was amazing. This book got under my skin. Not in the negative way, like what Tony, the narrator, may be doing, or trying to do, to Veronica, who 40 years ago was his first serious girlfriend, but in the way he describes how his ex-wife would dress a chicken -- slipping butter and herbs under the skin, with a delicate hand, never breaking the outer layer.
I was hooked from the first page and even when I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it, even in my sleep, or, more likely, semi-sleep. I was pulled int This book got under my skin. I was pulled into the dream of someone else's life, like the best novels do to the reader, and I stayed there.
Though the book at first reminded me greatly of Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier my guess is that was intentional , somewhere after the middle, it stopped feeling like it altogether and became its own entity.
While I didn't completely see the ending that arrived, I did have a clue, as I was reading very carefully, with a lot of attention, as if it were "The Good Soldier. Still, there were surprises, as there is in all great fiction. View all 78 comments.
Recommended to Nataliya by: Iffletoe. Shelves: reads , booker-winners-and-nominees. Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending has a lot packed in the short or so pages. Memory and history, responsibility and blame, deceit, misunderstandings, aging, guilt, remorse - and, of course, a safely passive coasting on the smooth sailing surface of life, occasionally interrupted by the tidal waves of unexpected upheavals and disturbances, just like Severn Bore , seen once by Tony Webster and Veronica.
For instance, that memory equals events Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending has a lot packed in the short or so pages. For instance, that memory equals events plus time. And so we construct our own memories and write our life stories the way it suits us. Told to others, but — mainly — to ourselves.
And, what's pathetically and sadly true, we fail to really grow and change at the end of our life stories - after all, Life is not really Literature. Yeah, it's not a book to read when you're feeling a bit down on yourself.
Whether he actually takes something important from this experience - well, that's debatable "It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.
The older Tony constantly interrupts his own narration to remind us of the subjectivity of his memory, setting himself up as the ultimate unreliable narrator. This story resembles a coming-of-age book at the beginning with all those pseudo- and not-so-pseudo-intellectual teenagers in the British prep school in the s waxing on and on about philosophical matters with the smugness inherent to the adolescence - but it turns out to be anything but.
Adrian Finn , who produces such pompous little gems as this one: "History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation. And along the path to reclaim that diary Tony embarks on a quest to turn remorse into guilt and guilt into forgiveness - in the most self-centered way possible.
Along the way he also toys with shouldering responsibility for what happened in the lives of Veronica and Adrian - but, as I see it, this over-estimation of his own importance is yet another one of his memory delusions and instead he may be on the sidelines of this story, regardless of what his unreliable memory tells him his life story should be. But ultimately it's not about Tony at all; Tony is just a slate on which to project the final thoughts, the final lines of this novel that harbor a bit of hope for the majority of us, floaters on the safe waters of life, who may or may not meet their Severn Bore.
There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest. It's insanely quotable, to the point where you begin to suspect that certain lines were thrown in by the author with expectations of their future quotability factor.
The language is smart and exquisite, sometimes a bit sardonic, sometimes a bit pedantic, and sometimes painfully genuine. Love this book or hate it - but you cannot deny that the writing is quite excellent. And to close off, I want to go back to the image of the Severn Bore, the natural phenomenon that unsettled Tony back in his youth and still may be the disturbance that we all need from time to time.
Great unrest, so to speak. It wasn't like a tornado or an earthquake not that I'd witnessed either — nature being violent and destructive, putting us in our place. It was more unsettling because it looked and felt quietly wrong, as if some small lever of the universe had been pressed, and here, just for these minutes, nature was reversed, and time with it. View all 39 comments. Nov 19, Jennifer aka EM rated it it was ok.
Maybe, like Tony, I just don't get it, but this was a whole lot of Man Booker-winning to-do about very little. Pretentious, upper middle-class schoolboys behave badly, and -- through too much ego and too little self-knowledge and empathy, too many book smarts and not enough life experience -- inflict cruelty on ex-girlfriends and others as they cavalierly grow out of their coddled adolescence into a ho-hum average life. It then comes back to haunt them - or one of them, anyway - in late middle-a Maybe, like Tony, I just don't get it, but this was a whole lot of Man Booker-winning to-do about very little.
It then comes back to haunt them - or one of them, anyway - in late middle-age, and as memories are jogged and regrets bubble to the surface, insight is finally gained. Sort of. It's really a dull spark of understanding nested in about the same amount of egocentric self-pity that it started out disguised by.
I guess it's a clever character study, but I didn't and don't like Tony. I really just wanted to give him a smack upside the head and tell him to stop whining and get over himself, kind of like his ex-wife did. Tony's real insight seems to be the recognition that he's failed to live up to his own pompous and overblown expectations of greatness for himself. He's led an average life. And along the way, through his own obtuseness and arrogance, he's inflicted a not-inconsiderable degree of harm, which seems to be of less consequence to him in the grand scheme of things than the fact that he's lived a life of complacent mediocrity.
But then, Barnes leaves us there, with this fellow sighing into his beer and chips. I feel myself asking - but what's next? What this guy does NEXT will tell the real story of his character. I feel Subject: The last chapter Dear Tony: The cure for your loneliness and sense of ennui is to pull your head out of your ass and go out and do something of value with the time you have left.
Turn that insight into action that will do someone some good and I don't mean just leaving a sizeable tip at the pub, either. Love, Jen View all 25 comments. Sep 10, Violet wells rated it really liked it. It seems inevitable that virtually every writer will at some point write a meditation on ageing and the role of engineered memory in defining identity. This is Julien Barnes contribution to a somewhat oversubscribed theme, one which is very popular with Booker judges, perhaps because they're generally of an an age when this theme is especially pertinent to them.
I'm not a great fan of minimalist prose so Barnes is never going to become one of my favourite novelists. I like my writers to be more It seems inevitable that virtually every writer will at some point write a meditation on ageing and the role of engineered memory in defining identity. I like my writers to be more painterly, more linguistically adventurous, more connected to the sensual world.
Barnes doesn't have the gift for immersing you in the moment; his gift is more for providing the philosophical overview. The best writers can do both. It's essentially his wisdom that has to carry this novel because his characters aren't particularly credible except for cyphers for his ideas. Would anyone with intelligence really have written the absurdly childish letter Alex writes? Would a grown woman really choose for no reason to be so obtuse and coy as Veronica in the final stretch of the novel?
There are lots of good quotes in this novel. In fact, I couldn't help feeling the quotes deserved a better novel. For this novel to work the reader is called upon to accept unlikely melodrama at all its pivotal moments.
And there wasn't enough humour, as there would be in an early Amis novel, to help me surf through these overly contrived plot fountains. I had bought into the mystery element and was reading with some degree of intrigue but what a damp squid of a denouement! Some admiration. Little love. Ultimately another overrated Booker winner though having just looked at the long list that year it didn't have much competition.
About 3. View all 33 comments. Again, I must stress that this is my reading now of what happened then. For such a short novel it seems to waste no words, and only speeds between breaths to tell us about the capriciousness of our memories. I think it cannot be truer that memory is a fickle friend. More than a story, this was a lyrical lesson Again, I must stress that this is my reading now of what happened then. More than a story, this was a lyrical lesson with a very precise rhythm of life and time.
What time? Batra was so nervous at meeting Barnes that he subsequently forgot most of their conversation, save for Barnes's parting line, spoken in jest: "Go ahead and betray me. Goofs Young Tony affixes a 'first-class' stamp to his fateful letter, sent in This sort of stamp was not produced for another 26 years in Quotes Tony Webster : [Voice over] When you are young you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books.
User reviews 61 Review. Top review. An original adaptation of a challenging novel. Based on the Booker Prize-winning novella by Julian Barnes which I have read , inevitably this film adaptation is different from the original work.
The structure of the book was a section of the unreliable narrator's time at school and university followed by the present day coming to terms with revelations of that earlier period. The film is set in the present with lots of flash-backs to the past and that works well. More questionably, the movie version of "The Sense Of An Ending" has a different ending which is not that of the author Julian Barnes or even that of the scriptwriter, the playwright Nick Payne, but essentially that of the director, Indian film-maker Ritesh Batra who made the delightful work "The Lunchbox".
The film offers us a conclusion which is more definitive and more upbeat that the novel but that is perhaps the nature of this different medium. The pacing allows the viewer to admire the wonderful acting, primarily from Jim Broadbent as the narrator, retired and divorced Tony Webster, but also from some fine actresses, notably Charlotte Rampling, Harriet Walter and Emily Mortimer, plus some new young actors.
Like the source novel, this film is a challenging and moving examination of the malleability of memory. As Tony puts it: 'How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? Details Edit. Release date March 10, United States. United Kingdom United States.
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