Book Review #2 - The Sense of An Ending

I don't know if Julian Barnes meant his title to be ironic but his ending for this book made no sense to me.  Again, maybe that was on purpose.  As a literary tool, endings can lift, resolve, change and ruin the story that preceded it.  And, as authors must both find a relief and burden, all books must end.  What's the best way to do that?

At first, I thought Barnes's The Sense of An Ending would have an ending as philosophically self evident as its narrator, Tony, repeatedly declared and quoted was the only realistic possibility of any history, that is "the certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation."  As Tony discovered throughout his attempts at nostalgia and navel gazing, memories of which he was certain changed with additional witnesses.  Moreover, memories long since forgotten were remembered with new cues and triggers never before considered. As an unapologetic gazer myself, I found the idea that our histories - whether it is our personal, national, or worlds' -  can't possibly be unbiased or thoroughly remembered both profound and accurate.

Then came the ending.  What I thought was philosophy was actually a semi-detective novel in disguise and its ta-da revelation finale ruined everything.  As The Sense of An Ending won the Man Booker Prize, I have no doubt that many more educated than I can explain how this blind sided and frustrating reveal not only needed to happen but was actually developed and obvious the entire time, only obstructed by Tony's own need for redemption, but I really wish it simply had a different ending.  I honestly would have been more satisfied with his old girlfriend, Veronica, saying, "You really don't get it.  You never have and you never will," one more time (although twice seemed like enough) and it just... ending.  With us not getting it.  I thought that would have been perfectly poetic and fitting with his painstaking defense of the weakness of memory.  But that was not Julian Barnes's sense of an ending.  See? Is it a play on the title after all?

This kind of book leaves me at a loss for rating or recommendation because while I ultimately found it unsatisfying and quite ruined by the ending, the writing was eye candy there were so many lovely quotes to enjoy.  Those discoveries are worth the reading effort, I believe.  Here are some of my favorites:

“How often do we tell our own life story? 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.” 

“We live in time - it holds us and molds us - but I never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing - until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.” 

“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.”

“What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.”

“Also, when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. You imagine yourself being lonely, divorced, widowed; children growing away from you, friends dying. You imagine the loss of status, the loss of desire – and desirability. You may go further and consider your own approaching death, which, despite what company you may muster, can only be faced alone. But all this is looking ahead. What you fail to do is look ahead, and then imagine yourself looking back from the future point. Learning the new emotions that time brings. Discovering, for example, that as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously kept records – in words, sound, pictures – you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping. What was the line Adrian used to quote? 'History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” 

“Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also - if this isn't too grand a word - our tragedy.” 

“Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?” 

“That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.” 

“But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.”

“What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain? Well, there was all this to reflect upon, while I endured a special kind of remorse: a hurt inflicted at long last on one who always thought he knew how to avoid being hurt - and inflicted for precisely that reason.” 

“You can put it another way, of course; you always can.” 

I adore that last one.  Actually, I do want you to read this book and tell me if I'm crazy about the ending.  Because how can those incredible quotes come from a book that I do not love????