The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Previously published in Dawn Books & Authors. 

Writer Julian Barnes once called the Booker Award ‘posh bingo’. He’s probably changed his mind since winning the prize this year for his fourteenth novel, The Sense of an Ending, a compact little book about one man’s reflection on his life – what critics have called a ‘meditation on ageing’. In another writer’s hands this may have been boring, but Barnes is quite a veteran when it comes to writing about the human condition, and this book is a subtle, clever little thing. It isn’t, as it first appears, just 150 pages of tedious geriatric introspection. ‘I had not wanted life to bother me too much,’ says Barnes’ protagonist Tony Webster, but luckily, life has a way of not listening.

Tony recounts his youth as spent with a small group of close friends, each of them ‘book-hungry, sex-hungry, meritocratic, anarchistic’. A newcomer in their midst makes them realise that all sixth form English school boys are not equal, and that their new friend Adrian is far smarter, more sensitive and mature than them. The boys grow up, grow apart and years later Tony finds that he has inheritedAdrian’s diary from a rather strange source. Barnes is deft at making Tony just staid enough for the reader to feel safe within his narration, but very soon indications that this is a classic case of the unreliable narrator arise. Tony, it seems, hasn’t been telling the entire truth all this time. In fact, he’s been fairly economical with it, and when Tony points out as a student that history is written by the victor, Adrian goes further to quote the French historian Patrick Lagrange: ‘history is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation’. This description comes up twice in the book – there’s no chance any one would miss the point.

But the person who does miss the point, again and again, is Tony himself. Not just is his an unreliable narrative, he is also incapable of recognizing what Barnes’ readers may well pick up on much earlier. In all his talk about memory, mortality and his sense of no regret, there is many a point when he is asked ‘you just don’t get it, do you?’ Tony’s inability to see further than his own version of the past is frustrating, not just to other characters but to the reader as well. That is what eventually makes him interesting – for a man who thinks he has everything sorted, he really is living with huge inadequacies of documentation.

Although Tony is eventually found to be unreliable, he is still a well defined character. In fact that may be what tricks the reader into never questioning anything he says, in perhaps even missing some of the doubts Barnes places on Tony’s version of the past. How can a man who is this open about his life be hiding information? More importantly, why would he? Questions arise when Barnes’ introduces Victoria, Tony’s college girlfriend who is quite possibly the single most frustrating character of 2011. What is particularly interesting is that Barnes’ treatment of Tony has been such that a reader would be quicker annoyed byVictoriathan by the man who ‘just doesn’t get it’.

Barnes’ skill as a writer is most obvious in the very readability of The Sense of an Ending (readability being a large factor in this year’s nominees for the Booker), but it is also obvious in his subtlety. This book is small, quiet, reflective and sensitive – it is understated and will never shout out what it needs to say. Barnes lets his readers question whether Tony’s ‘instinct for self-preservation’ harmed others or damaged him. As Tony asks, ‘[Y]ou might even ask me to apply my ‘theory’ to myself and explain what damage I had suffered a long way back and what its consequences might be: for instance, how it might affect my reliability and truthfulness.’ Of course, even he’s not sure how he could answer this at all.