The Sense of an Ending

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.

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What’s The Sense of an Ending About?

This is a short novel with a very simple story—well, a pair of them. The temptation at this point is to talk in detail about everything that happens—and I could still do that in fewer paragraphs than some longer novels I’ve written about.

The other option is to be very sketchy about the stories—I think that’s the way to go, it’ll be easier to cover things without tying myself in knots to avoid spoilers and it feels like it’s the spirit of the novel.

We meet Tony Webster and his friends in their teens, a new student comes to their school and they work hard to bring him into their circle of friends, and we stick with them for a few years—largely through the way the group dissolves as they disperse to various universities and make the attempts to stay in touch. Add some girls into the mix and the end is inevitable. Tony has one significant relationship that he spends some time relating with a young woman named Veronica—it’s a bad match from the outset, but both of them try to make it work. They eventually split, he travels America for a bit before coming home and getting a nice, comfortable job; getting married and divorced; and raising a daughter. (the post-America part of his life is covered in one paragraph).

All of this is told through the perspective of Tony as an older man recounting his younger days and comparing what he and his friends experienced to what “kids these days” have. This is really the introduction to the novel, the foundation—and takes roughly sixty pages to cover. He’ll breeze by a lot, and then stop and focus on a conversation or an event. Much like a conversation with my parents and grandparents about their lives (or, increasingly, how I find myself talking to my kids).

The second part builds on that foundation, Tony is now on the other side of marriage, divorce, career, “the fall of Communism, Mrs. Thatcher, 9/11, [and] global warming.” He’s contacted by a lawyer about a small item left to him in a will. Veronica’s mother, of all people, has left something for him. He has to work to find out what it is and then to actually get it from Veronica, who actually possesses the item. This leads to him having to revisit his past, re-examine friendships, their relationship, and how little he understood things then (and now).

So, what did I think about The Sense of an Ending?

While I feel an impulse to do a deep-dive on this book (like the kind of thing I’d do for a 400-level Contemporary Novel class or something, with all the journal articles, books(?), professional reviews, etc.), I’m going to resist that. I’m not even going to go as deep as I typically would because I’m not sure how I’d stop.

Bear with me, this is going somewhere positive. I think.

Tony and his friends initially struck me as the kind of protagonists you’d find in an Updike, Franzen, or Brodesser-Akner* novel, and I had to find solace in the fact that this was going to be shorter than my time with them. Well-written, crisp prose that would likely lead to something thoughtful and insightful—but I’d have to wade through some pretension, a lot of amoral callowness, and more masturbation than I really want (both literal and philosophical).

* I could’ve made the list longer, but I think I made my point. I feel bad about using the last name, but I just saw the trailer for the Hulu series, so she was on my mind—and I thought it would be nice to mention someone who wasn’t a white male author, even if they’re worst offenders.

Here’s where you expect the “But, I came around to…”, right? Well, I don’t really have one. I did grow to have some sympathy and understanding for Tony—even if I did think he’d be better off with a different hobby than obsessively trying to get his hands on the item (and trying to understand Veronica). With one exception, my opinion of everyone else in the novel went down. I probably would’ve liked a lot more time with Tony’s ex, actually. And there are some characters we spend very little time with that I might like to read about. But the named characters that we get to know are really not the kind of characters you want to get to know.

My other quibble with the book is how often Tony’s narration will say something to the effect of: “at least that’s how I remember it now.” The shifting of memory, interpretation, and perspective when it comes to relating events is clearly a theme of the book, but we don’t need to get hit over the head with it like a 2×4 in the hands of a 1980’s professional wrestler.

Once I got to Part Two, I was hooked. I was only mildly curious about the item and Veronica, and (again) thought that Tony’d be better off putting it behind him. But I couldn’t stop reading about his efforts to get to the bottom of it—it wasn’t quite the way you have to stop to look at a fender-bender on the side of the road, but it was close. His reactions, his recalculations, his reinterpretations—and the way he was forced to make them—kept me engaged and thinking. I didn’t care about the destination, I wasn’t thrilled with the journey, but I enjoyed the route and the mode of transport (to stretch the metaphor beyond use).

In a mere 163 pages (and it’s a small book in the other dimensions, as well—it could’ve been a much smaller novel had it been a more standard size), Barnes gives the reader a twisty little story with some solid character development (I refuse to commit to the word “growth” here, but it may be appropriate) and squeezes in some discussion on the nature of, and how we think about: narrative (both personal and fiction), metanarrative, history, relationships, life, death, memory, time (and its passage), aging, and other themes I didn’t pick up on during my first read or forgot to note.

Believe it or not, I do recommend this book. There was a lot I didn’t particularly enjoy (I think I made that clear), but it’s going to stick with me longer than many novels do. I think there’s a better than even chance that were I to write this post in a month that it would end up saying something different. The writing is compelling, there’s a quality to it that is clear from the opening pages, and you can see why it would be in the discussion for some prizes (many of which it apparently won). This is definitely the kind of “literary” reading I want to do—I just wish Barnes had filled it with people I wanted to read about, spend time with, and get to know.

And yes, I said first read, I think I’ll return to this in a couple of years. I’m pretty sure I’ll read more Barnes, too.

I’ve given this three different star ratings since I finished reading it, so I’m going to skip that shortcut and just let that muddle of an evaluation stand.

This book can only be described as a flawed masterpiece - had the novel bothered in fleshing out the characters from the bland caricatures that they were (lucid vs mysterious, ‘clever' vs pragmatic/complacent, and so on), it would have been an amazing read. But it was not, and I can't even blame Barnes for the result - the book is meant to be a short slice-of-life piece, and that's what it remains till the end.

This is a short read, but the ending, while not being a gut punch, was a surprise for sure - of facades and of avoiding responsibilities.

TL;DR - good read for a lazy weekend afternoon, the protagonist is worth empathizing for, and the digressions are not dumped, and feel natural.

Memory is a funny thing.