Review: The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The sense of an ending is a different kind of book and that is to it's credit. The story is recounted by Tony who is now a grandfather and his memory cannot be totally relied on. The story primarily revolves around a bunch of people who meet when Tony is in college - his friend Adrian, and his former girlfriend Veronica. After Tony breaks up with Veronica, she goes around with Adrian. Adrian later commits suicide. At the time of her death, Veronica's mother leaves Tony a sum of money and Adrian's diary in her will. Veronica holds the diary back from Tony. While Tony connects with Veronica to obtain Adrian's diary - he recollects & relives the past while he also stiches together the events in their lives since they stopped meeting long time back.

The book is interesting but I found it unsatisfying. It is left for you to speculate and tie up the ends. As such there is no right sequence (as the discussions at http://andrewblackman.net/2012/05/the... will indicate) since the narrator is declared unreliable and with the characters being sketchy - the motivation for the actions they undertake is unclear.

Leaving a story open to such wide speculation is no different in my mind to throwing a bunch of colours on a canvas and asking viewers to speculate what the resultant picture could be.....

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