The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes

the view from the upper circle

Not for the first time, I found myself unconsciously reading two books with very similar themes, characters and bombshell endings back-to-back.

The last time it happened, when I read The Sea by John Banville and Orwell’s Keep The Aspidistra Flying in tandem, both plots followed middle-aged men looking back on their lives, trying to come to terms with the past. And the hooks of both Sense of an Ending and The Go-Between, the book I read immediately after? Yes, two late middle-aged men looking back at their lives and…

Barnes’ Booker Prize winning novel is a slip of a book that deals with big ideas. It was one of those novels that the clichéd, and clumsy, ‘unputadownable’ was first uttered for. I devoured it in a day only to be left… I don’t really know how I felt as I closed it for the final time. There is little sense…

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