REVIEW: THE SENSE OF AN ENDING- Julian Barnes

As the winner of the esteemed Man Booker Prize, I had high expectations of The Sense Of An Ending from the start. Past winners have proved their worth: Adiga's The White Tiger was inspired, Rushdie's Midnight's Children was tricky at times, but a worthy winner. I'd heard twitters that this was a strangely ordinary Man Booker Prize choice: a controversial comment that made me want to read it all the more.

Unintentionally, this was a very appropriate book to read after The Good Soldier. Both books feature a protagonist looking back on his life- and past love- in light of some unexpected news. However, while The Good Soldier annoyed me, Barnes' novel continued to charm me throughout. Each main character constantly analyses his failings, and how they have lead them to their current situation- but somehow I felt more sympathy for Tony. Perhaps this was due to Tony's idolation of Adrian, his exceptionally intelligent high school friend, was more understandable than John Dowell's obsession with the cheating scoundrel Edward Ashburnham.

But enough of The Good Soldier; Barnes' novel holds enough insight and emotion to stand alone. In short, Tony Webster, along with his high school clique, befriend the outstandingly clever Adrian, who later goes to Cambridge. The group of four all go to separate universities, and begin to live separate lives. At Bristol University, Tony starts dating the righteous, pompous and alluring Veronica Ford, and introduces her to his former high-school chums on one of their rare reunions. Little does Tony know what will result out of this seemingly innocent meeting- both in the short and long term.

Barnes cleverly makes the reader empathise with the reader without even realising; just as Tony looks back on his life once he finally 'gets' what Vernoica tries to tell him, so the reader looks back in the novel and views certain events in a whole new light. Characters that invited sympathy at the beginning of Tony's narrative no longer do so, and those who are considered the 'villans' suddenly appear to be the heroes. The revelation at the end certaintly gave me a shock, and so I feel for Tony when Veronica repeatedly tells him: 'You just don't get it, do you?'

I truly felt 'the sense of [not wanting] an ending'. All the more delightful and poignant for it's relatively conciseness, I was left wanting to find out what happened to Tony- and Veronica- next. Memory is a truly fascinating- and surprisingly malleable- thing. With this novel, Barnes clearly aimed to demonstrate the power and persuasion of memory, and how it can be coaxed out of hiding and manipulated according to current circumstances. The author has fulfilled his goal superbly; his novel may seem ordinary to some critics, but Barnes makes us realise the extraordinary nature of ordinary human memory and emotions- something that we often take for granted.