The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape (e-book)

Julian Barnes' 11th novel is the last of this year's Man Booker nominees to be reviewed here, just in time for the awards on Tuesday. It sees Barnes come full circle, echoing his debut Metroland. We have a clever but emotionally baffled narrator: Tony Webster. At school, he is part of a high-brow gang - initially Colin and Alex, but later the clever and enigmatic Adrian Finn. 'Yes, of course we were pretentious - what else is youth for?' Well, sex, of course. Webster's parents are terrified he will turn into 'an incorrigible masturbator, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnatory libertine ... How far their anxieties outran our experience'. Standing between Webster and Finn is Veronica, briefly Webster's girlfriend but eventually Finn's better half. When Finn commits suicide, Webster finds himself obsessing about Veronica, and mulling over inexplicable events: why did her mother, whom he met just once, include him in her will? Webster's attempts to unravel this mystery double as a meditation on time, history, truth and death. The Sense of an Ending is elegant, funny, and moving.