It doesn’t take long to realize that this novel – recently awarded the 2011 Man Booker Prize – is about time and memory, and the dance they perform with one another. As the author writes, “If we can’t understand time, can’t grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history – even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it?”
The story is narrated by Tony Webster, and at first it can be summarized as four English schoolboys coming of age in the mid-1960s. There’s a bit of the youthful angst and rebellion we saw in “Spring Awakening” and “The History Boys,” although it’s Adrian Finn – not so much Colin or Alex – who Tony will find of more interest. Adrian is the new kid on the block, and clearly a cut above the rest.
“We finished school, promised lifelong friendship, and went our separate ways.” The narrator meets Veronica Ford and she becomes his girlfriend. There’s a digression or two on what dating was like at the time, and we end up with an account of Tony’s relationship with Veronica, from start to finish, which includes a weekend stay with her family.
Julian Barnes does something quite interesting and even dangerous: He makes sure we believe or understand Tony Webster to be a very normal individual. Dangerous, because even though the novel is brief and well written, normal people tend to lead bland lives and are not necessarily people we wish to read about. Unless Fate drops something in their lap, as it does here. Then the Everyman syndrome may take over.
In this instance it’s a tragic event, a suicide, and thus The Sense of an Ending is bifurcated, pretty much between past and present, as Tony Webster quickly ticks off the events that have befallen him over the following decades. Marriage, a child, divorce, retirement. An ordinary man – whose life is given a twist when he learns that Adrian’s diary has been willed to him, but is in Veronica’s possession.
The reader’s interest is piqued, but the drawback (or challenge) is that of being able to empathize with the characters as Barnes has described them. There is also the feeling that not enough has been said about any of them.
Perhaps it is the writing coupled with the themes of aging and remembrance, but we can excuse Barnes on this point. Time moves forward, that’s for sure, but sometimes what was left in the past finds a way to jump forward and bite us in the present. There’s an analogy in the book, that of the Severn Bore, when the tide changes and the river seems to be running upstream. Figuratively speaking, there is also such a thing as the revenge of youthful indiscretions; literally speaking, an insulting letter hastily sent.
The letter is a monster that has festered over four decades. Having it flung back into his face, Tony ruminates and rummages through the lost years, trying to solve puzzles without having all of the pieces. He feels remorse, feels it down to his bones, but also mollifies himself by thinking that he can rectify what was done. He imagines a reconciliation with Veronica; he even imagines a blissful outcome. But years earlier, in class, Tony had described history as “the lies of the victors.” His instructor had agreed but then reminded his pupil not to forget “that it is also the self-delusion of the defeated.” In other words, there are the facts, and then there is wishful thinking.
The Sense of an Ending comes to an implausible but not improbable close, one that is surprising and disturbing, but thought-provoking. Does life give us tidy answers? Of course not. Neither does Barnes. This is, however, a well-crafted novel and it resonates long after one sets it down.
