The Sense of an Ending

I just finished reading "The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes, a beutiful, densely written study on time, memory and remorse that won the Man Booker Prize 2011. "The Sense of an Ending" is a 150 page novel divided into two distinct parts (it is the second-shortest book to win the prize, the shortest, though only by a few lines, being Penelope Fitzgerald’s "Offshore"). "The Sense of an Ending" follows the memories of Tonny Webster, a 60 year old, middle-class retired man in modern day Britain who takes us through an emotional rollercoaster of his adolescence in the 60s, his "book-hungry, sex-hungry, meritocratic, anarchistic" existence, his best childhood friends, his thrurst for adventure, Eros and Thanatos, his first love and his first taste of betrayal, this is part 1. Part 2 follows a retired, divorced Tony in his quest for the hidden truth of the past and his struggle with a series of regrets that ends with a plot twisting punch in the stomach. Needless to say I loved this incredibly strong short book and definately recommend reading it! Enjoy some of my favourite excerpts.  

"I remember a period in late adolescence when my mind would make itself drunk with images of adventurousness. This is how it will be when I grow up. I shall go there, do this, discover that, love her, and then her and her and her. I shall live as people in novels live and have lived. Which ones I was not sure, only that passion and danger, ecstasy and despair (but then more ecstasy) would be in attendance. However...who said that thing about 'the littleness of life that art exaggerates'? There was a moment in my late twenties when I admitted that my adventurousness had long since petered out. I would never do those things adolescence had dreamt about. Instead, I mowed my lawn, I took holidays, I had my life. But time...how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but we were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical"

"Another detail I remember: the three of us, as a symbol of our bond, used to wear our watches with the face on the inside of the wrist. It was an affectation, of course, but perhaps something more. It made time feel like a personal, even a secret, thing."

"I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where your pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory. So when this strange thing happened - when these new memories suddenly came upon me - it was as if, for that moment, time had been placed in reverse. As if, for that moment, the river ran upstream."

"...that mental states can be inferred from actions. That's in history...Whereas in the private life, I think the converse is true: that you can infer past actions from current mental states. I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not, except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question, on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit or repress it, and how this affects our dealings with others. Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further dmage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of."


"-What is history? Any thoughts?
-'History is the lies of the vistors', I replied, a little too quickly.
-'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated.'
...-"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation""