THE SENSE OF AN ENDING by Julian Barnes

I don't know about you, but the end of the year I get reflective. I think about the previous year's successes and failures, pros and cons, hits and misses, and use these to plan the next year(s). My professional life, my writing, speaking, and my librarian gig, is governed by an academic calendar, but my personal life and learning are still attached to a traditional January-December schedule. This month being December, the month's blog book is about life, learning, and existential considerations, and I thought it would be a good choice to round out the year.

The Sense of an Ending is a novel with a unique form. The narrator, Tony Webster, introduces the reader to his school friends in some detail in Part One. There are Colin and Alex, his long-term friends, and then the noticeably brilliant Adrian Finn who manages to add himself to the trio. A quartet only briefly, each guy goes off to a different college and mostly lose touch, except that an old girlfriend of Tony's provides a link of sorts. Tony zooms through his middle age and we arrive at his retirement. This is where Part Two starts.

Tony the narrator reflects on his relationships in this section and how memory can be faulty. Evidence surfaces which takes Tony and the reader completely by surprise. This evidence makes a start at understanding why people have acted as they have, but as soon as the reader believes they've figured things out, more surprising details surface to shed new light on why people are how they are, and in one case why a person is at all. Oh, the novel is thick with surprises alright, and so many have to do with the slipperiness of memory.

I heard about this book at a memorial service. It was one of the last books the deceased English professor had read with his elderly eulogist. They loved the book, and that was enough of a recommendation for me. I relished imagining them in the elderly gentleman's apartment discussing the thoughtful novel with their intellectual ideas and wry observations. I live for those kinds of conversations over literature, music, art, and film, and wished I had known that my late colleague was such a devout reader! I purchased my copy of The Sense of an Ending and read it soon after, reflecting on how appropriate, or perhaps ironic, the title is. It's the kind of book I'll pick up again, I'm sure, and in it find new surprises and treasure.