The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending: The classic Booker Prize-winning novel

Fiction & Poetry, Modern & Contemporary Fiction
Paperback Published on: 01/03/2012
£9.99
27 reviews
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Bookseller Reviews

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The Sense of an Ending
Worth a read
As mentioned by others, I am normally wary of reading books which have been nominated for, or won prizes, as I expect them to be pretentious, or overtly co... READ MORE
Joanna B
The Sense of an Ending
Flawless
If I may be completely honest with you, I will tell you a secret. I am always a little wary of novels and writers that are supposedly literary geniuses. I ... READ MORE
Xavier Jones Barlow
The Sense of an Ending
A thought provoking read..
A beautiful and concise exploration of memory and the power of hindsight, whose ending is reason enough to read the whole novella. On paper the plot is mun... READ MORE
Ellie at Guildford

Synopsis

Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit.

Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life.

Now Tony is retired. He's had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He's certainly never tried to hurt anybody.

Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer's letter is about to prove.

It’s an unusual author who can claim to have written a highly praised novel of literary merit partly narrated by a woodworm but Julian Barnes’s diverse output is anything but conventional.

His novels range from his debut, the linear coming-of-age story Metroland, to more experimental novels including his breakthrough success Flaubert’s Parrot, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, the three-person love triangle explored in Talking it Over and Love Etc. and more recent meditations on temporality: The Sense of an Ending (for which he won the 2011 Booker Prize) and The Noise of Time.

His fabulous new novel, The Only Story, is out now.

  • Publisher: Vintage Publishing
  • ISBN: 9780099564973
  • Number of pages: 160
  • Weight: 140g
  • Dimensions: 196 x 128 x 16 mm

Customer Reviews

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The Sense of an Ending
Good little read
I enjoyed this book. It's shorter than I expected, easily readable in a few days. It really makes you consider how in time, memories fade and become how yo... READ MORE
Marie84
The Sense of an Ending
Memory reality and mortality
Like Ian McEwan, Barnes writes convincingly about the male psyche and its evolution from youth to maturity. Indeed much of the early part of this accomplis... READ MORE
Tim Dumble
The Sense of an Ending
Poignant questions
I found this book very powerful. I loved the protagonists' interpretation and recall of events. The characters were very real and the questions posed were ... READ MORE
Pipkin
The Sense of an Ending
Beautifully written, but not a strong plot
Tony first meets Adrian at school, and he joins their little clique, where they form a friendship that they pledge will last for the rest of their lives. A... READ MORE
Half Man Half Book
The Sense of an Ending
Quality, not quantity!
Wow! What an amazing little book! I'd only ever read one of Barnes' other offerings- 'Arthur & George'- and so expected to be entertained, but this blew me... READ MORE
D J Smith
The Sense of an Ending
Disappointing
Laborious to read especially after the first ten pages. True to life (in the USA) so doesn't translate entirely to the UK. Believable but booring! I read i... READ MORE
Wilkie
The Sense of an Ending
It's very short - just read it!
There isn't much of a plot to this deceptively short and simple book, but I don't think that's important - what's interesting is the way that the protagoni... READ MORE
kendrafortune
The Sense of an Ending
Disappointed
I picked this book because I wanted to know why it was so much talked about and maybe my expectations were so high that I was bound to be disappointed. The... READ MORE
Amandine
The Sense of an Ending
Good plot...
A very engaging book...however, I feel that Barnes is repetitive when going on about obtaining the main characters' inheritance...but this is not frequent ... READ MORE
Abby89
The Sense of an Ending
T for Traumatizing
Brilliantly written. A reread type. You'll be left traumatized
Saba Aftab
The Sense of an Ending
The Sense of an Ending
Bernadett Vincze
The Sense of an Ending
I loved this book
I'd been wanting to read this book for a while and it didn't dissapoint me. I was hooked and read it very quickly, I now feel like going back and reading ... READ MORE
Sharon Dymond
The Sense of an Ending
The Sense of an Ending has a poor ending
Rather sententious and preachy. And to pardon a pun, the frisson of the twist at the end left me cold.
David Moffatt