Cbr16bingo Free Spot (sub for Rings square), +3 bingos
The Sense of an Ending is a 2011 novel that won the Booker Prize. It is short but manages to delve into deep themes regarding memory, history and remorse through a story with a surprising finish. Told in two parts by the same narrator, Tony Webster, the reader must constantly question Tony’s memory and reliability, as he himself does.
Part 1 of the novel finds Tony as a teenager in the 1960s with his friends in school preparing for university. He and his two friends add another, new student to their group — Adrian. Adrian is a quiet, reserved fellow and highly intelligent. Upon graduation, the four friends go in different directions, but keep in touch. Tony, while at university, gets a girlfriend named Veronica and spends an awkward weekend with her family. The relationship becomes strained, with Tony feeling that Veronica is too cool and distant. He breaks up with her, but later when Adrian writes to more or less ask for permission to date Veronica himself, Tony finds himself annoyed with both and writes a letter reflective of this. Not long after, when they have graduated university, Tony learns that Adrian committed suicide, leaving a note that provides his philosophical reasons for choosing to end his life. Tony, as when they were young, finds himself impressed with Adrian’s intelligence and courage.
Part 2 occurs when Tony is now in his 60s, divorced but still friendly with his ex-wife Margaret, and on good terms with his daughter and grandchildren. Unexpectedly, Tony gets notice that Veronica’s mother has died and left him a small amount of money and some documents. One of those documents, a diary that Adrian had kept, is currently in Veronica’s possession and she is not inclined to give it up. This leads Tony to reach out to Veronica, stirring up past feelings and revealing that something has happened that Tony clearly does not understand. It is not until the past pages of the novel that the truth comes out.
I was completely drawn in to this story and found myself constantly questioning Tony’s reliability as narrator. On one hand, he knows that histories are never the full story and frequently do not tell the real truth, and that this is as true for “big” history like the Roman Empire as it is for personal history. Tony strives to be objective, analytical and self-critical when he looks back decades to try to remember his teenaged and university days. Yet, we know from Veronica that Tony has “never gotten it”; he has never understood something extremely vital, and Veronica is not about to reveal whatever that is. We, the readers, will only know it when Tony does. In the end, I found Tony’s journey to the truth (and remorse) — about Adrian, about himself — to feel very real, very human, true to life.