The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

It wasn't an illusion. This book was short yet it was one of the sweetest and the saddest ones I've read. For me, it was the style that truly moved me. Certain words and the tone that was used. The narrative looked through what I was feeling and it directly confirmed what I was thinking; I hope you are following me.

Adolescence

Friends

Girls

Sex

Intellect

Books

Age

Lost

Life

Suicides

Reflection

Clique

Peers

Influences

Go over all of this in detail with Tony Webster, the protagonist. I had to use the dictionary several times to get through the book, and that means that Barnes's diction is pretty old-fashioned and specific.



Here are some excerpts from the book worth typing out (according to me anyways, haha):

pg 10 -- Yes, of course we were pretentious – what else is youth for? We used terms like ‘Weltanschuung’ and ‘Sturm und Drang’, enjoyed saying ‘That’s philosophically self-evident’, and assured one another that the imagination’s first duty was to be transgressive. Our parents saw things differently, picturing their children as innocents suddenly exposed to noxious influence. So Colin’s mother referred to me as his ‘dark angel’; my father blamed Alex when he found me reading The Communist Manifesto; Colin was fingered by Alex’s parents when they caught him with a hard-boiled American crime novel. And so on. It was the same with sex. Our parents thought we might be corrupted by one another into becoming whatever it was they most feared: an incorrigible masturbator, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnatory libertine. On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent friendship, the predatory behavior of strangers on trains, the lure of the wrong kind of girl. How far their anxieties outran our experience.

Pg 103 – Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that’s something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we’re just stuck with what we’ve got. We’re on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn’t it? And also – if this isn’t too grand a word – our tragedy.


  Big thanks and love to Kathy who lent me the book!  

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