Happy 2012! As usual, still have some unfinished book post business for 2011... but not too bad this year, only one more book (and a quite small one!) to go.
I have found the Booker Prize to be a good personal literary barometer (of course, there have been exceptions), but to be perfectly honest a big reason I read Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending was to get one more book under my belt before the end of the year (yes, I was sensing an ending... thank you very much, I'm here all week!). But while short, under 200 pages, this work certainly had the scope and feel like a much bigger novel, though detractors just may call it slow and meandering...
... and they would not be wrong. The older English gentleman who narrates this tale already knows -- or at least thinks he knows -- the secret from his past when the story begins, but Barnes takes his time to unravel it all. But beyond the plot, this central mystery, there is quite a bit of philosophizing about life, relationships, and a recurrent theme re: memory... of how we choose to tell the story of our own life and how we even view or own lives, both in an intentional and subconscious manner.
I have to admit, at first pass, I was not blown away by the "reveal" at the end. I did not quite predict it, but then again, in novels of this nature, I don't tend to waste a lot of mental effort on trying to figure things out for myself, just allowing and trusting the author to do so. But after turning the last page, I began wondering about the ending that was presented... all the puzzle pieces of what was told to the narrator... what he told us, including all that life philosophizing... and that's when I came to the realization that it was quite likely I still did not know the truth. One needs only to go back to the title to be given that clue that are not given an ending, but the sense of one. Hmmm...
The more I think about this novella, the higher the rating seems to be going. As I write this post, a few weeks removed from the book I admit I still find myself thinking about it. Again, not the really anything regarding the plot but just the nature of life and memories. As I have been doing quite a bit, I hedged and gave the book 4.5 stars, but rounded it down to 4 for Goodreads. While I thought it was exquisitely written and left me with all that pondering, I got thinking that maybe it crossed the line from being intricately constructed to out-right manipulative... but then again, that was likely the whole point! Regardless, still highly rated and a good way to end another year of reading (well, almost... one more book to go)!
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