The Sense of an Ending

Narrator Richard Morant portrays protagonist Tony Webster with grace and verve. A British man of a certain age, Tony reflects candidly on his youth and uses recollections of friends and lovers lost to examine his own progress as an individual. Morant's crisp, efficient accent emphasizes Tony's reserve, his natural tendency to keep things orderly and appropriate. While relatively brief, this audiobook is immediately engaging and feels like a complete, albeit concise, examination of a life lived somewhat at arm's length. Tony watches people come and go in his life, loving them without necessarily connecting with them, and the listener can't help but empathize with this likable, circumspect hero as he traces his life's journey. L.B.F. 2011 Man Booker Prize Winner (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Starred review from October 31, 2011
In Barnes's (Flaubert's Parrot) latest, winner of the 2011 Man-Booker Prize, protagonist Tony Webster has lived an average life with an unremarkable career, a quiet divorce, and a calm middle age. Now in his mid-60s, his retirement is thrown into confusion when he's bequeathed a journal that belonged to his brilliant school-friend, Adrian, who committed suicide 40 years earlier at age 22. Though he thought he understood the events of his youth, he's forced to radically revise what he thought he knew about Adrian, his bitter parting with his mysterious first lover Veronica, and reflect on how he let life pass him by safely and predictably. Barnes's spare and luminous prose splendidly evokes the sense of a life whose meaning (or meaninglessness) is inevitably defined by "the sense of an ending" which only death provides. Despite its focus on the blindness of youth and the passage of time, Barnes's book is entirely unpretentious. From the haunting images of its first pages to the surprising and wrenching finale, the novel carries readers with sensitivity and wisdom through the agony of lost time.

May 1, 2012

When we look back on our lives, what do we remember from our experiences? Tony's story starts and finishes with his school chums, one of whom commits suicide during his college years, and his first girlfriend. When he is contacted by someone from 40 years in his past, he must reexamine events, memories, causes, and results. The pacing is steady and the insights poignant, although the ending is a bit contrived. Narrator Richard Morant moves smoothly between the awkward, loud voice of an English schoolboy, the all-knowing college student, and the resigned elder. VERDICT Barnes's 14th book and winner of the Man Booker Prize, this short novel will best appeal to readers of introspective literature. [The Knopf hc, published in October, was a New York Times best seller.--Ed.]--J. Sara Paulk, Wythe-Grayson Regional Lib., Independence, VA

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