The Sense of An Ending

I've loved Julian Barnes since I randomly picked Love Etc. in Shakespeare and Company in Paris. I've always gotten hooked in his way of writing and drawn in his interesting plots. So, when my sister and I found The Sense of An Ending in a bookstore, we just had to grab it :)


The Sense of An Ending is basically centered on philosophies in life, about growing old, death, the past, and the future. It revolved on relationships --- beginning, peak, falling apart, closing stages. It presented the changes in perception as you experience more of life. Let me share with you some of Barnes' thoughts as stated in his novel.

"What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed."

"If you're that clever, you can argue yourself into anything. You just leave common sense behind."

"What you fail to do is look ahead, and then imagine yourself looking back from the future point. Learning the new emotions that time brings."

"When we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others."

"And if we're talking about strong feelings that will never come again, I suppose it's possible to be nostalgic about remembered pain as well as remembered pleasure."

"The more you learn, the less you fear."

"We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time..give us enough time and our best-supported decision would seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical."

"And the longer life goes on , the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but --- mainly --- to ourselves."

The Sense of An Ending made me stop, and think of how I see my life now and how I want to live it to have the future I dream about. Or at least the future I want to have with my present state. When the time comes, what would I answer to these questions posted by Tony Weber (the lead character) towards the end? Would I have the same assessment of my life?

"What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realized? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival?"

Or would I read this post and smile because I know I've lived fully? That by then I won't have regrets, just pure memories of how fulfilling I spent my years.

SPOILER ALERT: The ending is soooo unexpected and quite disturbing :p I had to read it thrice to be sure I got the point. Haha