Thought provoking, beautifully observed with just enough mystery to keep you turning the pages to find out what happened. Tony has his memories but without evidence or corroboration, how sure can he be? Do the lessons learnt in the History classroom apply to the individual? What starts off in the manner of Alan Bennett's 'History Boys' soon turns into a darker mystery as Tony is forced to face up to the actions of his younger self. It's a book about history and how we recall events. And that would have been that, except that many years later a mysterious letter opens up the past causing Tony to reconsider the actions of his youth.
However the friendship falls apart after the friends leave to go to university and Adrian enters into a relationship with Tony's ex-girlfriend. He's unexceptional and his subsequent life has been so conventional as to border on the dull, unlike the catalyst for the story Adrian Finn who is intellectually gifted and a natural philosopher of the human condition. And this being Barnes, this school clique is intellectual in interest, as the narrator recalls English and History teachers and student philosophising. Barnes has long been a terrific observer of the English middle classes and his style invariably contains satire and dry humour. It starts off describing the relationships between four friends at school, narrated by one of the friends, Tony Webster, but quickly it becomes clear that this is written many years later. 'The Sense of an Ending' is almost more of a novella - it's a slim volume but exquisitely written, as you might expect from Julian Barnes. Full of delicious observation and insight. A retired, (and somewhat dull), man is forced to recall events soon after leaving school by an unexpected letter. Summary: This short book is almost perfectly formed.
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