Chefs don't have time to write. While I was working on Smoke and Pickles, I was running a restaurant — a daily regimen of testing recipes,...
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hthayer, February 10, 2013 (view all comments by hthayer)
Self-absorbed, pompous, pretentious twaddle. Just because words sound impressive and seem inscrutable doesn't make it great literature if the words, once examined, don't actually MEAN anything. Nothing about the story, the characters or the writing will make up for the 3 hours of my life lost to this ponderous exercise in public self-gratification. The only way that I can possibly forgive the author is if I were to discover that he was having us on and wanted to figure out if people would actually buy meaningless nonsense if it were dressed up in enough impressive-sounding words.
Emily Craddick, January 30, 2013 (view all comments by Emily Craddick)
No book has ever made me reflect on myself more than this book. I questioned my memory, my aging process, my parents aging process, the way others see me, etc.. It affected my greatly.
LO book lover, January 2, 2013 (view all comments by LO book lover)
I loved how elegant the prose is and how deceptively simple he makes it seem to write this way. A book that keeps me thinking about it far past when I read it is my standard for a wonderful book. I'm still thinking about it.
Julian Barnes won the Man Booker Prize for this lyrical little tome, and, in spite of the controversy surrounding the prize and the 2011 shortlist, I believe he deserved the award. It's the kind of book that one races through, stopping every now and then to relish a particularly elegant turn of phrase.
by Sheila N.
"Staff Pick"
by Dianah,
A reflection on time, aging, memory, and remorse, The Sense of an Ending packs a giant sentimental (but not schmaltzy) punch. Beginning in an English boarding school (I am such a sucker for boarding school stories!), the book follows Tony Webster through school, college, relationships, marriage, work, and middle age. Tony is completely unaware of his part in a tangled relationship between himself, his ex-girlfriend, and his best friend. Decades later, Tony receives a letter from a lawyer indicating that he has inherited his best friend's diary, yet his ex-girlfriend won't give it up. Trying to somehow comprehend the relationships, his part, the results, and the nature of this mess, Tony begins to question not only his own past but his memories of that time as well. The 2011 Man Booker prizewinner, The Sense of an Ending is quiet, clever, and lovely.
by Dianah
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"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." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
"Review"
by The New Yorker,
"Elegant, playful, and remarkable."
"Review"
by San Francisco Chronicle,
"A page-turner, and when you finish you will return immediately to the beginning."
"Review"
by Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times,
"Dense with philosophical ideas....It manages to create genuine suspense as a sort of psychological detective story."
"Review"
by The Los Angeles Times,
"[A] jewel of conciseness and precision....The Sense of an Ending packs into so few pages so much that the reader finishes it with a sense of satisfaction more often derived from novels several times its length."
"Review"
by New York Journal of Books,
"Concisely written and yet rich and full of emotional depth....It's highly original as well. And complicated, just like life."
"Review"
by The Wall Street Journal,
"Ominous and disturbing....This outwardly tidy and conventional story is one of Barnes's most indelible [and] looms oppressively in our minds."
"Review"
by The Washington Post,
"With his characteristic grace and skill, Barnes manages to turn this cat-and-mouse game into something genuinely suspenseful."
"Synopsis"
by Random,
A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning new chapter in Julian Barnes's oeuvre.
This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, as he contends with a past he never thought much about — until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony thought he left this all behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.
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