Chris

The Sense of an Ending

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Just finished Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending. It's quite short, under 200 pages; I read it in two days. A really heartbreaking and wonderful work. It prompted a whole lot of deep reflection in me about certain incidents in my life, and about the way in which we arrange and bring to bear our memories. Highly recommended.

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I've heard so much about Debt now that I feel I have to read it. But maybe I should get The Sense of an Ending first because of the cast!

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I've heard so much about Debt now that I feel I have to read it. But maybe I should get The Sense of an Ending first because of the cast!

I finished The Sense of an Ending in two sessions, and I think I read pretty slowly. I think that you could probably squeeze it in to your queue without a lot of disruption.

To echo what Chris said, the novel did stir a lot of self-reflection after I finished--more than any book in recent memory for me. I'm looking forward to first bookblast very much.

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Speaking of boobs books, I have ordered The Sense of an Ending and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Let the games begin! I'm actually really looking forward to reading both.

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I finished The Sense of an Ending and I have the feeling that I need to read it again. There seem to be a lot of complexities and I don't feel like I've grasped it at all.

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I finished The Sense of an Ending and I have the feeling that I need to read it again. There seem to be a lot of complexities and I don't feel like I've grasped it at all.

Yeah, I feel the same way (finished it on Wednesday). Glad I picked it up when I saw it at the university bookstore picking up other stuff. Heck of a book.

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So... I didn't really like this book.

The first part was reminiscent of Albert Camus' "The Stranger," with the narrator just sort-of-objectively relating things that he remembers, while making damn sure that the reader knows this is only his memory, and how faulty the human memory is.

The second part is mostly him dealing with someone who is so combative and abrasive that I don't understand why he didn't just stop, forget everything, and get on with his life.

I didn't find either part to be particularly interesting or engaging, and if the book hadn't been so short, I probably wouldn't have finished it at all.

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I liked it but I read a book very similar to this a while back. I can't remember the name (it might have had the word 'Sea' in the title). It was about a very old man retelling a story from his childhood while also dealing with getting old and returning to the place where the story of his youth took place. The same theme of things getting half-forgotten and then having others corroborating certain things while completely debunking others is in it.

Fuck, the novel I wrote has themes along the lines of a character wrapping himself up in the story that he wants to believe while contradicting himself constantly - but I am not published so I don't count.

Anyways I clearly enjoyed the book as I lapped it up in the space of an afternoon and it was a proper page turner as it is a topic I am interested in. Look forward to the book cast.

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I liked it but I read a book very similar to this a while back. I can't remember the name (it might have had the word 'Sea' in the title). It was about a very old man retelling a story from his childhood while also dealing with getting old and returning to the place where the story of his youth took place. The same theme of things getting half-forgotten and then having others corroborating certain things while completely debunking others is in it.

Fuck, the novel I wrote has themes along the lines of a character wrapping himself up in the story that he wants to believe while contradicting himself constantly - but I am not published so I don't count.

Anyways I clearly enjoyed the book as I lapped it up in the space of an afternoon and it was a proper page turner as it is a topic I am interested in. Look forward to the book cast.

The novel you're talking about might be Iris Murdoch's 'The Sea, The Sea' - in which a somewhat embittered and exasperated theatre director retires to an inlet cottage by the sea - near the costal town of his childhood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sea,_the_Sea

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I posted this in the pre-podcast thread but this one seems more active. ¬¬

Just finished it yesterday, in audiobook form. Since I was working at the time I didn't bother to get up and turn off the device before it looped, so I listened to the whole first chapter again -- it is SO full of foreshadowing! Almost every single thing they say or speculate about turns out to be important later.

The conclusion that for a family to be happy there must be no family (Tony's family, fragmented as it is, is pretty happy), the speculation that Adrian's mother might've had a young lover, the other kid's suicide being due to a pregnancy he couldn't handle or just marry into, the way Adrian's suicide note turns out to just be there for his friends' sake so they won't think him as base as that other kid, and of course everything they say about history although those are obvious throughout the book.

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Oh, interesting, I should reread the first chapter.

It's a little annoying the discussion about this book might be held in both this topic and the one about the bookcast, and in either case I'm not sure what to do. I posted a long blurb in the other topic, but got a little shock when I saw nobody else there had, so I think I might have been premature and ruined the whole thing.

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The novel you're talking about might be Iris Murdoch's 'The Sea, The Sea' - in which a somewhat embittered and exasperated theatre director retires to an inlet cottage by the sea - near the costal town of his childhood.

Alternately, (though perhaps less likely based on the description), the book could have been John Banville's The Sea, in which an older man, having recently lost his wife, returns to the seaside town of his youth.

It contains this wonderful little passage (which posting here is partly just an excuse to quote):

"Before Anna’s illness, I had held my physical self in no more than fond disgust, as most people do—hold their selves, I mean, not mine—tolerant, necessarily, of the products of my sadly inescapable humanity, the various effluvia, the eructations for and aft, the gleet, the scurff, the sweat and other common leakages, and even what the Bard of Hartford quaintly calls the particles of nether-do."

One's never quote sure whether Banville either has double the working vocabulary of any other human being or if he's making most of the words up. I suspect it's a bit of both.

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Just finished my previous book and started reading Sense of an Ending last night, excited for the book cast!

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Finished this book a few days ago, and I really liked it, more so after letting it settle in my brain for a while. I may reread it to see if I can pick out any more subtleties I missed.

The only weakness, to me, was the climax. It didn't see how learning that

Adrian slept with Victoria's mother

added anything to the story. We already knew that Tony misremembered his own past and didn't have all the information about Adrian's or Victoria's. The reveal at the end didn't do anything to develop those ideas because they had been firmly established at that point already. It felt like, for a moment, the story turned into a soap opera. It didn't really detract from the rest of the story, but I didn't see how it contributed to it.

Maybe my opinion will change after I read it again. Overall that's a very minor complaint anyway.

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I was definitely happy to have read this book (finished it last week). I had to continually put it down and ponder my own life. I definitely have relationships that didn't work out the way I thought they would, and now I occasionally find myself pondering over what happened. Should I contact the other person and find out if they remember such and such event and what it meant for them? Can I build that broken relationship back up? Did I say something wrong? Have I misremembered all that happened?

This book really got me thinking about how I think, and I will always respect any form of media that makes me introspective.

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So, finally read this, in anticipation of the eventual inaugural Idle Books... um... Thumbed Pages... anyway.

I'm glad I read the book... it's so brief of course it would be difficult to be frustrated by reading it.. more than that, I did enjoy it. The writing is at times really very nice indeed and it reminded me a lot of incidents in my own life, or at least how I chose to remember them. In constructing a fascinating discussion about memory and how it works and what we can do to affect that and we choose to do to affect that... I liked it very much.

As a story, as a piece of literature, I went through a journey. At first, I found the book off-putting and far too impressed with itself. The end of Part 1 and beginning of Part 2 really entertained me and I was extremely happy reading the book. The last few pages flew by only because I wanted it to end. I had lost patience with it really. The protagonist is unlikeable, a rather unpleasant person. In this respect Barnes did a great job in creating a fully fledged character, but I didn't like him and I didn't like what he was apparently supposed to represent. By the end of the novel, I was back to feeling like the prose was far too impressed with itself.

That definitely lessened the impact of the book as a whole. It's weird... I feel like I went through my own crisis many years ago, learned how to deal with it and got on with my life. I understand that Barnes is saying that this is exactly the kind of artificial process that we all go through, and that we all tell ourselves that we've gone through it, but Tony doesn't get to complain about modern football being morally bankrupt and the world changing and then whine about how things haven't turned out for him the way he expected or thought.

I had kind of guessed at how the book would end early on, and I like the way that the book generally chooses to leave things unresolved. It shows respect for the reader and fits in exactly with what the book is trying to do thematically. Ultimately, though, it left me feeling a little cold.

Anyway, an enjoyable experience. If pushed, I'd probably say I wasn't the biggest fan of the book... if pushed. Thing is, you don't have to be over the moon in love with a piece of literature to have enjoyed the experience, and I did. I'm looking forward to the podcast.

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I read this a few weeks ago, having read a few of the authors previous works over years. I can see why this suitably myopic unreliably narrated mood piece did well at the awards, I ultimately found myself reminded of stronger and more subtle works throughout. The books reliance on a telegraphed twist felt like a contrived peepshow act.

Genteel reflections on the pain of returning were, to my mind, much better explored in Kazuo ishiguro's works. His "an artist of the floating world" Is a work I could not recommend more.

As talented a writer as Barnes can be, I thought this effort traded on off the shelf sentimentality and torque teased plot contrivances at an inflated price.

In conclusion. 78 out of 100.

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So, cut through this book in a couple of days; I enjoyed it, for the most part, as it made me reflect on things I have done or said in the past, and how it was perceived by others and myself at that time, and how it is now perceived (looking back) by me at this moment. As I'm at an age in my life where I lack some subjective components to bring the table to really connect with this book on a fully introspective level, I don't know how exactly I feel about it just yet. But that's the thing: I think with time and further re-reads, this book will yield higher fruits of significance for me and make me think more about how I act on decisions in the future.

Overall, a great pick for the first official discussion.

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I read this a few weeks ago, having read a few of the authors previous works over years. I can see why this suitably myopic unreliably narrated mood piece did well at the awards, I ultimately found myself reminded of stronger and more subtle works throughout. The books reliance on a telegraphed twist felt like a contrived peepshow act.

Genteel reflections on the pain of returning were, to my mind, much better explored in Kazuo ishiguro's works. His "an artist of the floating world" Is a work I could not recommend more.

As talented a writer as Barnes can be, I thought this effort traded on off the shelf sentimentality and torque teased plot contrivances at an inflated price.

In conclusion. 78 out of 100.

Which other work by Barnes do you recommend? I liked his prose and the technicalities of his writing, but did not enjoy the actual plot or story as much as I wanted to in The Sense of an Ending. I'm interested in reading more of his stuff.

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Which other work by Barnes do you recommend? I liked his prose and the technicalities of his writing, but did not enjoy the actual plot or story as much as I wanted to in The Sense of an Ending. I'm interested in reading more of his stuff.

Flaubert's Parrot, England, England, and his stuff as Dan Kavanagh.

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"Apocalyptic wanking."

I liked the book. His use of language was quite charming. One thing that stuck out to me was how quickly we moved from him being a young kid to an old man. I've experienced this in my life and i'm only thirty, next thing i know i'll look up and i'll be 60 too. His relationship with Veronica reminded me of several relationships I've had, getting to see somebody else suffer was oddly enjoyable lol.

One concept I enjoyed was the thought that as you get old you have less and less people to corroborate your memories. So often i forget fun experiences with friends I've had that i only remember if I am reminded by a friend. As I get older this will certainly get worse and that's a bit of an existential crisis I guess. I've always wanted to be the type that journals. It will never happen but i got to thinking about how social media is filling that role for me. But kind of like memory I only post the things that I believe make me look good, cool, or clever.

at any rate I really liked this book a lot, it came at an appropriate time in my life and look forward to reading it again when I am older.

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Alternately, (though perhaps less likely based on the description), the book could have been John Banville's The Sea, in which an older man, having recently lost his wife, returns to the seaside town of his youth.

It contains this wonderful little passage (which posting here is partly just an excuse to quote):

"Before Anna’s illness, I had held my physical self in no more than fond disgust, as most people do—hold their selves, I mean, not mine—tolerant, necessarily, of the products of my sadly inescapable humanity, the various effluvia, the eructations for and aft, the gleet, the scurff, the sweat and other common leakages, and even what the Bard of Hartford quaintly calls the particles of nether-do."

One's never quote sure whether Banville either has double the working vocabulary of any other human being or if he's making most of the words up. I suspect it's a bit of both.

That is the one, it is a pretty good book from what I remember (badum-tish).

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Bummed I didn't get a chance to get involved in the discussion of this one for the cast (moving house so internet issues), hope to contribute next month.

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