The Sense of an Ending (2011) (edit title/settings)

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Veronica Mary Elizabeth Ford: Tony's first girlfriend. Her brother is Jack. Daughter of Sarah.
• Adrian Finn: Rational and clear headed school friend of Tony's. Adrian had read Camus and Nietzsche. He quotes Lagrange when he tells Joe Hill that "History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." Wins Cambridge scholarship.
• Margaret: Tony's ex-wife.
• Mr. Anthony Webster: The narrator. When Tony talks about choice of philosopher he observes that he had read George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. "read" history at Bristol. Rather than taking charge of his life, he allows it to drift along to him.
• Alex: School friend of Tony's. Alex had read Russell and Wittgenstein. Goes into his father's business after school.
• Colin: part of the group of 4 friends who went to secondary school together; went to Sussex
• Mr John Ford: Father of Veronica Ford.
• Mrs Sarah Ford: Mother of Veronica and Jack. Leaves money and two documents to Tony Webster, her daughter's teen boyfriend. And oh so much more, hinted at and then explained, but she is only fleshed out in our imaginations. Her story would have made a nice addition and maybe filled this book out to enough to win the booker (250-300 pgs), not sure if JB just didnt see it that way or tried and realized he didnt "know" her well enough to keep the quality of the rest of the book if he wrote about her.
• Old Joe Hunt: History teacher. He asks challenging questions, such as "who might offer a characterisation of the age (of Henry VIII)", "debate the origins of the First World War". He is 5 years from retirement.
• Brown: Brown is of the Maths Sixth, and is a spreader of rumours.
• Annie: Tony met Annie while travelling in America.
• Susie: Tony and Margaret's daughter
• Robson: Add a description of this character.
• Tony Webster
• Mrs Eleanor Marriott: The solicitor executing Sarah Ford's will.
• Tony Webster: The narrator of the story and a part of a quartet of close friends
• Alex. ' Adrian: The most intelligent and precocious of the quartet of friends and a man of deep and profound thoughts and deeds
• Mr Gunnell: Webster's lawyer. minor voice of reason.
• Jack: Veronica's older brother
• Mary: Veronica's second name
• Miss Veronica Ford: A woman of importance to both Adrian and Tony Webster
• Tony W.: The main character. It's his memories of an event which are challenged
• Alex. And
• Veronica
• Marshall
• Caroline
• Ken

Quotes edit see section history

• “We live in time-it holds us and moulds us- but I've never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing- until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.”

• “Perhaps I feel just safer with the history that has been more or less agreed upon”

  Anthony Webster

• “Well, in one sense, I can’t know what is that I don’t know. That’s philosophically self evident”

  Adrian Finn

• “An enigma is a puzzle you want to solve. I didn’t even want to solve Veronica”

  Anthony Webster

• “If I can’t be sure of the actual events any more, I can at least be sure of the impressions those facts left. That’s the best I can manage”

  Anthony Webster

• “You still don’t get it. You never did it and you never will”

  Veronica Ford

• “I am peacable”

  Anthony Webster

• “Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.”

  Anthony Webster

• “"Every day is Sunday" punk song and also what Tony finds to be an apt description for much of life.”

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• “ ‘History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.’ ”

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• “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”

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• Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

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• History isn’t the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.

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• But time … how time first grounds us and then confounds us. 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 decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

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• It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.

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• And then there is the question, on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it, and how this affects our dealings with others. Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.

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• How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? 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.

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• Some Englishman once said that marriage is a long dull meal with the pudding served first.

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• Perhaps I just feel safer with the history that’s been more or less agreed upon. Or perhaps it’s that same paradox again: the history that happens underneath our noses ought to be the clearest, and yet it’s the most deliquescent.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• London
• Cambridge
• Chislehurst
• Wobbly Bridge
• Bristol
• Oxford Street
• Minsterworth
• America

Organizations edit see section history

• Friends Reunited: An early social networking website that enabled users to rediscover colleagues from school and work with whom they had lost touch.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Memory: Most of the book is about how we remember the past. How deliberate we are in manipulating moment's in our heads, and how time can change perspective. It's perceptively handled, right from the first sentence.
• History: History and it's relationship to memory, serves as a gateway to the narrative of the book. Time is explored frequently.
• Friendship: This book is about friendship and how we assume things about others. We assume they are smarter then us, richer, and cooler then we are.
• Suicide: The taking of one's own life; a sign of mental illness or a person's right to choose to live or die.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Julian Barnes (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Man Booker Prize (October 2011)
• Costa Book Award (Finalist, 2011: Novel, Shortlist)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PR6052.A6657S46 2012
• Dewey: 813

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Add a note to help parents select a book for a child.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Essays

More Books Like This edit see section history