The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

In their delightful spoof on history, 1066 and All That, Sellar and Yeatman state: "History is not what you thought.  It is what you can remember."  Perhaps we can say of Julian Barnes' latest book that personal history is not what you thought but is what you can remember.

Tony Webster is in his late sixties and is retired.  He spends his time recommending books to people in hospital who are sick or dying.  His life has been fairly sedate, having been married once and divorcing amicably.  Sedate, that is, until one day when he receives a letter from a solicitor; then his mental life is thrown into turmoil as something from his past rears its ugly head.  Tony has to confront his past, what he remembers of it and how others remember him.

The Sense of an Ending is divided into two parts.  In the first, Tony recounts a sliver of his life when he was a senior schoolboy and later a university student.  A good deal of it takes place in his history class where the teacher forces the boys to examine the nature of history.  In the second part, Tony narrates the course of his life after he receives the letter from the solicitor.  The tale is told in the first person by Tony, and we spend a lot of time looking at the world through his eyes as he remembers and evaluates his past, and as he tries to solve the mystery raised by the letter.

Barnes has given us a powerful novella about memory, the tales we tell ourselves to make life bearable and about males dealing with their feelings - in this case, a straight-laced Englishman.  In the short space of 150 pages, Barnes manages to create the inner-life of Tony Webster in the most convincing way.  The supporting characters are less well-drawn, and necessarily so, as they are catalysts, mirrors or sounding-boards for Tony's thoughts and emotions.  Old certainties are torn down only to be replaced, first, by bewilderment and then by a creeping sense of ... well, you'll have to read the book to find out what's creeping.