The Sense of an Ending

Editorial Reviews

"Deservedly longlisted for the Man Booker prize, this is a very fine book, skilfully plotted, boldly conceived, full of bleak insight into the questions of ageing and memory, and producing a very real kick - or peripatetic - at its end... Barnes has achieved, in this shortish account of a not very attractive man, something of universal importance" - Justin Cartwright, Observer

"A dexterously crafted narrative of unlooked-for consequences...polished phrasings, elegant verbal exactness and epigrammatic perceptions embellish his sombre story. Uncovering, link by link, and appalling chain reaction of briefly wished-for revenge, almost accidental damage, and remorse that agonisingly bites after most of a lifetime, it's a harsh tale rich in human resonances." - Sunday Times

"Cleverly, Barnes compresses a story with long temporal sweep into a scant 150 pages. (You can imagine a younger or a less confident author taking about three times as long to make the same points.) The cleverness resides not only in the way he has caught just how second-rate Webster's mind is without driving the reader to tears of boredom but in the way he has effectively doubled the length of the book by giving us a final revelation that obliges us to reread it. Without overstating his case in the slightest, Barnes's story is a meditation on the unreliability and falsity of memory; on not getting it the first time round - and possibly not even the second, either. Barnes's revelation is richly ambiguous." - Evening Standard

"Mesmerising... A slow burn, measured but suspenseful, this compact novel makes every slyly crafted sentence count... The concluding scenes grip like a thriller - a whodunit of memory and morality, and one which detonates a minor, private apocalypse" - Boyd Tonkin, Independent

"Compelling... Its effect is disturbing - all the more so for being written with Barnes's habitual lucidity. His reputation will surely be enhanced by this book. Do not be misled by its brevity. Its mystery is as deeply embedded as the most archaic of memories'" - Daily Telegraph

"This is drama from the pen of a master wordsmith...a wise book" - Bookmunch

"The main pleasures of reading The Sense of an Ending are the solid, traditional ones of story and character...the desire to know who did what" - Lidija Haas, Times Literary Supplement

"Adroit and unnerving and Barnes's keen intellect has rarely been so apparent" - Christian House, Independent on Sunday

"Its brevity, however, in no way compromises its intensity - every word has its part to play; with great but invisible skill Barnes squeezes into it not just a sense of the infinite complexity of the human heart but the damage the wrong permutations can cause when combined" - Michael Prodger, Financial Times

"It gives as much resonance to what is unknown and unspoken - lost to memory as it does to the engine of its own plot. Fiction, Barnes writes in Nothing to be frightened of, 'wants to tell all stories, in all their contrariness, contradiction and irresolvability'. The Sense of an Ending honours that impossible desire in a way that is novel, fertile and memorable." - Guardian