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| Author: Julian Barnes |
EARN 32 SUPER POINTS!
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| Format: | Hardcover Large Print |
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Product Summary
Format: Hardcover Large Print
Publisher: Center Point Pub
ISBN-10: 1611733251
ISBN-13: 9781611733259
Buy.com Sku: 227159743
Publish Date: 1/1/2012
Dimensions:
(in Inches) 8.75H x 5.75L x 1T
Pages:
191
See more in Psychological
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From the Publisher:
Follows a middle-aged man as he reflects on a past he thought was behind him, until he is presented with a legacy that forces him to reconsider different decisions, and to revise his place in the world. |
Annotation:
Julian Barnes had previously been finalist for the Man Booker Prize three times: for ARTHUR AND GEORGE; ENGLAND, ENGLAND; and FLAUBERT'S PARROT. With this thin yet powerfully insightful novel, he finally achieves the prestigious recognition. The title, A SENSE OF AN ENDING, evokes the imprecision that is at the heart of Barnes's book--the imprecise yet life-shaping power of memory. Told with contrastingly exquisite and exacting language, Barnes's story follows Tony Webster's reflection and gradual reconstruction of a time in his late childhood that shaped the rest of his life. Now retired, Tony looks back on his high school days, particularly on his friendship with Adrian Finn--a boy Tony and all his friends admired--and on a fateful weekend involving Tony, Adrian, and a young woman named Veronica. The unexpected arrival of a solicitor's letter brings jarring news about Veronica that ignites Tony's efforts to unpack his carefully calibrated memories. Regret over missed opportunities and reassessments of long-held assumptions imbue A SENSE OF AN ENDING with resonant meaning that will stay with readers for a long time after the final page.
Julian Barnes had previously been finalist for the Man Booker Prize three times: for ARTHUR AND GEORGE; ENGLAND, ENGLAND; and FLAUBERT'S PARROT. With this thin yet powerfully insightful novel, he finally achieves the prestigious recognition. The title, A SENSE OF AN ENDING, evokes the imprecision that is at the heart of Barnes's book--the imprecise yet life-shaping power of memory. Told with contrastingly exquisite and exacting language, Barnes's story follows Tony Webster's reflection and gradual reconstruction of a time in his late childhood that shaped the rest of his life. Now retired, Tony looks back on his high school days, particularly on his friendship with Adrian Finn--a boy Tony and all his friends admired--and on a fateful weekend involving Tony, Adrian, and a young woman named Veronica. The unexpected arrival of a solicitor's letter brings jarring news about Veronica that ignites Tony's efforts to unpack his carefully calibrated memories. Regret over missed opportunities and reassessments of long-held assumptions imbue A SENSE OF AN ENDING with resonant meaning that will stay with readers for a long time after the final page.
Author Bio
Julian Barnes
The son of two French teachers, Julian Barnes studied modern languages, including French and Russian, in preparatory school. Raised without religion, Barnes says he has never been inside a church. At Oxford, he briefly studied psychology and philosophy, then returned to French. Upon graduation, he took a job doing research for the new supplement to THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY (letters A-G), but became restless after three years and decided to study law, specializing in contracts. By the age of 30, however, he had quit the law to become a full-time book and television critic. Four years later, his first novel was published. Barnes has been the London correspondent for The New Yorker and, in addition--a little-known aspect of his career--he has written a series of crime novels published under the name Dan Kavanaugh. Many of Barnes's novels are subtly autobiographical, all are satirical, and some of them are at least partly about being English but having an attraction to France. He hates to repeat himself, and in fact, each of his books is vastly different from all the others.
"Like some of Mr. Barnes's earlier works of fiction THE SENSE OF AN ENDING...is dense with philosophical ideas and more clever than emotionally satisfying. Still, it manages to create genuine suspense as a sort of psychological detective story. We not only want to find out how Mr. Barnes's narrator, Tony Webster, has rewritten his own history--and discover what actually happened some 40 years ago--but also understand why he has needed to do so."
10/17/2011
"[E]legantly composed, quietly devastating tale about memory, aging, time and remorse."
- Heller McAlpin
10/13/2011
"[Barnes's] 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."
- Anita Brookner
07/25/2011
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