"The Sense of an Ending", Julian Barnes

Sometimes it is easy to wonder if every semi-literate person has already read what is commented on here.  Anyway, this book won the most recent "Man Booker Prize", the equivilant maybe of best book of the year by U.K. critics.  Barnes is well known to many as part of a cadre of writers around his age, Amis, Hitchens, others, who have dominated U.K. fiction and essay writing for a couple of decades. 

In my 'umble opinion, his short stories are lame but some of his full novels are rare.  His lengthy essays, most notably "Nothing to be Frightened of" are at times so insightful as to never be forgotten, at times so well written as to be obtuse.

"The Sense of an Ending" has a first half that is an everyman story of growing up being born in the late 1940's and all that followed.  It is beautifully written, and his observations could be converted to those of almost any alert individual of that era.  One wonders how autographical this novel may be, reminding one of Michael Ondaatje's 2011 "The Cat's Table" which was a novel but much more than a little bit of first hand experience.

The second half of the book moves into the title subject and is a combination of thought provoking observations, underline that, but ultimately unsatisfying resolutions.  While as a novel the ending works, and surprises, as a personal statement it is not so uplifting.  It's just straight talk, that some don't accept.  Maybe futile, but my grandmother who died 30 years ago would quote Dylan Thomas and say "Do not go gentle into that good night..."   

Not a book reviewer here, that is more than I usually write.  "The Sense of an Ending" is a brief book, compelling here, with certain groups of pages that are scintillatingly and brilliantly insightful, others mundane.  Where does one find today books that have uneven "brilliantly insightful" portions to serve.  I'll take them any day.