Julian Barnes

the-sense-of-an-ending

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more

source_10558

By signing up, I confirm that I'm over 16. To find out what personal data we collect and how we use it, please visit our <a href="/company/about-us/notices/privacy-policy/">Privacy Policy</a>

Keep an eye out for a confirmation in your inbox

Stories, ideas and giveaways to help you spark young imaginations

source_10972

The latest books, activities and tips to help you grow little readers

source_10975

About us

About Us (Header 4)

john-le-carre-a-legacy-of-spies-960-2.jpg

Margaret Atwood

Richard Osman

Malorie Blackman

George Orwell

marian_keyes_mobile_320x200px.png

Elif Shafak

shonfaye

Authors (Header 3)

Books (Header 2)

Company

Features (Header 1)

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Selected Short Stories

A Vision of the World

From the Booker Prize-winning author of THE SENSE OF AN ENDING

Elizabeth Finch

The Man in the Red Coat

Essays on Art (Updated Edition)

Keeping an Eye Open

The Pedant in the Kitchen

Parade's End

The Only Story

In the Land of Pain

Vintage Minis

Death

The Noise of Time

Before She Met Me

Staring at the Sun

The Porcupine

The Lemon Table

Levels of Life

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

Metroland

Cross Channel

Love, Etc

Talking It Over

The Sense of an Ending

It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide

A masterpiece... I would urge you to read - and re-read - The Sense of an Ending

Mesmerising... the concluding scenes grip like a thriller - a whodunit of memory and morality

A very fine book, skilfully plotted, boldly conceived... Barnes has achieved...something of universal importance

A precise, poignant portrait of the costs and benefits of time passing, of friendship, of love. A small masterpiece

A wonderful story that is all too human and all so real

An extremely moving, a precise book about the imprecision of memory and how it constructs people, stories and histories.

From the moment that we hear from the woodworm which snuck aboard Noah’s ark to the final pages of the novel, Barnes interrogates moral dilemmas and motivations. These tales could easily be read is isolation, but are much better when consumed as a whole.

A dexterously crafted narrative...quivering not just with tension but with psychological, emotional and moral reverberation...overlaid with witty portrayal of the contemporary London scene and spot-on period evocation in harkings back to the class and sexual mores of the early 1960s... Uncovering, link by link, an 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 humane resonances

Like Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, which it resembles...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

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... It subverts not only the conventions of the where-are-the-snows-of-yesteryear fiction...but also the redeemed-lonely-old-man novel...and also the very notion that towards the end of our lives we see things more clearly

Barnes is a cerebral novelist exploring sophisticated ideas...ancient philosophical questions, resonating through centuries of great literature. Barnes picks them up and spins them with suavity and wit that sparkles on the surface of deep and troubling thought... What is so impressive in Barnes's fiction is his ability to evoke the chaos and vulnerability that beleaguer human life, while remaining calm and lucid in the face of both. He seems a modern-day Stoic

Its brevity...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. It is perhaps his greatest achievement that, in his hands, the unknowable does not mean the implausible

Barnes, as ever, writes very well. Yet for all the style and irony, it is the depth of powerful feeling, the emotional intelligence, the taste of remorse that brings it so close to the best of John Updike... Julian Barnes may well have written his best novel, he has certainly told a wonderful story that is all too human and all so real

Adroit and unnerving and Barnes's keen intellect has rarely been so apparent

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

A fascinating sketch of an unglamorous and rarely-mined vein of middle-class life

His best attempt yet at proving that his creative urges only seem contradictory...is as satisfying as anything he's written

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

It's a terrific yarn, and as soon as you finish it you wnt to go back to the start to read it again...he combines weight and lightness again in The Sense of and Ending, a disturbing meditation on memory, remorse and regret, masked as an intriguing entertainment

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

Might be read as a quietly suspenseful, and angry, judgement on postwar culture

A seemingly slight work that is, in fact, possessed of almost infinite depth. It's an elegant inquiry into what we can know and how we can know it - and it's gripping too

It sets off a moving meditation on ageing, regret and the unreliability of memory

Has rightly been praised for its economy and elegance

Belatedly and deservedly, this was the year of Julian Barnes

Elegant verbal exactness, analytic finesse and a witty portrayal of contemporary and 1960's life complement the intricate plot

A worthy Booker laureate of this or any other year, our most versatile novelist...a perfect present in these last days of the book as a singular object

A worthy winner of this year's Booker prize: short, but certainly not slight, precise and insightful

This novel packed more emotion into its 150 pages than any other I have read this year

Melancholic, suspenseful and thought-provoking

Several plot twists later, what started off as a thoughtful (and fascinating) meditation on memory becomes something close to a full blown thriller

Essential reading  for any writer, aspiring or otherwise

A meditation on memory and regret slyly conveyed through the unreliable voice of a complacent man whose past gives him a nasty surprise

Masterful, gripping and, above all, surprising

Barnes has  always  has an ear for  the bleak comedy of the first person

Julian Barnes’ Man-Booker prize-winning novel has extraordinary power and emotional density

An eloquent meditation on relationships, emotional arrogance and the discomfort of remorse

The key to this slender, tantalizing mystery is on its opening page: what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed

His art is artful, often openly so, but never showy or obvious

Described in Justin Cartwright’s review as 'a very fine book, skillfully plotted, boldly conceived’

I am eager to read it, though I hear it needs to be read twice to be fully appreciated

The classic Booker Prize-winning novel

'A masterpiece... I would urge you to read - and re-read ' Daily Telegraph 
 
**Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011** 
 
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. 
 
Now Tony is retired. He's had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He's certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer's letter is about to prove. 
 
 Now a major film

Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2011 and a Sunday Times bestseller - this is a brilliant novel from a writer at the very height of his powers

'A dexterously crafted narrative...quivering not just with tension but with psychological, emotional and moral reverberation...overlaid with witty portrayal of the contemporary London scene and spot-on period evocation in harkings back to the class and sexual mores of the early 1960s... Uncovering, link by link, an 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 humane resonances' Sunday Times 
 
'Like Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, which it resembles...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' Anita Brookner, Daily Telegraph 
 
'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... It subverts not only the conventions of the where-are-the-snows-of-yesteryear fiction...but also the redeemed-lonely-old-man novel...and also the very notion that towards the end of our lives we see things more clearly' Evening Standard

Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.

The Sense of an Ending

Select a format:

Retailers:

Summary

Reviews

About the author

Julian Barnes

More from this Author

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter