The New Julian Barnes Is Worth It

If you’re looking for something to culture up your weekend, you could do worse than carve out a couple of hours to read Julian Barnes’ Booker Prize winner, The Sense of an Ending. This is actually a decent starting place for those who have not read any Julian Barnes before: it deals with many of the same themes that populate most of his work, and at a brief 176 pages it’s a fair indicator of whether or not you’ll want to read his longer, better books. Which is to say that, no, this one is not his best: the ending feels somewhat forced and the main character is occasionally irksome in ways that a writer as talented as Barnes should have taken more care to avoid. But for all that, it’s a very satisfying book. It’s a meditation on memory, on aging, on the lies we tell ourselves in order to continue living with ourselves. It’s about all the issues we face as we trundle toward the tomb. It’s good reading for a gloomy Sunday. Go for it!