The sense of an ending, by Julian Barnes

This very short (160 pages) novel recently won the Man Booker prize and is told from the prospective of looking back at the age of 60 or so. At school, Tony’s circle is joined by a new boy, Adrian Finn. They keep in touch during college, although they are beginning to go their separate ways. Tony has a girlfriend, Veronica, and they break up not long after he is invited to visit her family, where he meets her parents and older brother. Their relationship has never been consummated, and when Adrian writes to ask Tony’s permission to begin seeing her, he fires off a letter which comes back to haunt him 40 years later when Veronica’s mother dies and leaves him an unexpected legacy which may explain subsequent events. Tony has led a quiet, uneventful life – I was reminded of the line “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” Looking back, he explains, “…after all, wasn’t ‘back then’ the sixities? Yes it was, but as I said, it depended on where – and who – you were. If you’ll excuse a brief history lesson: most people didn’t experience ‘the sixties’ until the seventies. Which meant, logically, that most people in the sixties were still experiencing the fifties – or, in my case, bits of both decades side by side.” Although many have praised the book – more of a novella than a novel – I found it ultimately less than satisfying. 160 pp.