The sense of an ending is a short novel by Julian Barnes, published in 2011 and awarded the Man Booker Prize on October of the same year. This novel is about friendship, love, death, sex, loneliness and above all, memory: the perception of the facts and the volatility of memories. Did it really happen like I remember that or is it how I want to remember it? This thought is reflected in the main character, Tony, who is moved between present and his past.

Tony, a middle-aged man, lives in a calm place after his divorce. Suddenly, he receives a letter of his lawyer: Sarah, the mother of Veronica, his first girlfriend in university, left him five hundred pounds and a manuscript. The manuscript was the Adrian’s diary, a Tony’s friend in university, but it wasn’t in the letter, because Veronica took it and she didn’t want to give it him.
Consequently, this fact moves Tony and he starts to remember his life when he went to the university. The novel explains that Tony and his friends met Adrian in the high school and then they went to the university together. They liked philosophy, literature and girls too. Adrian was the most intelligent and serious, but all of them promised to be friends for ever. However, Adrian died and they got away from each other for forgetting this incident. These memories and the mysterious letter take Tony to achieve this manuscript, that makes him reconsider his life and his place in the world.

In my opinion, I didn’t have a lot of problems to understand the storyline and the book is quite short. However, it isn’t light due to its flashbacks. At the beginning, it’s difficult to know the difference into the present and the past. Despite the fact that I would recommend reading the book because of its great plot.

Jordina Solsona