The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes

 “I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not,except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it,and how this affects our dealings with others.Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it;some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.”

This Man Booker Prize–winning novel is now a major motion picture is so full of tought provoking nuggets and it's not just the suspense in the story but loose end that keep one thinking with so much of  psychological and emotional depth and sophistication. It reminds us that jumping to conclusions is always a mistake. The story is fragmented and open to interpretation.

This novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, as he contends with a past he never thought much about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony thought he left this all behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

We live in time - it holds us and molds us - but I never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing - until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return. ~Julian Barnes

This reminded me of:

“In telling the story of any life, and certainly when telling our own, we cannot pretend we are narrating anything just as it happened. Our memories come to us as images, feelings, glimpses, sometimes fleshed out, sometimes in outline. Time solidifies as well as dissolves. We have no precise recollection of how long things took: a few days, weeks, a month? Chunks of time are a blank, while others grow to be momentous in retrospect. I believe this is true for most people.” - All the lives we never lived

“How often do we tell our life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but-mainly- to ourselves.”

You had me, and will always have me captivated with your words - "... we are dishonest narrators of our own lives.

The Title of the novel The Sense of an Ending depicts ending of two lives Robson and Adrian,  it also suggests that this is an ending of journey of Tony too as he is very close to the ending of Tony who feels guilty because his spiteful letter drove Adrian to Veronica’s mother, which led them to produce a son, which led to his suicide. The suggestion, then, is that Adrian’s suicide wasn’t an intellectual/philosophical decision after all, but a banal one on the same level as Robson’s suicide in their school days. As Tony says, “I looked at the chain of responsibility. I saw my initial in there.” I believe the title of the book “The Sense of an Ending” explains the ending. Tony is suppressing what happened to him. He has a sense of what happened but not the whole story. So the ending of the book is only his sense of what happened — not what actually happened.

Also felt it was a revelation that Tony couldn’t possibly have guessed, any more than we could. So why was Veronica so angry at him all the time for not getting it? What was there for him to get? How could he possibly have got it or how could he have forgotten the letter he wrote? Does it indicate he had Alzemers of which he was always afraid of? Why are we supposed to believe that Tony had any agency in the love triangle between the mother, daughter and Andrian? Just because he once introduced them and then wrote a poison pen note? Tony seems to bear no responsibility whatsoever. Andria and the mother bear 100% of the responsibility for their actions. Or does it show that she was very angry and deeply hurt.

Did Tony have an affair (if you can call a one night stand that) with Sara thus producing Adrian 2? Do Veronica sleep with Tony only after this to get back at her Mother? There is some question about Veronica’s own parenthood “Could such a giant oaf produce an elf like Veronica” but will leave that in the disfunctionality of Veronica’s family. Brother Jack seemed like an odd lot from the get go.Why is the child named Adrian and why does Adrian1 kill himself, is it not emotional but philosophical as Tony first suspects ans as documented by letter to coroner? Veronica’s attesting that “Tony doesn’t get it” seems to refer to her mother’s sexual exploits and the child.

Look at the names and their literary place is another interesting bit:

Anthony: hermit who founds Christian monothicism (Tony is a hermit of sorts)

Veronica: Sta who wipes Jesus face and finds his image upon it – is our Veronica permanently stained?

Mary: Either Virgin Mary and immaculate conception (Adrian -2’s birth we never know for sure who the father is) or Mary Magdelene (loose woman, secret lover of Jesus, Mother of his child.. to put the reader off the scent?)

Margaret: patron Saint of expectant Mothers (Mother of all Mothers in the story)

Sara – wife of Abraham sho gives birth to Isaac at 90 (late childbirth of Adrian 2)

Adrian comes from Hadrian who is best known for his Wall across Britian – does Adrian put up a Wall

I also think that the names contain some important clues.

Even Annie the girl that Tony hooks up with while traveling the States. The name Anne derives from the Sanskrit word “the one without sin”. It also mentions that “it is said that Mary’s mother was Anne and the name Mary and Anne are commonly used together.”.

Is that as corroborating the theory that Tony had an affair with Sarah (Mary’s mother) which he repressed in his memory. Instead, he seems to remember a lengthy affair with an American girl which is a much more innocuous memory to have. Hence, this particular memory is one where he didn’t committ a sin of sleeping with his girl friend’s mother and possibly getting her pregnant.

Indeed, it may have been that Sara was predatory on all of Veronica’s boyfriends, and in this sense Veronica’s behaviour that weekend was a test of sorts, which Tony passed. But then what does “Sleep the sleep of the wicked” mean which Veronica whispered to Tony on the second night?

Accordingly, because Tony passed the test of being faithful to Veronica and not being pounced upon by Sara’s mum, Veronica verbalized “He’ll do, won’t he?”, and then steered him to the next step of the relationship. But by this time Tony was fed up, confused, feeling outclassed and adrift, and indicated no inclination to deepen the commitment, so Veronica left?

Tony likes to “lie-in”. It seems to me that the mother is expected to make advances toward him, maybe after she’s taken the cooked breakfast up to his room.. But this doesn’t happen because he doesn’t lie-in and, being the straightforward guy that he is, he would have been horrified at such an event.. Nevertheless, the conniving mother (Sara) uses the intimate breakfast- affair with Sarah that Andrew points to cannot be so simple – Veronica wears a red glass ring on her marriage finger. The interpretation of this is left completely open, but it is not too much to assume it is in memory of Adrian

Tony is a manipulative narrator, not just an unreliable one.

 Tony’s perception of Veronica colored his entire life after they parted. He chose the safety of marriage to a woman who was Veronica’s opposite and seemed to remain distant and dispassionate in his own life ever after.

Veronica’s life took a somewhat different turn with similar results. I believe her immersion in the “you just don’t get it” mantra became so central to her life that she chose it over living. It seems to me that her early fears of rejection were solidified when Adrian chose her mother over her. Rather than realize that Adrian and her mother were flawed, she chose to punish herself instead. Her unrelenting anger at Tony kept her bound in a relationship with him.

The ending was a revelation of sorts – Tony and Veronica each based their existence…

Another ironic comment not “to let Veronica get away with too much,” ironic since the mother was the one who got away with too much.

Tony helped deliver Adrian to Sara by telling him to “consult the mother.” Again, Tony “didn’t get it.” He thought Sara’s role would be to help Adrian understand how to handle Veronica.

I think Veronica knew what Sara was capable of. She understood how dangerous her mother was, and she was furious with Tony because he didn’t “get” that. He encouraged Adrian right into her web.

In Car while returning from his only visit to her home Adrian had said her mother was great, what did he mean by that? “I like your mum”, the rival comment, the odd wave/gesture followed immediately by “I rather wished I’d talked to her more, at one point Sara “just smiled at me, as if we had a secret”, that Sara sends Tony a letter, that Tony refers to Sara as “carefree” and “dashing”. Also later in the story – Tony admits to completely omitting Veronica from “his history” when talking with Margaret. Perhaps he would omit others from his history if inconvenient?

Then you wonder if Adrian did not father the boy, why did he committ suicide?

What did Adrian's mathematical equations mean?

b = s –v +/x a1

a2 + v + a1 x s = b?

Equation 1: Sara who has a unhealthy relationship with Veronica( jealousy)  causes her to have a more meanful,passionate relationship with Adrian  that lead to the formation of a another life,a baby.

Equation 2: Anthony   who had a meanful relationship with Veronica, who started to date Adrian after breaking up with Tony, indirectly lead Adrian to have a more meanful or more important relationship  with Sara which lead to the formation of a baby.

And why did Sara send the blood money? The right definition of 'Blood Money' is the money paid by the murderer to victims family as a act of penance.Veronica who sees her mom responsible for Adrian suicide refers the money Sarah left to Tony,Adrian's friend and most likely to be  the last surviving kin  of Adrian as blood money.

 The red line of the entire novel is that memory is not to be trusted, that it is selective, that we choose how to interpret the memories so that they support the image we have of ourselves.

“I thought of a woman frying eggs in a carefree, slapdash way, untroubled when one of them broke in the pan; then the same woman, later, making a secret, horizontal gesture beneath a sunlit wisteria. And I thought of a cresting wave of water, lit by the moon, rushing past and vanishing upstream, pursued by a band of yelping students whose torch beams crisscrossed in the dark”. So the novel almost ends with reflections but what do that indicate?

Our memories are not really actualities, but stories we tell ourselves about the past?

Then am reminded of what Adrian says about V’s brother Jack? “I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious. I really hate it.”

May be Veronica has a mother with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Her family revolves around the narcissistic parent, children learn this from birth. The son is her prize and is often spoiled while the daughter is a competitor so must be kept down. Very common. This happens from birth so the children inherit degrees of the disorder, and are often quite unbalanced themselves. In this case, the family knows about the mother’s tendencies in sex (quite common.) Is that why she keep saying “You still don’t get it and you never will”

” — bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door.

This last isn’t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.”

The cold bathwater behind the locked door referred to Adrian’s method of suicide. He slit his wrists and bled to death in the bathtub, and his body was not found for a day and a half.

May be Veronica didn’t find out about the letter or her mother’s affair with Adrian until after her mother’s death, when the letter and diary came into her possession. So Veronica’s angry, frustrating and mysterious behaviour were not a clumsy plot device but (a) the result of her finding out very recently about Tony’s letter and its consequences, combined with (b) the fact that she was still very much in love with him and he just couldn’t see it because he had such a low opinion of himself.

As Tony, Adrian and his fellow classmates debated  about the definition of history in part 1, we all can agree that all the characters agree that history is an account of a person using only  imperfect memories  and inadequacies of documentation.Just like  Robson suicide made the students to speculate what  really happened,Adrian's suicide,the 'historical event' of  this novel is left to the readers own speculation and interpretation  based on what Tony remembers and what Veronica and Sara implied.So just like Robson suicide and other historical event,  nothing can be proved unless with a testimony  from the person involved which in this case quite impossible as Adrian is not alive or with the authentic documentation on what has happened(The diary).Unless Julian Barnes decide to write another book on Veronica's POV or publishing the fragments of the diary,like all historical events,we are left to assume and believe what might have happened.

There is so many questions and thoughts after reading the book which aptly goes with the title.