A Compelling and Intricate Story

In today's book review, I will be sharing my thoughts on The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.

It is the first time I am reading such a book and I got to admit, I was not able to frame out the story until the very end and even at the end, there are still questions left unanswered. As a result, I decided to went online to read other readers' review to clarify as much as I can and based on the mixed reviews I had read, it seems like there are differing opinions on the story and how it ends.

In my view, I find that Adrian Jr is the son of Adrian Sr and Sarah to be more convincing. There are not much evidence that shows that Tony could be the father of Adrian Jr. The letter he wrote to Adrian Sr and Veronica in a way did happened and it did not ends well for either of them which could lead to Veronica's hatred for Tony. Despite their weird interactions, I did not realise that Tony and Sarah could have an affair together. I merely seen it as a friendly gesture between future mother-in-law and son-in-law. However, now when the truth comes out, it does make some sense of Sarah's behaviour towards Tony. Furthermore, the fact that Veronica had to accept that Adrian Jr is the son of Adrian Sr (Her ex) and Sarah (Her mother) is definitely more hurting for her. This would justify her hatred towards Tony in my opinion. If there was not such letter sent to them in the first place, such incident might not happened but of course, we will never know what can happen if the story went the other way.

What I do not like about the story is that there was not much closure to it. We do not know what happened to Veronica or even Margaret. Nothing is known about Veronica's brother as well. It would be better if we can get some closure to it despite it being a sad ending but I guess that is the beauty of the story. What happened next is up to the reader's interpretation.

What i enjoyed is that from the perspective of Tony, we get to see something that all humans have. As time passed, memories of the past might becomes distorted and sometimes, in order to follow the rules of normality, we might even change our past memories to suit what is considered right and normal. The weight of remorse that Tony carries would definitely follows him throughout his entire life and this is something that some of us might have experienced in our life. Regrets and remorse... but I suppose that is life. Life is full of uncertainties and we will not know what will happen until it has happened.

Overall, this was an interesting read filled with questions from the start and even at the end, there are still questions that remains unanswered but it is definitely a story that will keeps you occupied throughout and wanting to find out more.