The Sense of an Ending by: Julian Barnes

I just finished reading this novel today and I really can't decide how I feel about it. Yes, this novel was, too, among the group of novels that I randomly selected and had no idea what I was getting into. The novel is based in London and is about a boy and his friends. It reflects often on life and is told from the perspective of one of the friends and focuses mostly on his life. It is quite vague at parts and keeps you interested so you can figure out what the speaker is talking about or if their is ever a resolution. I think that was the point; however, because as the title suggests, sometimes its not the actual ending that brings closure but the sense of an ending.

Quotes:

"Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all its cracked up to be."

"But time... how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time... give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical."

"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 then 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."

"How often do we tell our own 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 get towards the end of life -no, not life itself, but of something else; the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?"

"There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest."