How long is it?
176 pages in the Alfred A. Knopf 2011 hardcover edition.
Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Literary fiction
The Sense of an Ending
Highly regardedBooker Prize, 2011Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 56 / 100High
- Length
- 176 pagesAlfred A. Knopf · 2011
- Reading time
- 3 h 30 minat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 3 / 5
About 3 h 30 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 8 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
Comfortably retired in England, Tony Webster considers his school friendships and first love settled history. A lawyer’s letter announcing an unexpected bequest sends him back to memories of Adrian Finn, the clever friend who challenged their teachers, and Veronica, the girlfriend whose family made him feel out of place. As he reconnects with his past, Tony tests his recollections against documents and other people’s memories, questioning the version of himself he has carried into retirement.
Reader notes
Compact and reflective, the literary novel proceeds through Tony’s conversational narration, repeatedly pausing over questions of memory and responsibility. Its restraint can feel emotionally cool even as his search becomes increasingly uncomfortable. Sexual recollections are brief and non-graphic, while suicide is a recurring, serious subject.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Direct · Essayistic · Witty
- Tone
- Cerebral · Melancholic · Reflective · Unsettling
- Structure
- Framed · Nonlinear
- Driven by
- Character · Ideas · Voice
- Point of view
- First person
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 4 / 5
- Ideas
- 4 / 5
- Structure
- 4 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 1 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Aging
- Friendship
- Guilt
- Identity
- Memory
- Morality
Content notes
- Violence
- None
- Sexual content
- Mild
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- Mild
- Abuse
- None
- Self-harm or suicide
- Strong
Standing and awards
Highly regarded
- Booker Prize, 2011
- Costa/Whitbread Award shortlist, 2011
- Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction longlist, 2012
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
Alfred A. Knopf · 2011 · Hardcover. ISBN 9780307957122.
How long does it take to read The Sense of an Ending?
About 3 hours 30 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 176-page Alfred A. Knopf edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes is an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer who spent three years early in his career as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement. Since his first novel, Metroland, appeared in 1980, he has worked across fiction, satire, biography, and criticism while returning to questions of memory, evidence, and self-deception. Flaubert’s Parrot joins literary investigation to a narrator’s private history, The Sense of an Ending makes an apparently settled life depend on unreliable recollection, and England, England treats national identity as something assembled and marketed. These different forms share Barnes’s witty, essayistic prose and his interest in articulate narrators whose accounts remain open to doubt. His range also includes four crime novels written during the 1980s as Dan Kavanagh and centered on Duffy, a former police detective turned security adviser.
If you liked this
Edition and details
- Publisher
- Alfred A. Knopf
- Publication year
- 2011
- Format
- Hardcover
- Pages
- 176
- ISBN
- 9780307957122
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 2011
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Literary fiction · Psychological fiction
- Editions
- 9
- Languages
- 3 (English, Korean, Unspecified)
The catalog does not yet include a matching edition. Details may differ between editions.