![]() ![]() The thing is, even if I admired the concept and was emotionally affected by the late revelation, I didn’t really enjoy the journey to get there. Suddenly all the events, Tony has talked about during the book can be seen in a different light and I was almost tempted to start all over again, to see events from this new angle. However, towards the end there is a revelation of something Tony actually didn’t realise as a youngster, which makes the story come full circle. His memory has filtered out or modified events from his youth to the extent that he appears to be an unreliable narrator. Told to others, but-mainly-to ourselves.” “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. Even if Barnes has managed to squeeze in a lot in this slim novella, the main theme relates to how we all choose to remember our own story, the way we want to remember it. This frames The Sense of an Ending nicely. “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” ![]() Some of the early flashbacks include discussions they had in school about the objectivity of history and the historian’s influence on the narrative. A small inheritance triggers Tony Webster to ponder on events, which took place in his youth. ![]()
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