Review – Sense Of An Ending

Sense of an Ending, the Man Booker award winning short novel by Julian Barnes is hard to write about simply because it doesn’t evoke any feelings at all. It is a mediocre book that while readable is also incredibly forgettable. There are worse things that you can do with your time than read this, but since there are so many better things as well, I don’t see why you should.

As much a book as a set of rambling insights, it just fails to leave any impact whatsoever on the reader. The characters are a bit unintelligent and very hard to empathize with. The plot is contrived and the thoughts that it spends so much time in dropping are trite and unmemorable. Additionally, the ending is vaguely unsatisfying. None of these faults are severe enough to break the book, they are just undeniably true.

This is the sort of book that exists to have people question the validity of certain awards and tell themselves that if the writer can be a successful author, they can too. It is not bad, but it is hard not to feel that anyone could do better.