Lauded book unworthy of its praise

Julian Barnes won the much sought-after Man Booker prize for The Sense of an Ending last year. The back flap of the book has on it the very high praise it received from the likes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, The New Yorker and The San Francisco Chronicle, as well as a reviewer from NPR. Knopf has always been a very prestigious publishing firm. All of which persuaded me to choose it for review.

I found its low-key tone rather uninteresting, its writing somewhat pretentious, in that its language seems to suggest deeper, larger thoughts than the narrative sustains.

Briefly: the narrator, Tony, is one of three friends at a London school who are joined by a fourth, Adrian, whose philosophical approach suggests that he is somewhat more of a thinker than the three friends. They all go off to college.

Tony picks up his (first-person) story with his acquisition of a girlfriend: Veronica Mary, who remains a character throughout the book.

One weekend early on, Tony is invited to meet her parents, with whom he is quite uncomfortable. Veronica’s mother warns him: “Don’t let Veronica get away with too much.” To Tony, it is a mysterious warning.

Later the four friends have a reunion in London and meet Tony’s Veronica Mary for the first time. Following college, Tony takes off for the U.S. and the others for Africa. Later we learn that Adrian has hung himself.

Tony has a career in arts administration, marries and has a daughter. Forty years later, he meets Veronica once again. She keeps telling him, “You don’t get it, do you.”

And because revealing more of the plot would spoil the book for whoever plans to read it, no more of it will be told here. Even Amazon tells the viewer not to read their readers’ comments if the book itself hasn’t yet been read.

The author has a world-wide reputation. But in my opinion, he is trading on it to write a book that doesn’t measure up to that reputation.

Book info:

The Sense of an Ending

By Julian Barnes

Knopf, $23.95

Posted by Rae Eastman on September 13, 2012. Filed under Arts and Entertainment,Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry