"What time does to memory and what memory does to time, how they interact. It's a book about "memory and time," Barnes tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer. To his horror, he discovers that he had cruelly wounded his friends years ago, and he must now radically revise who he thinks he is. Tony tracks down Veronica and other long-forgotten classmates - including the inscrutable Adrian. When protagonist Tony Webster, a retiree in his 60s, learns that the mother of his college girlfriend, Veronica, has left him a bequest, it sets off a chain reaction. We present ourselves in all sorts of ways, but maybe the ways we present ourselves are not how we really are." Stella Rimington, chair of the Booker judging committee, praised The Sense of an Ending for its ingenious plotting and its revelations into character: "One of the things that the book does is talk about the human kind," she says. In this latest book, feeling is laid bare and imbued into Barnes' longstanding intellectual preoccupations with authorship, authenticity and mortality. In his previous novels and short stories, emotion has been stifled, concealed or tucked behind technical devices (as in Flaubert's Parrot). The Sense of an Ending, winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, might be - paradoxically - Julian Barnes' slenderest and most emotionally forthcoming book to date. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Sense Of An Ending Author Julian Barnes
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