The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes mirrors the real world flawlessly. It does not distort reality in any way whatsoever. This book reflects events that happen in everyday life and is emotionally tangible because of how characters deal with their anger and heartbreak over suicide and relationships. The characters created by Barnes are extremely complex like a real person would be, and their personalities are also authentic. The Sense of an Ending is an extremely philosophical book that explores inquiries such as “time”. In the book the main character, Tony, states that, “We live in time- it holds us and molds us- but I’ve never felt I understood it very well. And I’m not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability. Some emotions speed it up, other slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing – until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.” Statements such as shown are throughout the book causing you to think and explore issues that you deal with in everyday life. It’s reflection of reality is dead on.
The Sense of an Ending has many shifts which disrupt the plot. The book does not give you a “whole” feeling in which you understand exactly what is going on; the reader asks him or herself many questions throughout the book. Just when you assume you have figured out Tony, the main character, you discover another side to his personality. or more information which shifts your opinion on him. Tony is constantly re-evaluating his memories from when he was a school boy and every time he re-evaluates a memory something is added or it is changed. Due to this constant transformation throughout the book, the reader loses trust in the narrator. On the first page of the book Barnes wrote, ““What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.” You would think this would preface to the reader that this will be a book of change and variation in thoughts, but the reader finds themselves believing all of the memories that Tony describes no matter how many times they are modified. The last quarter of the book is when parts start to fit together but up until that point the internal consistence of the book is not smooth. When the pieces finally do fit together, though, you do not regret the struggle you have had to search for unanswered questions in the first part of the book.