For March's meeting, we met to discuss the book The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes while enjoying the light refreshments of tea and fruitcake cookies (very apt to the book in which a character is given the nickname "The Fruitcake"). Additional resources on the book can be found below.
Professional reviews of the book:
Discussion questions:
- Why do you think Tony, Colin, and Alex all became so enamored with Adrian as schoolboys to the point of forgetting their earlier friendship of three?
- What did you make of Veronica’s mother, Mrs. Ford? What do you surmise her intentions toward Tony to be during that weekend trip? What did her comment about Veronica mean? What did her farewell gesture mean?
- Do you think Mrs. Ford’s willing Tony 500 pounds was indeed “blood money”? Why did she feel compelled to “confess” or “atone” her guilt to Tony rather than to her daughter or her son? What were her motivations in sending the money and the diary to Tony?
- Do you think that Tony was ever on some level in love with Veronica?
- Tony observes: “If you’ll excuse a brief history lesson: most people didn’t experience ‘the sixties’ until the seventies. Which mean, logically, that most people in the sixties were still experience the fifties--or, in my case, bits of both decades side by side. Which made things rather confusing.” Do you agree or disagree that a person is often ‘between decades’?
- Tony also says at one point: “You might think that I behaved towards Veronica like a typically callow male, and that all my ‘conclusions’ are reversible. For instance, ‘After we broke up, she slept with me’ flips easily into ‘After she slept with me, I broke up with her.’” Given Veronica’s reaction to this incident and her accusation of ‘practically rape,’ do you think that the latter is the case even though Tony presented the former as the truth?
- “Two other things she said over the years: that there were some women who aren’t at all mysterious, but are only made so by men’s inability to understand them. And that, in her view, fruitcakes ought to be shut up in tins with the Queen’s head on them. I must have told her that detail of my Bristol life as well.” Is Veronica actually mysterious or is it because Tony can’t/doesn’t understand her? Is your answer the same whether it’s the younger Veronica or older Veronica?
- Why does Tony harbor so much resentment toward “Brother Jack”? Is it a question simply of class and feeling / being made to feel “less than”? What do you think of his little vengeance of telling Veronica that he got her contact details from her brother?
- What do you make of Adrian’s diary musings on accumulations? Did your interpretation of this passage change radically after the reveal at the end?
- What do you make of the ‘stupid’ kid from their schooldays (a minor, easily missed character) having the last words of the book?
- Is Tony essentially happy with his life before the start of the novel? What about by the end?
- Were you familiar with this author before? Would you read something by him again?
- This book is one of the “1,001 Books to Read Before You Die” and won the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Do you think it deserves all the acclaim?
Random tidbits / observations:
- Saloon = British slang for sedan car
- Barnes frequently quotes from or makes reference to various poems, most by Philip Larkin -
- He also references Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man with “Who said that thing about the eternal hopefulness of the human heart?”
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blessed:
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
