The Sense of an Ending

The tyranny of memory and the mysteries of our own past. Julian Barne's The Sense of an Ending is beautifully rendered and carefully laid out. It would have been too easy to falter writing this, the cliche of the old man remembering his youth, old cliques and distant girlfriends from the comfort of his “peaceable” retired life. But as the author notes, “When we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.” It's easy to delude ourselves, write our own histories and see ourselves in a flattering light.