I read Julian Barnes’ 2011 Booker Prize-winning novel, The Sense of an Ending. I then watched the 2017 film directed by Ritesh Batra.
The novel begins with an older man reflecting on his school days. We find out our narrator is Tony Webster, and he went to school and university in England during the 1960s.
For the first 50 pages I found myself not liking or caring about the characters including unreliable narrator, Tony Webster. The novel navigates middle-class terrain peopled by middle-class characters. I have seldom found such comfortable terrain fertile ground for insights into the human condition. Tony’s girlfriend, Veronica Ford, comes from a more posh middle-class family than he does. Her father, a civil servant, drives a Humber Super Snipe. Presumably the Webster family car is less grand. We don’t however get to find out what it is.
Tony feels belittled by the posh Ford family on a weekend stay at their home. After dinner he returns to the guest bedroom and pees aggressively into a basin. (Veronica’s father had already permitted him to pee into it when welcoming him to the family home). Yawn. Give me stories of edgy characters and uncomfortable lives, give me Shuggie Bain.
After the first 50 pages I found the novel gripping. Not unputdownable, I did put it down a couple of times for long periods, but gripping nevertheless. As the story unfolded it worked on me at a psychological level. It drew me in with rich and subtle layers of meaning dealing with our human capacity for selective memory, and the way we make our own history by telling our own story to suit us. These are universal themes worth writing about. At page 95, our narrator says:
‘How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but — mainly — to ourselves.’
I found the novel unsettling — a mark of literary merit. I found myself warming to Tony’s former wife, Margaret, with her common sense and quiet gravitas. Veronica’s mother emerges as one of the more interesting characters. Unfortunately, the author does not spend much time on her. I would have liked more development of her character, and other major characters, and more development of the novel’s themes.
Did I like the novel? Yes and no. It’s a clever book that packs a lot into 150 pages. A short book written by a talented author is normally a sign of an economical prose style — no wasted words — which I like. Barnes’ writing is technically excellent, although a little wordy. I don’t often find words in novels that send me to the dictionary. Barnes did it with ‘deliquescent’. Which brings to mind the quote attributed to master wordsmith, Sir Winston Churchill, who worked as a journalist before becoming a politician, ‘Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.’ I agree.
Although the novel succeeds at 150 pages, I was left feeling that a further 50 pages would have resulted in a better book. In those extra 50 pages Barnes could have better developed major characters and themes.
Did I like the film? Yes and no. I found it entertaining. The actors are all at least competent and all turn in performances that are as good as can be expected given the deficiencies in the script. The soundtrack effectively evokes the 1960s — the era of the narrator’s youth — his school and university years. I particularly liked the inclusion of the Nick Drake song, Time Has Told Me. The director’s use of flashbacks is also effective in dealing with themes of memory and selective memory. The cinematography generally works well.
The film is let down by a mediocre screenplay. Too often the story is told by the actors via explanatory dialogue which looks and feels unnatural. The film-makers, having assembled an obviously talented group of actors, including Charlotte Rampling, Jim Broadbent, and Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary Crawley in Downton Abbey), failed to trust them to do their work in telling the story via their performances. The actors clearly had the capacity to do so.
The film-makers also made the book’s characters bigger and sexier, as if to make them more interesting. The narrator’s wife, Margaret, is made into a “QC”, being a Queen’s Counsel (senior court lawyer). The Margaret of the film comes across as cold, aloof, and brittle. She does not have the quiet gravitas of the Margaret of the book. Veronica’s mother, Sarah Ford, is made into an obviously sexy beast in the film, whereas her sexual attractiveness is only hinted at in the book.
The novel is deserving of a Booker Prize only in a year without strong contenders. It is not the best Booker Prize-winning novel I have read. It is not as good as Shuggie Bain, or Midnight’s Children, among others. The novel is a little underdone both in characterisation and thematic development. It is however well worth reading. The film tries to be more than the novel — bigger, sexier, and more interesting — and ends up being less. If I had viewed the film without reading the novel I would not have grasped the deeper themes. The film is however mildly entertaining.
