The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
I’ll admit it. If a book wins a major literary award (this particular novel won the 2011 Man Booker Prize) I do my best not to read it. This slight book was picked by my local book group and I didn’t feel right as a librarian to argue against an acclaimed book the rest of the group was excited about. And at less than 200 pages I figured I could suffer in silence. I didn’t suffer exactly. I found that the writing was wonderful and enough to keep me reading a story that I felt was lacking. Then I attended book group and we started chatting. And chatting. And exclaiming things like: Do you think that’s really what was going on?! We found ourselves loving the way the author told the story since we’re still not completely confident that we got it right.
Now a fan of the book, I want to see if another group has a similar experience. That and I really want to re-read it knowing what I think I now know… The Popular Fiction Book Discussion Group will be meeting on Tuesday, September 18th at 7pm at the Bridgewater Library to talk about this book.
