The first BookTalk of 2016 continued the focus on contemporary fiction with a discussion of Julian Barnes’s Man Booker Prize-winning novella, The Sense of an Ending (2011). Although deceptively short—150 pages exactly—Barnes’s eleventh novel is a measured, masterful meditation on ageing, memory, loss and regret. It tells the story of Tony Webster, a man whose seemingly comfortable retirement is disrupted when he receives a strange bequest from a woman he met briefly decades ago. This bequest leads him to reflect upon his life, and to reconsider the version of the past he has been telling both himself and others for years. Our speakers for the evening were Prof. John Aggleton, Prof. Jonathan Scourfield and Emma West.

You can read the posts for the event below:

1. BookTalk event, 11 Feb 2016: Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (2011) 13 Jan 2016
2. Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending: Excerpt #1 1 Feb 2016
3. From an interview with Julian Barnes 2 Feb 2016
4. Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending: Excerpt #2 4 Feb 2016
5. Reader’s reaction to The Sense of an Ending 5 Feb 2016
6. From a review of The Sense of an Ending 5 Feb 2016
7. Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending: Excerpt #3 7 Feb 2016
8. From a review of The Sense of An Ending 9 Feb 2016
9. Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending: Excerpt #4 10 Feb 2016
10. Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending (2011): Event Review 25 Feb 2016