It is such a wonderful book, and told in just 150 pages. It has the feel of a much longer novel because it packs so much in. Such a worthy Booker Prize winner.
I read it in almost a single sitting, lulled by its restraint and elegance. The style is clean, almost cool, but what it’s quietly building toward is something morally complex and emotionally sharp. Barnes explores the unreliability of memory and the stories we construct to shield ourselves from responsibility. It’s a novel that turns after you’ve finished it, and the real weight of it hits later.
I had been thinking of writing a quick post just on A Sense of an Ending, but with the recent news that Barnes is soon to publish his final novel, it felt like more than just good timing. It feels like a landmark moment.
He’s a writer who, for me, we don’t talk about enough. His work is clever without being showy, emotional without being sentimental, and often preoccupied with time, memory, art, and loss. If you’ve never read him, or you’ve only dipped in here and there, here are five more essential books to explore:
1. Flaubert’s Parrot (1984)
A playful, brilliant novel that asks how we can ever truly understand a writer—or anyone. It’s part literary detective story, part character study, part philosophical inquiry. A cornerstone of postmodern British fiction, but with heart.
2. The Noise of Time (2016)
A fictionalised life of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, caught between art and state. Barnes explores what it means to survive as an artist under authoritarian rule. It’s quiet, meditative, and laced with dread.
3. The Only Story (2018)
A tender but quietly brutal novel about a young man’s first love and how it shapes the rest of his life. It’s about memory again, and the difference between the stories we tell and what actually happened.
4. Levels of Life (2013)
A deeply personal book. It begins with a history of ballooning, then shifts into an elegy for Barnes’s late wife. It’s spare, elegant, and devastating—a meditation on grief unlike anything else.
5. Talking It Over / Love, Etc. (1991 / 2000)
These companion novels follow a love triangle across decades. They’re witty, caustic, and formally inventive—each character speaks directly to the reader, and you’re constantly being nudged to take sides.
Barnes has written across genres—novels, essays, memoir, history—but whatever the form, his voice remains unmistakable: dry, perceptive, quietly profound. If A Sense of an Ending is your way in, there’s so much more to discover.
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