Not exactly a Booker novel

Last week saw Julian Barnes claim the Man Booker for his short novel ‘The Sense of an Ending’ in what has been derided as the worst shortlist in the prize’s 43 year history. No doubt this was caused in part by the judges’ reward for readability; a strange requirement for the pre-eminent award for literary fiction in the UK.

‘Sense’ treads familiar territory – middle-aged, middle-class pondering on memory and death – such is the scope of modern British literature. Tony Webster is a retired divorcé contemplating the passivity of his life when a letter from the past resurfaces, causing him to re-evaluate his actions, or rather his memories of them. What comes next is a psychologically acute but oddly unbelievable retrospective of his rememberings; of what he has forgotten, and what he has chosen to forget.

Barnes’ story touches thematically on Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘The Remains of the Day’ and ‘On Chesil Beach’ by Ian McEwan (both Booker winning writers – though McEwan won for a different book). However, ‘Sense’ lacks the pathos of Ishiguro’s unreliable narrator and the subtlety of McEwan’s interweaved narrative.

‘Sense of an Ending’ treads familiar territory ... such is the scope of modern British literature

Andrew Motion, the former Poet Laureate and last year’s Booker head judge, said that amongst the dire shortlist, Barnes’ novel was the clear winner, though his panel did select Howard Jacobson’s similarly middle-of-the-road ‘The Finkler Question’. It makes you wonder if perhaps the list was compiled only to give Barnes his just desserts; after all, this was his fourth nomination for the prize and his first win.

‘The Sense of an Ending’ is not a bad book. It is faultlessly written, and at times beautifully so, but in its constant exposition it often feels more like an extended essay than a full-blooded work of fiction. Surely to win a prize this big a novel must have a good chance of making it into the English Canon, and this one just does not fit the bill.