by Sue,
This short novel won the Booker Prize
in 2011. I make the point about brevity because this year’s winner
is a very long novel and I wouldn’t want to worry you
unnecessarily. My brother recommended this one, so we’re not to be
too critical! And it was a very timely recommendation because Julian
Barnes, the author, was at Hull University last week discussing this
book. Obviously, I attended. And blow me – there’s a suicide in
this book, too. Seems someone Julian Barnes was at school with
committed suicide when he was about 25, but Barnes knew nothing of it
and had imagined the person living a life. There is a 40-50 year gap
in the middle of the book, and we might want to think about the
writer’s management of time in the novel. It seems Barnes certainly
did as he was writing it.
Although the book is short, the author
recognises there is a backstory of equal length behind it, thus the
room for interpretation of characters and their motivation is
considerable. He said this is a book about remorse, distinguishing it
from guilt by suggesting guilt can be overcome but remorse never
leaves you. Personal responsibility is a central theme, set up early
in the book – so we can all look for that moment. And another
concern is clearly memory: a factual bank to be dipped into, or more
closely related to imagination?
The “Ending”
of the title refers to the fact the narrator is coming to the end of
his life.
One day, I’ll find a happy book.
Hello ladies,
ReplyDeleteI just thought I'd send a quick note to see how you both are.
Katie, I'm seeing images on the news of terrible snowstorms in you country. Are you in the middle of this? I have no real experience of living somewhere that snows so when I hear these things I imagine all sorts of hardships. What's it like? I hope your little family is well, I loved the Christmas photo, Benjamin truly is the cutest boy in the world !!!
Sue, where are you now? I am in awe of your adventurousness.I have to admit to doing a little skiteing here at home " of my friends who are trekking in the mountains of India and crossing the desserts of Oman" I am sure you have so much material for your creative writing projects by now.
As for me, we are enjoying some beautiful summer weather with only a few scorchers to marr the experience. The uni brats are heading back to Brisbane in a few weeks after a wonderful holiday, we have had some good times with each other. Mum has been in hospital sadly but seems ok at present, she's developed AF, although this now seems under control.
Wherever you both are my love to you and yours, oh by the way, I am enjoying the new book !!
Hello to you both! Thankfully I'm not late this time! Nancy the weather here has been frightfully cold. We had some terrible snow the first week of January that really hindered travel. Unfortunately for Franklin and I, hospitals do not close on account of snow! We had several days of below freezing weather. Luckily it has subsided a bit. I saw on the news you were having the opposite weather. Must say I'm a bit jealous haha. Congratulations also on your retirement (Sorry I'm a bit late haha)! Enjoy yourself. Sue, have you returned home yet? How were your travels? Just to forewarn you both, there are spoilers in here if you have not finished your books.
ReplyDeleteTony's philosophies on time and life were fascinating. At many points I felt my views on life were inadequate. Tony followed the "rules" of life: school, job, marriage, baby. And yet he felt complacent about taking this path; As if there was more to life and opted not to find or have it. Does this make me complacent too? I believe myself happy with the same style path Tony took. His ideas make me wonder, will I look at my life 40 years form now and think the same way as Tony? Have I "just let life happen to" me? Do not take this as regret or self pity, merely quandary and reflection based off a novel of fiction.
I love a particular paragraph on page 16 of my copy: "This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents- were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and by standers, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was about: love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. And barn owls...."etc. Do you ladies ever think about your life and say, "this moment or event (or what have you) is like a novel"? Our lives are made up of many different stories. Maybe not enough for a whole novel, but maybe a few short -novellas-.
Another particular paragraph I loved was on page 114: "...refers to the question of responsibility: whether there's a chain of it, or whether we draw the concept more narrowly. I'm all for drawing it narrowly. Sorry, no, you can't blame your dead parents, or having brothers and sisters, or not having them, or your genes, or society, or whatever- not in normal circumstances. Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary." I believe few people in our society are willing to take responsibility for their actions. This is both frustrating and disheartening. Isn't being a "grown up" about taking responsibility for one's own actions? Or am I too old for today's society? Maybe this is just an American thing. Maybe people are much more reasonable and responsible in your respective countries? Veronica blames Tony for the actions of Adrian and her mother. I hardly see this as fair. Tony's letter did not tell Adrian to have an affair with Mrs. Ford. The only people Veronica has to blame are her mother and Adrian.
(Sorry ran out of room! haha)
DeleteThese thoughts on responsibility also lead me to my displeasure with Adrian. I know he was a ghost of a character but my opinion of him changed completely after I learned of his son. He wrote this note claiming to be giving up life for many philosophical reasons but in the end his reason was probably not that different than the one used by Robson. Do you think that Adrian's suicide was for his listed -ennoble- reasons or caused by Mrs. Ford's pregnancy with a handicapped child?
Yes this is another tale revolving around suicide, but I enjoyed this one much better than A Perfectly Good Man. I was intrigued during the whole novel and I felt that the suicide was addressed much more so than Lenny's suicide in APGM. There was so much more philosophizing in this novel. I frequently had to stop and think on what I had just read in relation to my life, the world, and the story. I devoured this novel quickly!
Happy New Year, ladies
ReplyDeleteIt’s so good to be writing this at my own laptop and feel fairly confident that what I’m writing will be sent to you – famous last words. The holiday was marvellous – highlights Omani Empty Quarter and Jebel Akbar mountains; and in India the hills above Munnar, and the Kerala backwaters. The backwaters, though, are overcrowded at this time of the year. It was wonderful to catch up with friends in Brunei, and just fantastic to be at Jay’s nephew’s wedding. Jay will stay in Malaysia ‘til April. Terrific to be back – parents in need of attention and house requires some TLC.
I do hope the weather has improved Katie. I’m assuming it has, as it’s not on the news anymore. Damp and chilly here, with lower temperatures promised. Lots of rain for rather too long in many areas, and though we aren’t one of those areas, the garden is sodden.
The book was really disturbing to someone who is less than four years younger than the author. What might I have done 40-50 years ago of which I have no recollection but which might have had nasty consequences? Who hasn’t done something that has had an unpleasant significance? How was Tony going to live out the rest of his life? Was Veronica tortured because she felt some responsibility for her failed relationships - with both Tony and Adrian and who knows who else - and perhaps her half brother’s very existence? And to what extent did she feel responsible for the manner of her mother’s death? Very clearly she wanted Tony to share that responsibility – wanting him to believe if he hadn’t written the letter, Adrian would not have gone to visit Mrs. Ford and begun a chain of events. But where did that chain start? If Veronica and her mother had enjoyed a different relationship, there would have been no handicapped child. Very difficult to apportion responsibility - all the more so because of the much discussed imperfection of the memory. I thought the enormous gap between earlier and later events was handled well – indeed, it was essential to have such a gap given what the author wanted to say about memory – which was clearly that it’s more aligned to our emotions than our intellect. (Perhaps that’s what Adrian couldn’t handle?)
One thing that did seem to be clear was that Adrian’s more clinical, detached way of looking at life and relationships (his attitude to his parents’ divorce; his view of history; his use of algebraic equations to apportion responsibility; his suicide letter and his means of committing suicide) prove just as inadequate in helping him to lead a “successful” life (whatever that means) as Tony’s more self-centred approach. It just crumbled in the face of a handicapped son, and he must have realized his whole life was based on an untenable philosophy. (Was Adrian’s mother responsible for all of this?)
In the talk I went to, Tony was universally disliked. There was much conversation about how difficult it is to write a first person narrative when the person in question is clearly unpleasant/inadequate. Reference was made to Pip in “Great Expectations”. The author, too, saw Tony’s portrayal as a literary challenge. It’s unfortunate, then, that I saw Tony as Everyman – his insecurity, his need to be loved, leading to his nastiness and his need to forget that aspect of his character. Perhaps that was Barnes’ intention: to portray a weak, insensitive person as someone with whom we can identify since most of us are weak and insensitive to some degree. Spending all that time talking about himself on the lunch with Veronica was incredible – but how many times in my excitement about something have I done the same thing myself? Awful to contemplate. But such lack of insight, such ability to forget, means we survive. “Humankind cannot bear too much reality” or whatever it was Eliot said.
(Continuation – didn’t think the system would take all this.)
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you, Katie, about taking responsibility for one’s life – we have to. I can’t blame my parents for the way I am – indeed, I wouldn’t dream of it – but the fact remains I am my mother all over again, from illnesses to manner of speech and interpretation of events. My Dad says he knows what I’m going to say before I say it because it’s just what my mother would say. This despite the fact I left home at 18 and have only recently returned to live near my Mum again. I have lived an entirely different life, but my successes and failures seem to have been dictated before I was born. So what am I responsible for? I act as if I’m responsible for everything (I hope) but in my heart of hearts I do wonder. There’s a kind of inevitability about things.
More cheerfully, I think everyone’s life is worthy of a whole novel. I really do. There are bits that are more romantic, more exotic, but is that where life is really lived? No, it’s in these struggles to interpret one’s responsibilities, and all the other minutiae of everyday life. Barnes has really communicated that.
Such shocking pontification: as ever, sorry. You can tell the novel had a great effect on me. Kept me awake a goodly part of last night, thinking rather than reading. You are suffering the consequences of that and the fact Jay’s not here to listen to me.
I promise to be more concise next time.
Hello Ladies,
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry for taking so long to comment on our latest novel. I finished the story last week and have been tossing my thoughts around about it ever since. Next month I am going to comment as soon as I finish reading, all this theorising has left me more confused than before.
I enjoyed this novel, I did feel it ended rather abruptly as I still had some questions left unanswered.
I realise it was a novel essentially about Tony and the other characters seem to orbit around him and I guess as I didn't like Tony very much I would have liked some more filling out of the other characters. I feel my dislike of Tony comes from his selfishness and his lack of appreciation of the good life he has led. Sue, I wholeheartedly agree that everyone's life is novel worthy.
I wonder if today's obsession with celebrity lifestyles and the media hype surrounding these people and the turning of their lives into mega soap opera's contributes to ordinary people thinking what they have is not good enough perhaps as Tony compared his life to the life in Literature.
I found it interesting, how much maturity Tony attached to Aiden. Aiden was a very young man with untested intellectual philosophies thrust into a very real and difficult situation which he could not handle. Tony's selfishness seems to come to the fore again when he finds out about Aiden's suicide yet doesn't do any investigation into the reasons, he accepts the high brow opting out of life option which fits with his ideal of Aiden.
Katie, I don't think the lack of personal responsibility is just an American thing.
We in Australia seem to be bombarded constantly with people trying to blame the government, the police, their neighbours, their mum for all that is not right in their world. I find it frustrating and futile. I feel when you assign blame somewhere else you lose power and control over the situation so I try as best I can not to do that.
Sue, I am glad you are safely home and your holiday sounds fabulous [very envious]. It is great when things we look forward to work out well.
I still keep seeing the big freeze news coverage in your neck of the woods Katie, hope all is well and you are coping with cold, I don't know how you do it, if the temp dips here to single figures I think the ice age is coming, I am such a sook though !!
love to you both
Nancy
Hello! I’m sick of snow! We just lost power due to the weather. They do not know when it will return so Franklin will be hooking up the generator again. So ready for summer!
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that people disliked Tony so much. I agree with you, Sue, about him being an "everyman". He is a flawed human being just like the rest of us. He seems to be a much more relatable character than the demanding Veronica, the intellectual Adrian, or the detached Margaret. I feel like I did not see this “selfishness” that people have attributed to Tony. His reaction to Adrian and Veronica’s getting together seems to me a very typical reaction of a young man. His attempts to acquire the journal did not seem, to me, too outlandish. So I’m not sure which of his actions constitute as selfish.
Back to the concept of blame. What right does Veronica legitimately have to blame Tony for Adrian's betrayal and suicide? As Tony said, he was a hurt kid taking out his pain with hurtful words. He could never have predicted that Adrian would go to Mrs. Ford and this would lead to a love affair. That is completely unpredictable. I agree, Nancy, the book did end too abruptly. Why did Mrs. Ford send Tony money? Why did she send him a journal that he could not collect?
I have to get the next book still. My library did not have it. Unlike December’s novel, I will order this one on my kindle so I do not have to wait for shipping. TO more happy reading!
I hope the power cut did not last too long, Katie. When does spring arrive in North America? Your winter seems to have been going on for ever. Here, the birds are singing in the morning, but I fear the poor things are ahead of the game - we have been told to expect winter to return next week.
ReplyDeleteI haven't given enough thought to Mrs. Ford. There's a character who deserves a whole story to herself. What was she thinking about giving Tony the money? Guilt money? For what?
I'm going to have to read the book again.
Hope your family are doing well, Nancy. And hope winter ends soon, Katie.
Love
Sue