Vom Ende einer Geschichte (Ungekürzte Fassung)

Geschrieben von Julian Barnes

Erzählt von Manfred Zapatka

Als Finn Adrian in die Klasse von Tony Webster kommt, schließen die beiden Jungen schnell Freundschaft. Sex und Bücher sind die Hauptthemen, mit denen sie sich befassen, und Tony hat das Gefühl, dass Adrian in allem etwas klüger ist als er. Auch später, nach der Schulzeit, bleiben die beiden in Kontakt. Bis die Freundschaft ein jähes Ende findet.
Vierzig Jahre später, Tony hat eine Ehe, eine gütliche Trennung und eine Berufskarriere hinter sich, ist er mit sich im Reinen. Doch der Brief eines Anwalts erweckt plötzlich Zweifel an den vermeintlich sicheren Tatsachen der eigenen Biographie. Je mehr Tony erfährt, desto unsicherer scheint das Erlebte und desto unabsehbarer die Konsequenzen für seine Zukunft.

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: argon
• Erscheinungsdatum: 21. Jan. 2013
• ISBN: 9783839811641

Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes (Leicester, 1946) se educó en Londres y en Oxford. Está considerado una de las mayores revelaciones de la narrativa inglesa de las últimas décadas. En Anagrama se han publicado sus novelas Metrolandia (Premio Somerset Maugham 1981), Antes de conocernos, El loro de Flaubert (Premio Geoffrey Faber Memorial y, en Francia, Premio Médicis), Mirando al sol, Una historia del mundo en diez capítulos y medio, Hablando del asunto (Premio Fémina a la mejor novela extranjera publicada en Francia), El puercoespín, Inglaterra, Inglaterra, Amor, etcétera, Arthur & George, El sentido de un final (Premio Booker), Niveles de vida, El ruido del tiempo, La única historia, Elizabeth Finch, Despedidas, los libros de relatos Al otro lado del Canal, La mesa limón y Pulso, el delicioso tomito El perfeccionista en la cocina, el libro memorialístico Nada que temer y los ensayos Con los ojos bien abiertos, El hombre de la bata roja y Mis cambios de opinión. Ha recibido también, entre otros galardones, el Premio E. M. Forster de la American Academy of Arts and Letters, el William Shakespeare de la Fundación FvS de Hamburgo y el Man Booker, y es Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Rezensionen für Vom Ende einer Geschichte (Ungekürzte Fassung)

[sweetiegherkin · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

After becoming the recipient of a mysterious willed gift, Tony Webster uses his retirement days to reflect on his life thus far, specifically focusing on his school chum Adrian and his college sweetheart Veronica.This slim novel reads quickly (although I wouldn't say it's a book that qualifies as "can't put it down") and seems straightforward enough as Tony muses over the nature of memory and nostalgia. But as key parts of the past are revealed to Tony with a new light casting over all he's recalled, the book becomes so much more. The reader sees how everything -- even seemingly trivial conversations -- ties together and comes full circle. At that point, you realize the mastery of Barnes's writing and why this book has received such acclaim. While the language is simple, it is packed with meaning and symbolism.I can imagine this book would make a great re-read once the reader knows the end and can pick up on all the loose threads that point to and lead up to that moment. It also made for an excellent book club choice as we had plenty of fodder for discussion and interpretation.

[evaberry · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Highly astute observations of how memory works and how our attitudes towards life and other people can, in hindsight, hinge on small events.Somehow, I found the ending a slight let-down. Ultimately, Tony didn't have the responsibility for the events that the build-up had led us to believe.

[bsiemens_2 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

When you go about stuffing a full-length novel into one hundred pages, you must leave certain things to the reader's imagination. And you must set the words in place as to not leave the reader confused at the climax. Julian Barnes does precisely this with such panache.

[dandiercks · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

This brief book, a novella, is really a gem in my opinion. Often when I read a novel, I think what a terrific book it was but that it was much too long. The Sense of an Ending is the well written novel that the novelist knew when to stop. The ending is reasonably cryptic with the mystery fairly easily figured out. That said, the ending probably makes the novel well worth a second read with that information in mind. Winner of the Man Booker award The Sense of an Endling would be a terrific book club read. As a former high school English teacher, I can also see it being taught in school, although probably more appropriately in college than in high school.

[bobyworry-346048 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

A short read on the tricks of memory and emotion over a lifetime...will find more of his work...

[jan_cornelis · Bewertung: 2 von 5 Sternen]

Boring, dry, pretentious and unoriginal but well written.

[edgepath · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Booker Prize 2011. Middle-aged man and the legacy of his past

[gpower61 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

I wanted to read this after seeing the film. The film is good - even though it now strikes me as an adaptation with added sweetener - but the book is better. This is mainly because Julian Barnes writes such excellent prose. This is full of understated yet beautifully turned and witty sentences. It’s a masterclass in how to be serious with a light touch. Barnes also understands that less is more. The Sense of an Ending is short - and the narrator ages about forty years between the end of part one and the start of the second - but it gave me the sense of an entire life. A poignant and sobering reflection on the passing of time, the ways we self-protectively edit our memories, and how the past is never over.

[toddstewart-623495 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

"How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but--mainly--to ourselves."

[vive_livre · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I really enjoyed spending time in this characters head. That doesn't mean I endorse his thoughts, I just enjoyed spending time with him in this brief novel.

[mykl8s · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

The Sense of an Ending, begins with the words "I remember, in no particular order:", and lists six events which for me resonated only after I read the ending and circled back to that first page. Julian Barnes is a clever writer of this book about time and memory.

It follows the remembrances of Anthony, the narrator, who early on quotes another character saying history is "where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation". Then he goes on to describe his changing view of his past life as new "documents" and renewed "memories" come to light. He slowly learns that what he thought had happened was not exactly what had occurred.

This all seems very abstract, but Barnes fleshes it all out with real people and real events, all in only a hundred-sixty-odd pages.

I don't usually read other reviews until after writing my own, and was surprised to see 540 of them written on LibraryThing, showing I am not the only reader influenced strongly by this short but insightful and impactful novel.

[arubabookwoman · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being."

In older middle age, Tony has an unexpected visit from his past when he learns that the mother of his first serious girlfriend has in her will left him a "document." The document turns out to be the diary of Adrian, the best friend of his youth, who committed suicide (for "philosophical" reasons) as a young man. Tony reexamines his past, and memories of things he had forgotten are dredged up. The book is a meditation on history, particularly one's own personal history, and how we tell ourselves stories about who we are and how we have lived our lives.
This is an exquisite book, and well-worthy of the Booker and inclusion on the 1001 Books list.

4 1/2 stars

There were a number of memorable quotes in the book which I highlighted. Here are a few:

"We live in time--it holds us and moulds us--but I've never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down. Occasionally, it seems to go missing--until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return."

"{T}ime is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we can't understand time, can't grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history--even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it?"

"How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but--mainly--to ourselves."

"For the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse--a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred--about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded--how pitiful that was."

"You get towards the end of your life--no not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?"`

[cdagulleiro · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I think I heard someone once saying "literature is a book where nothing happens, but it happens very beautifully". Apart of the end, a là Chinatown, I had that feeling about this book. I loved the style, and I loved the development in personality of the characters.

[booklove2 · Bewertung: 2 von 5 Sternen]

This was...ok for this reader.  The main character was unpleasant.   I won't say much more other than this wasn't a book I would have chosen as a Booker winner, or for the 1001 books list, or for the Morning News Tournament of Books.  shrug
*Book #136 I have read of the '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die'
*Book #144/340 I have read of the shortlisted Morning News Tournament of Books

[dinahmine · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

The Sense of an Ending was a powerful little novel. While I didn’t connect with much about the story, I was fascinated by the overall messages about memories and how they change for us over time. I listened to the audio version but I’m quite certain if I’d read the book I would have highlighted and written notes on several passages. This is a novel I will revisit.

[thorold_1 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

A pleasant short novel about a dull man who is suddenly prompted, far too late in life, to work out that there was after all a meaning to an apparently inexplicable set of events that took place many years before. Set in Barnes's usual world of slightly old-fashioned tennis-club suburbia (admittedly there's no actual tennis in this one, but there is a lunch in the John Lewis cafeteria). Some interesting play with the way narrative closure seems crucial but doesn't necessarily actually change anything in the world.

[rickgeissal · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

What a terrific (small) book! I like his writing very much, and the story & characters fascinated me. It is unusual, largely the protagonist's reflection on some of his actions with others in the long past & reflecting some of his present actions with some of the same people, 40 years later. It is compelling and did not work out as I expected it would. Quite a book.

[misses_london · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I appreciate why this book won the Booker Prize. The prose is beautiful, and the content is compelling and really makes you think about your own memories and how others' actions (or yours) might have been misinterpreted, etc.

[beentsy_1 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

So glad I read this. One of those books that makes you think about things differently. It reminded me of how fluid human memories and experiences are. The ways that you can change your recollections, particularly over time,to protect you from memories of the more unsavoury things you did/thought/said/were in the past.

An excellent story.

[robfwalter · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

This is a magnificent book, the kind that I try to read slowly so I can savour it and understand what's going on, but which I end up racing through, on to the next beautiful turn of phrase or poignant scene. There is so much to like about it I don't even know where to start my gushing. I guess the first point is that it's a perfect book. There is not a single misstep or awkward sentence in all hundred and fifty pages. Nothing is wasted and it thus feels totally whole.

Point two is that it's profound, and not just at the end as some books are. Right throughout it conjoured emotions beyond just delight and pathos. It is an experience in itself, as great literature must be. At different stages it prompted me to reflect on the unknowability of others and the self, on the uncertainty of memory, on the fear of death, on ambition.

Points three and four are that the characterisation and plot are wonderful. Point five is that it's funny when it needs to be.

Point six is for example, the last sentence of this quote: "...she never wore heels of any kind.I'd read somewhere that if you want to make people pay attention to what you're saying, you don't raise your voice but lower it: this is what really commands attention. Perhaps hers was a similar kind of trick with height. Though whether she went in for tricks is a question I still haven't resolved."

[kalliegrace · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

I'm not sure what to do with this one. It's been on my shelf for years, and having finally gotten round to it, I don't know what made me pick it up. The whole story hinges on one person withholding a piece of information from another for....what reason? I guess the theme of memories being fickle and only falling into place in retrospect with information from more parties was worth exploring. And the writing is fantastic. I think I just need fewer books of white men being clueless.

[jbarringer-2 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I am working on finishing the combined 1001 Books lists, and this book is on the 2012 List. This story reminds me a lot of Looking for Alaska (John Green) and A Separate Peace (John Knowles), at least in the first half of the book. A man recounts his childhood and youth, his days in a boys' prep school and in college and his friendship with a boy named Adrian, who commits suicide. The main character, Tony, accepts Adrian's explanation in his note for why he chose to die, but still fails to fully understand what happened to his friend.
The second half of the story moves forward in time to Tony's late middle-age, when his childhood is returned to his attention by a strange bequest from the recently deceased mother of one of Tony's ex-girlfriends.
For a book of less than 200 pages, this story was quite complex, and well enough written to keep me interested in what might in other writers' hands have been a monotonous, self-important monologue about an ageing man's reminiscences. That is in fact what this book amounts to, but it was engaging and probably worth listing on a 1001 Books list. I still like A Separate Peace better(which is not on a 1001 Books list yet), but I did like The Sense of an Ending, and do recommend it.

[rosalita_1 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

I've often wondered if my feelings about books I review are changed by the act of reviewing them. I finished this book a week or so ago, and it's taken me a while to get around to writing the review because, well, I'm not quite sure what I think of it. It is, without question, beautifully written, with passages like this one:
But time … how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time … give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

At its heart, The Sense of an Ending seems to be all about time, and especially memory, and how the former can distort the latter without our even being quite aware of it. The character Tony narrates the entire novel putting himself at the center of the story, as we all do when we are the one doing the telling. It is only in the closing pages that Barnes tilts the story on its side, and we along with Tony see that the real story is not his to tell, after all.

As I've thought through the book while writing this review, I've come to realize I actually liked it quite a lot. Which brings me back to the question: If I had simply rated this book straight after reading it, would it still have gotten 4½ stars? I think perhaps not. It is deceptively slender in pages, which is not to be confused with being slight in stature. Barnes does his readers the favor of not spelling out every little detail, and there are still things that I'm not sure about (why did Veronica's mum leave Tony that £500?) It may not wrap everything up neatly in a little bow, but The Sense of an Ending is a book that rewards careful reading and contemplation.

[romonko · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

This book won the Man Booker Prize of 2011. It won for a very good reason. The book is a small masterpiece. In so few words Julian Barnes tells us about what it means to live a life. Tony Webster is the narrator of this book, and also the narrator of his life story. I'll say up front that he is an unreliable narrator, and this book was written long before this type of story telling became so common. This is the way a master handles this form of storytelling. The story is told in two time frames. The first is in the 1960's when Tony was growing up, going to school through to university. The second is 40 years later when he is in his sixties. As Tony looks back on his life he remembers only the things that he has trained his brain to remember until something happens that forces him to pry open some buried memories that change the way he sees himself. He realizes as he looks back that though he can't change his history, he can come to terms with it while examining it from his 60 plus years. So much is touched on in this book. Friendship, family, love, relationships, marriage, children and death all are a part of this book--so much is said and in so few, well-crafted words. The ending is one that will surprise you and when you close the book you will realize what Tony has been trying to say throughout. I notice that many reviewers do not care for the ending and I understand why. It's visceral and real and made me examine my own thoughts about life and decisions that I've made. But, even so, from my perspective I don't think the ending could have been more perfect. The ending answered all Tony's questions about his life, and it answered mine as to what Julian Barnes was trying to say in this little masterpiece. This is a book to read and read again. Highly recommend.

[charon07 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

Much though I dislike fiction with ambiguous, unresolved endings, in this case the open-endedness serves a purpose, which is to illustrate the book's principal theme about the unreliability of memory and the uncertainty of history. I do like fiction that forces you to reexamine what's gone before, and this novel has that in spades. Maybe it's my age, however, but I thought the narrator's self-examination throughout the book, up until the ending, was far more satisfying than the ending. I suspect, however, that like Tony I still "just don't get it."

[reader1009-863136 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

adult fiction; human drama/family secrets. Short and intriguing enough to easily read in a few sittings.

[kittycunningh-815148 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

I found the ending a little garbled and there were still some unanswered questions, but I enjoyed the story and the telling of it nonetheless.

This is NOT a happy book. (I don't require happy endings.)

[castlelass · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

This is a story of a retired man looking back on his youth and trying to make sense of his past. It is divided into two parts. In Part One, set in London in the 1960’s, narrator Tony Webster recounts his time in school with his group of four intellectual friends. They take a somewhat arrogant approach to life, history, and literature, while at the same time want to appear diffident and “cool” to their peers. At one key point, they analyze a school mate’s suicide, to puzzle out what may have caused it, while casually discussing the ramifications in a rather callous way. The narrative proceeds to describe their college days and relationships, with a focus on two of the four, Tony and Adrian. Part Two takes place about forty years later. Tony summarizes his life up to that point, and the past comes calling. He receives a mysterious bequest, which leads him to unravel a series of unsavory events. He discovers that what he believes to be true about his past is not quite what actually happened, that he has forgotten some rather important facts. From the distance of age, his younger self seems like another person and his past actions disturb him deeply. He feels a need to solve the mystery and atone for his behavior.

The author explores the interaction between time and memory, mortality, self-perception, and the myriad of ways we can deceive ourselves to lessen guilt and remorse. The writing is beautiful, sophisticated, and philosophical. It packs a substantial amount of emotional depth into a rather slim novel and is compelling enough to read in a single sitting. Barnes cleverly inserts significant bits of information to keep the reader interested in finding out more, while not revealing everything until the end. In fact, the enjoyment of the novel will likely hinge on the reader’s response to the ending. It provides a great deal of “food for thought” in terms of evaluating the consequences of one’s actions and facing responsibility. There is lots to discuss and would be an excellent selection for a book club. While all loose ends are not tied up, it does provide The Sense of an Ending.

[suesbooks · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

This book kept my interest and had many true thoughts not often expressed. However, in the end it did not amount to as much as promised.

[aront-2 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Barnes is an amazing crafts person and the writing here is brilliant, the story exceedingly well crafted. Everything about the story is perfectly executed, including the “surprise” ending. However, the genre—the inner life of an ordinary modern person—is not my favorite (I read it as a friend recommendation). This book reinforces why: usually at the end, the character and you end up in the same place, with no useful insights to take away about that ordinary inner life. In a short story it can work great and have real emotional impact. As a novella or novel-meh.

Bottom line: Only read it if you are already a fan of the genre.