The Sense of an Ending (Easton Press Signed Collector's Edition)
BARNES, Julian. The Sense of an Ending. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 2015.
Octavo. Full grey leather. Spine with four raised bands, 22-carat gilt accents. Gilt design, lettering and fore-edges. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page marker. 163 pp. Signed Collector's Edition. Part of the Easton Press Signed Modern Classics series. Signed by the author on the special dedication page. Includes signed Certificate of Authenticity, edition card, and bookplate adhered to front endpaper. Originally published London: Jonathan Cape; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.
Julian Barnes (b. 1946) is among the most consistently accomplished British novelists of his generation — a writer of precise formal intelligence, dry wit, and philosophical seriousness who has produced, since Metroland in 1980, a body of fiction of considerable range and distinction. He had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize three times before The Sense of an Ending won it in 2011 on his fourth attempt. He told an interviewer that he had "learnt the ins and outs of not winning the Booker," which made it pleasant to see the other side. He holds the CBE and the David Cohen Prize for Literature, which recognises a lifetime's achievement in British and Irish letters.
The novel is short — 163 pages — and precisely calibrated. Tony Webster, in comfortable, unremarkable middle age, receives a lawyer's letter informing him that Adrian Finn's mother, now dead, has left him a small sum of money and the diary of Adrian Finn. Adrian, Tony's most brilliant schoolfriend, killed himself at twenty-two. Tony barely knew Adrian's mother. He cannot imagine why she would leave him anything, let alone the diary. His attempt to understand the bequest requires him to revisit the history of his own youth — a history he believes he has understood accurately — and what he finds is that his memory has been, with the quiet efficiency of self-protection, editing and revising events for forty years.
The Sense of an Ending is a novel about memory and self-knowledge, and about the specific failure of self-knowledge that consists in genuinely not knowing — rather than consciously refusing to know — the damage one has caused. Barnes handles the revelation at the novel's centre with a restraint that makes it feel, when it comes, entirely inevitable: the reader has been given all the information and has processed it the same way Tony has, which is to say incompletely and in accordance with what is comfortable. The Guardian called it "masterfully controlled," and the ending has generated more discussion than almost any other in recent British fiction. Ritesh Batra's 2017 film adaptation starred Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling.
Near fine. Marking to upper edge gilt; some very faint spotting. Otherwise fine throughout.
This book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000530
Product Information
Product Information
Shipping & Returns
Shipping & Returns
The Sense of an Ending (Easton Press Signed Collector's Edition)
The Sense of an Ending (Easton Press Signed Collector's Edition)
BARNES, Julian. The Sense of an Ending. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 2015.
Octavo. Full grey leather. Spine with four raised bands, 22-carat gilt accents. Gilt design, lettering and fore-edges. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page marker. 163 pp. Signed Collector's Edition. Part of the Easton Press Signed Modern Classics series. Signed by the author on the special dedication page. Includes signed Certificate of Authenticity, edition card, and bookplate adhered to front endpaper. Originally published London: Jonathan Cape; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.
Julian Barnes (b. 1946) is among the most consistently accomplished British novelists of his generation — a writer of precise formal intelligence, dry wit, and philosophical seriousness who has produced, since Metroland in 1980, a body of fiction of considerable range and distinction. He had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize three times before The Sense of an Ending won it in 2011 on his fourth attempt. He told an interviewer that he had "learnt the ins and outs of not winning the Booker," which made it pleasant to see the other side. He holds the CBE and the David Cohen Prize for Literature, which recognises a lifetime's achievement in British and Irish letters.
The novel is short — 163 pages — and precisely calibrated. Tony Webster, in comfortable, unremarkable middle age, receives a lawyer's letter informing him that Adrian Finn's mother, now dead, has left him a small sum of money and the diary of Adrian Finn. Adrian, Tony's most brilliant schoolfriend, killed himself at twenty-two. Tony barely knew Adrian's mother. He cannot imagine why she would leave him anything, let alone the diary. His attempt to understand the bequest requires him to revisit the history of his own youth — a history he believes he has understood accurately — and what he finds is that his memory has been, with the quiet efficiency of self-protection, editing and revising events for forty years.
The Sense of an Ending is a novel about memory and self-knowledge, and about the specific failure of self-knowledge that consists in genuinely not knowing — rather than consciously refusing to know — the damage one has caused. Barnes handles the revelation at the novel's centre with a restraint that makes it feel, when it comes, entirely inevitable: the reader has been given all the information and has processed it the same way Tony has, which is to say incompletely and in accordance with what is comfortable. The Guardian called it "masterfully controlled," and the ending has generated more discussion than almost any other in recent British fiction. Ritesh Batra's 2017 film adaptation starred Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling.
Near fine. Marking to upper edge gilt; some very faint spotting. Otherwise fine throughout.
This book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000530
Original: $52.14
-65%$52.14
$18.25Product Information
Product Information
Shipping & Returns
Shipping & Returns
Description
BARNES, Julian. The Sense of an Ending. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 2015.
Octavo. Full grey leather. Spine with four raised bands, 22-carat gilt accents. Gilt design, lettering and fore-edges. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page marker. 163 pp. Signed Collector's Edition. Part of the Easton Press Signed Modern Classics series. Signed by the author on the special dedication page. Includes signed Certificate of Authenticity, edition card, and bookplate adhered to front endpaper. Originally published London: Jonathan Cape; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.
Julian Barnes (b. 1946) is among the most consistently accomplished British novelists of his generation — a writer of precise formal intelligence, dry wit, and philosophical seriousness who has produced, since Metroland in 1980, a body of fiction of considerable range and distinction. He had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize three times before The Sense of an Ending won it in 2011 on his fourth attempt. He told an interviewer that he had "learnt the ins and outs of not winning the Booker," which made it pleasant to see the other side. He holds the CBE and the David Cohen Prize for Literature, which recognises a lifetime's achievement in British and Irish letters.
The novel is short — 163 pages — and precisely calibrated. Tony Webster, in comfortable, unremarkable middle age, receives a lawyer's letter informing him that Adrian Finn's mother, now dead, has left him a small sum of money and the diary of Adrian Finn. Adrian, Tony's most brilliant schoolfriend, killed himself at twenty-two. Tony barely knew Adrian's mother. He cannot imagine why she would leave him anything, let alone the diary. His attempt to understand the bequest requires him to revisit the history of his own youth — a history he believes he has understood accurately — and what he finds is that his memory has been, with the quiet efficiency of self-protection, editing and revising events for forty years.
The Sense of an Ending is a novel about memory and self-knowledge, and about the specific failure of self-knowledge that consists in genuinely not knowing — rather than consciously refusing to know — the damage one has caused. Barnes handles the revelation at the novel's centre with a restraint that makes it feel, when it comes, entirely inevitable: the reader has been given all the information and has processed it the same way Tony has, which is to say incompletely and in accordance with what is comfortable. The Guardian called it "masterfully controlled," and the ending has generated more discussion than almost any other in recent British fiction. Ritesh Batra's 2017 film adaptation starred Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling.
Near fine. Marking to upper edge gilt; some very faint spotting. Otherwise fine throughout.
This book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000530
