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Tony Webster y su pandilla conocieron a Adrian en el instituto. Hambrientos de sexo y literatura, atravesaron juntos la adolescencia y se prometieron seguir siendo amigos para siempre. Pero cuando la vida de Adrian dio un vuelco trágico, todos, especialme
Cariola: Another brief but powerful novel that explores how our perceptions vary and memories change over time, as well as regrets over lost oppotunities. McEwan is, like Barnes, a master of words and character development. On Chesil Beach made the Booker short list in 2007--and should have won!… (más)
BookshelfMonstrosity: These brief, intricately plotted novels are reflective, character-driven stories that examine a pivotal event from different perspectives. In a complex narrative that shifts between past and present, individuals who grew up in 1960s England discover that memory can be unreliable.… (más)
Queenofcups: I found myself thinking of Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea as I read this book. There is some affinity in theme and story. Murdoch is expansive, where Barnes is elegant and economical. It won the Booker in 1978, and it's well worth another look.
jayne_charles: Intelligently written account of an old guy reminiscing, with the added bonus in this case of an education in Balkan history along the way
sweetiegherkin: Two short and seemingly simple, quiet novels that both have a lot to unpack & would be good for book club to discuss the deeper meanings.
Tony Webster y su pandilla conocieron a Adrian en el instituto. Hambrientos de sexo y literatura, atravesaron juntos la adolescencia y se prometieron seguir siendo amigos para siempre. Pero cuando la vida de Adrian dio un vuelco trágico, todos, especialmente Tony, miraron hacia otro lado, se alejaron. Ahora Tony vive solo en un pacífico y próspero retiro, tras una vida opaca que poco tiene que ver con la que fantaseaba en su juventud. Y un día recibe una carta de un abogado: Sarah Ford, la madre de Veronica, su primera novia, le ha legado quinientas libras y un sobre con un manuscrito. Le entregan el dinero y una carta de Sarah, pero el manuscrito nunca llega. Y Tony averigua que son los diarios de Adrian, que ahora están en manos de Veronica y no piensa entregárselos. Y estos diarios son el oscuro, enigmático corazón de una novela espléndida, premiada con el prestigioso Man Booker.
Que bien que escribe Barnes, te plantea la historia sencillita de la amistad y de la mediocridad del personaje, para luego en la segunda parte con una vuelta de tuerca, te termina volando la cabeza con el otro lado de la historia, pero siempre como cambia la percepción del personaje. A todo esto será la verdad o una nueva percepción de la amistad, el amor, la vejez, la propia historia que se va reescribiendo siempre ( )
This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, as he contends with a past he never thought much about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony thought he left this all behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.
Tony Webster y su pandilla conocieron a Adrian en el instituto. Hambrientos de sexo y literatura, atravesaron juntos la adolescencia y se prometieron seguir siendo amigos para siempre. Pero cuando la vida de Adrian dio un vuelco trágico, todos, especialmente Tony, miraron hacia otro lado, se alejaron. Ahora Tony vive solo en un pacífico y próspero retiro, tras una vida opaca que poco tiene que ver con la que fantaseaba en su juventud. Y un día recibe una carta de un abogado: Sarah Ford, la madre de Veronica, su primera novia, le ha legado quinientas libras y un sobre con un manuscrito. Le entregan el dinero y una carta de Sarah, pero el manuscrito nunca llega. Y Tony averigua que son los diarios de Adrian, que ahora están en manos de Veronica y no piensa entregárselos. Y estos diarios son el oscuro, enigmático corazón de una novela espléndida, premiada con el prestigioso Man Booker. ( )
By now, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes has gained itself a reputation for being the novel you must read twice.....
Nearly every paragraph in this book has multiple interpretations. Once all the questions are answered, the reader is left in the same state that Tony is in the book’s final pages—floored at life’s essential mysteries, and frustrated that they cannot be relived. Fortunately for us, we can just read the book again.
Barnes' work is one in which, event-wise, not a whole lot happens. Unless we’re talking about the events of the brain and the tricks of time and memory. If that's the case, then Barnes has impressively condensed an undertaking of biblical proportions into a mere 163 pages.
A man's closest-held beliefs about a friend, former lover and himself are undone in a subtly devastating novella from Barnes. It's an intense exploration of how we write our own histories and how our actions in moments of anger can have consequences that stretch across decades. The novel's narrator, Anthony, is in late middle age, and recalling friendships from adolescence and early adulthood. What at first seems like a polite meditation on childhood and memory leaves the reader asking difficult questions about how often we strive to paint ourselves in the best possible light.
añadido por kthomp25 | editarKirkus Reviews. (Nov. 1, 2011)
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
for Pat
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
I remember, in no particular order: -a shiny inner wrist; -steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it; -gouts of sperm circling a plughole, before being sluiced down the full length of a tall house; -a river rushing nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by half a dozen chasing torchbeams; -another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface; -bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door.
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
"We could start perhaps with the seemingly simple question. What is History? Any thoughts, Webster? 'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied a little too quickly.' Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated...' (p. 25, large print ed.)
We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. There is the question of accumulation, but not in the sense that Adrian meant, just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase.
Indeed, isn’t the whole business of ascribing responsibility a kind of cop-out? We want to blame an individual so that everyone else is exculpated. Or we blame a historical process as a way of exonerating individuals. Or it’s all anarchic chaos, with the same consequence. It seems to be me that there is--was--a chain of individual responsibilities, all of which were necessary, but not so long a chain that everybody can simply blame everyone else. But of course, my desire to ascribe responsibility might be more a reflection of my own cast of mind than a fair analysis of what happened. That’s one of the central problems of history, isn’t it sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.
That last isn’t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.
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.
I’m not very interested in my schooldays, and don’t feel any nostalgia for them. But school is where is all began, so I need to return briefly to a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty. If I can’t be sure of the actual events any more, I can at least be true to the impressions those facts left. That's the best I can manage.
Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn’t life’s business to reward merit, why should it be life’s business to give us warm, comfortable feelings toward its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve?
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.
Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does; otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that’s something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we’re just stuck with what we’ve got. We’re on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn’t it? And also-- if this isn’t too grand a word--our tragedy.
I was saying, confidently, how the chief characteristic of remorse is that nothing can be done about it: that the time has passed for apology or amends. But what if I’m wrong? What if by some means remorse can be made to flow backwards, can be transmuted into simple guilt, then apologised for, and then forgiven?
History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation" p17
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond this, there is unrest. There is great unrest.
Tony Webster y su pandilla conocieron a Adrian en el instituto. Hambrientos de sexo y literatura, atravesaron juntos la adolescencia y se prometieron seguir siendo amigos para siempre. Pero cuando la vida de Adrian dio un vuelco trágico, todos, especialme
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Descripción del libro
Tony Webster e os seus amigos coñeceron no colexio a Adrian Finn e axiña quedaron cativados polo seu enxeño e a súa profundidade filosófica. Eran días nos que o tempo semellara detido e os inmobilizara nunha burbulla inflamada co seu desexo de acceder á vida adulta para gozala segundo os ditados da súa imaxinación, alimentada de soños e lecturas. A vida conduciunos por camiños tan diverxentes ata converter en imposible a promesa de amizade eterna que se fixeran ao saír do colexio. A Tony, a vida deulle unha existencia pacífica e convencional, na que as arelas aventureiras da xuventude deron paso á conformidade e un plácido retiro. Pero a chegada inesperada dunha carta obrigarao a revisar o seu pasado e cuestionarse se a versión que se contou a si mesmo durante tantos anos non é tan fiel aos feitos como el cría.
O sentido dun final é un incisivo exame das zonas de sombra da memoria e a fraxilidade das aspiracións, do valor da amizade e do compromiso, ademais da impredecible natureza do amor e os afectos, a cargo dun inesquecible personaxe. [editorial Rinoceronte]
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The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
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