Crenshaw's Books & Decks

Talking it Over is a very witty novel on a love-triangle story told by each character in first person to the reader. Barnes creates a human chorus with distinctive voices, and characters that feel real and almost alive due to his insight on the psychology of each one. I especially love snob Ollie's character which is just hilarious.

Talking it Over is not as philosophical and deep as other of Barnes' books, but is light, entertaining, witty, well written, with a masterly character composition, and still succeeds at making us questioning what reality is by listening to the distinct voices of all of characters involved.

Just a warning, more of Ollie's interventions are plagued with French expressions and sayings. If you don't know French, you will need a dictionary at hand, which might be a put off for some people.

The Sense of an Ending is one of those books that 1/ is well written, 2/ you cannot put down, 3/ It is light and profound at the same time, 4/ It keeps you thinking long after you have finished it, 5/ and you want to re-read it. It happened to me.

Barnes succeeds at creating a very engaging story with terrific characters and providing food for thought regarding different philosophical and psychological issues.

The mystery in the book is purposely vague and open to interpretation. I think the key to understand the mystery and the difficulty that Tony has at understanding it, is in the character itself, his perception of reality and how his memory works according to his self-centred personality. We like the character and become him, so it is difficult for us, like for him, to "get it" because we are seeing things from his point of view.. To get it easy, we should have been presented with a different book structure in which all the characters and their stories have similar weight in the narrative, or simply a straight forward narrative of what really happened.

Barnes gives many clues of what he is doing through the philosophical reflections of Tony, who is able to reflect on life with great clarity but it is unable to see some things in front of his own eyes because he has a black spot in his way of perceiving reality. Many of the things in the "mystery" case are his perception of them, probably not what happened. That is why he does not get it. He is his own black spot.

Ultimately the book is about the role of perception and of memory in our lives, and on how core personality issues remain intact through age, no matter we think they are not. After all, Tony despite what he says, is still the same Tony he was when he was when he was young.

The sense of a ending is a brilliant reflection on what reality is, how we see reality and how we create our lives. It is also masterly at involving the reader, almost fusing it, with the character of Tony, so much so that, only after a bit of thought, you realize that you were accepting a version of reality that was, simply put, very personal to Tony, not the real reality.