Wow, this has been a busy summer. Now that it is more or less over, along with the family vacations, Scout camps,dance camps, and cook outs (on the new grill), I have the urge to turn my attention back to tracking my media consumption for the fiftyfifty challenge.
At the end of April I finished The Sense of an Ending, winner of the Man Booker award. I only just discovered the Man Booker nomination lists and recently read a nominee, The Sisters Brothers, which I really enjoyed. I was very impressed with The Sense of an Ending, too, but I think The Sisters Brothers should have won the prize, between the two.
Still, Ending was a very good book. It is more of a novella, and that alone made it ideal for a fifty books in a year challenge. I was impressed with how much meaning was packed into such a short novel. I even remember thinking, "I should read that again," which is rare for me. Of course it may be telling that I didn't read it again; it wouldn't count twice.
Most reviews I've seen of the book make a big deal about the unreliability of the narrator's memory. And this is certainly a big part of the story. But what struck me as a more prominent theme was that the narrator was trying to escape responsibility for his actions. Perhaps willfully forgetting these memories. In any case, it makes you wonder if the nice constructed reality we impose on our lives is really worth anything, or does it prevent us from seeing things how they really are?
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