“In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding
pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when that moment came, our
lives—and time itself—would speed up. How were we to know that our lives had in
any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already
inflicted? Also, that our release would only be into a larger holding pen, whose
boundaries would be at first undiscernible.”
This and other passages in Julian Barnes’s new novel The Sense of an
Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize, evoke adolescence as I (and,
I’m sure, you) remember it. But how accurate are our memories?
Not very, says Barnes, who is something of a specialist in the subject. [Read more here.]
