The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes)

The Booker Prize for Fiction (or "The Man Booker Prize" as it's called these days) creates excitement and debate around the literary world like no other award. Over the years, it's been awarded to works of genius (Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' in 1981), works of excellence (Margaret Atwood's 'The Blind Assassin' in 2000), works of solid literary merit (Pat Barker's 'The Ghost Road' in 1995) and works which were merely good (Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things' in 1997). Interestingly enough, I hadn't read a Booker winner since 2001, when Peter Carey secured the prize with 'The True History of the Kelly Gang'. None of the winners since then had piqued my interest enough to pick them up. I've perused the displays of Booker nominees in the bookshops, sure, but not bit the bullet. So it was a pleasant surprise to pick up 'The Sense of an Ending' in Waterstone's back in October and have my interest well and truly piqued. Registering my interest, my girlfriend put this under our Christmas tree for me, and here we are.

A tightly structured and beautifully written little novella, 'The Sense of an Ending' is predicated on the fact that our memories and recollections can in fact be trumped by actual historical documents, which may place ourselves in a less favourable light. The novella asks the very pertinent question "what is history?". Is it the song of the victor or the self-delusion of the defeated, or indeed both? Is there such a thing as history if we cannot understand the history of the historian? What kind of power does the distorting hand of time hold over us and can we ever come to terms with this? These philosophical musings are masterfully woven into Barnes' plot, so we become painfully aware of our own failings, just as the narrator and protagonist, Tony Webster, becomes painfully aware of his. It's an unsettling, dark and nasty little tale, just as most of the best books tend to be, at least in my view.

The book begins in a modest public day school in London in the early 1960s, where three friends- the narrator, Tony Webster and his close friends Colin and Alex  are joined for the final year of school by the enigmatic and intelligent Adrian Finn. Together, the boys pretentiously float around the sixth form, and like all cliques, revel in their superiority over their peers. When they are separated by university, Tony meets a girl, Veronica Ford, who turns out to be something of a manipulative succubus, and after a visit to her family one summer turns the relationship sour, she ultimately leaves him for Adrian. Infuriated, Tony writes them both (what he thinks) is a strongly worded but broadly magnanimous goodbye letter and cuts them both out of his life. We then get a brief run down of what happened to Tony during his adult life, including the news, in his early twenties, that Adrian had committed suicide. This is only half the story. It is the other half of the story that is really compelling. A letter arrives from the solicitor of Veronica's recently deceased mother. And here, the tragedy begins.

I enjoyed this book a tremendous amount, and finished it in a mere day. The prose style is musical, stark and haunting, and Barnes has a keen eye for what sort of things rise from our past to trouble our psyches.I found all of the characters entrirely believable and Tony's narrative voice is controlled and painfully self-aware. Motifs recur and rear their heads like hydra, and certain phrases stick with you, bore into you. This is real fiction, ladies and gentlemen, and it's the most lurid compliment I could pay this book when I say that it reminded me most of Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History' and Margaret Atwood's 'The Blind Assassin', two books which also take a compellingly bleak look at the past lives of their narrators. I can unreservedly say that last year, the Booker judges chose an absolute humdinger. How it stands up to history remains to be seen, but as of right now, I think this is a book destined for future greatness.

Ecstasy (Irvine Welsh)

Another month, another Irvine Welsh to review. I picked this up in a charity shop back in November, despite the fact that I had so many other unread books on the shelf. I'm such a hopeless book buying addict. Anyway, fresh from reading 'Filth', I popped this in my bag to read on a coach journey to and from London, the return leg of which turned out to be so epically traffic delayed that I had pretty much finished it by the time I got home.

'Ecstasy' (subtitled 'Three Tales of Chemical Romance') is a collection of three novellas which are loosely linked by the themes of love and drug taking. The first, 'Lorraine Goes To Livingston', concerns Rebecca Navarro, an author of best selling romantic fiction who suffers a stroke and, during her convalescence, discovers the dastardly deeds of her pornography loving husband and cooks up a revenge scheme with her young scots nurse. A bizarre sub-plot focuses on a necrophiliac television personality of their acquaintance who gives generously to a local hospital in return for, ahem, "access" to the recently deceased. The novella is narrated in the omniscient third person and structures the action quite ingeniously, with the actions of each of the characters finally intertwining at the end in a manner strangely reminiscent of Jane Austen. The narrative is punctuated by extracts of Rebecca's unpublished work in progress, a formulaic Regency romance which transforms into a poronographic romp to spite her husband's ambitions for yet another money spinning novel he can live off of. In all honesty, although it is enjoyable enough, even amusing at points, 'Lorraine Goes To Livingston' is quite lightweight and not particularly impressive as a whole. It feels like Welsh is often experimenting with form for the sake of it, and the character of Freddy Royle, the necrophiliac presenter, is deeply irritating, with the West Country dialect not translating as well to the page as Welsh's more familiar Scottish characters' dialects do. The endless references to nineties club culture feel forced and the plot of the story is too outlandish for it to truly work as social commentary.

The second novella, 'Fortune's Always Hiding', begins promisingly, but ultimately feels like a missed opportunity. Samantha Worthington is one of many victims of a drug called Tenazadrine (a very thinly veiled Thalidomide) and has been inducted into a brutal revenge scheme against its makers by a former lover, the German anarchist Andreas. However, this brutality has left her emotionally cold, unable to enjoy her life or her vengeance. It is a chance meeting with football hooligan Dave Thornton that transforms her life, not only because she is able to use him against the last living man responsible for Tenazadrine, its British marketing director Bruce Sturgess but also because she begins to feel again. The novella again suffers from a gimmicky structure, with present day first person narration from Dave and third person flashbacks from the perspectives of Samantha and Bruce. Furthermore, the supposedly heroic character of Dave is deeply unpleasant, with Welsh seeming to glorify hooliganism and misogyny in the most naive way possible. This is supposed to be a redemptive tale, the thug and the victim joining forces against corporate evil, but Bruce is too much of a pantomime villain for this to work, a mere parody of capitalist greed. This is sledgehammer sociology and it doesn't work. Aside from the incendiary prologue, the only moment that made me want to cheer was a brief glimpse of Mark Renton from 'Trainspotting' in one of Samantha's flashbacks about London's punk scene.

In some ways, 'The Undefeated' feels like the best thought out of these novellas, but it's still deeply disappointing; you can see what Welsh was trying to achieve, but he missed the mark as far as I'm concerned. Heather is in her late twenties and unhappily married to Hugh, twenty-seven going on forty-seven. Her narrative of bored middle class desperation runs alongside that of Lloyd, a veteran club-goer who worries that he doesn't get enough out of life outside of the E induced euphoria of the weekend. Lloyd is a much more familiar Welsh character type, and it's a relief to return to the familiar "Ah wis jist sayin, ken?" dialogue and the semi-stream of consciousness narrative. This type of writing, Welsh does well.  The plot, however, is weak, essentially revolving around multiple nights out and drug psychology in the case of Lloyd, and domestic drudgery in the case of Heather. You do certainly root for both characters in a way that you don't in either of the other two novellas, but the way in which their nascent relationship is painted at the end ruins the build up Welsh has given it. The heavy handed elucidation of the club scene, and ecstasy use in particular, doesn't help matters.

'Ecstasy' is a massive disappointment, three novellas which have their moments but ultimately feel disposable. I can only assume that back in 1996, with the film adaptation of 'Trainspotting' taking over the world, Welsh let the hype get to him and published something unworthy of his considerable talents. Poet laureate of the chemical generation he may be, but there's nothing poetic about this book, and nothing that future generations could use to piece together what nineties Britain was truly like.