The Sense of an Ending, I Capture the Castle and Trauma

You wonder how such a short novel could win The Man Booker Prize, but Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending just shows how a brief story can be so good. Tony is looking back. He is retired (yes, OK) and is ruminating about Adrian, who he first met at school, and what happened to him. I did start off wondering why "The" Sense of an Ending and not "A". But in the end I did found out why. The writing is just sublime. Tony asks a lot of questions of the reader. We do not have to necessarily agree, but they do make you think, and not in a highbrow philosophical way, but just about life. The book is also about memory, and how it is imperfect or distorted, especially as you grow older. But more than anything, the book transports you to a sort of semi-comfortable reflection of the past. I'm just not sure if, like Tony, you have to be retired.

I keep trying to remember what prompted me to read I Capture the Castle. It might have been that it is one of the films I have always wanted to see, and found it was an adaptation of the novel by Dodie Smith. Looking at the reviews on Amazon, I wondered if it might be just chicklit (how wrong can you be) as so many women had given it positive reviews. When Heather from book club emailed about the next meeting, I asked her about it, and she said it was good and that I might like it. When the book arrived, the introduction mentioned two male readers. Christopher Isherwood read the draft in 1949 and Ralph Vaughn Williams (the composer) chose it as his "Christmas Book of the Year" for the Sunday Times. So I am good company believing this was one of the best books I have ever read. Cassandra is seventeen and it is her journal that relates her experiences of a year in the 1930's. It is the story of her family, the Mortmains, who live in a medieval moated castle in what would now be termed poverty. But Cassandra's father wrote a highly successful book, so that was not always the way. His second wife Topaz is a wonderful creation and the family also includes Cassandra's older sister Rose and younger brother Thomas. Their lodger Stephen is a miracle. Things take off when two half-American brothers and their mother arrive at nearby Scoatney Hall, landlords of castle estate. The characterisation is just marvellous, and the descriptions of the places give a great feeling of intimacy. This is a top class feelgood book that is no wonder a classic.

Charlie Wier is a psychiatrist living in New York and the subject of Patrick McGrath's 2008 novel Trauma. Some of his experiences of treating victims of trauma have had a disturbing effect on him. As he delves into his client's childhoods, so something troublesome in his own becomes an increasing problem. His relationships do nothing to help. The book is a sort of psychological thriller, it has good pace and always interesting. The writing is fairly bland, a good concept but he plotting quite trivial. At just over 200 pages, it was a quick read, forgotten as soon as it was over.