Books like The Sense of an Ending
Tony Webster, retired and settled, receives a solicitor's letter about a small bequest from the mother of his university girlfriend, and it forces him to revisit his friendship with Adrian, the brilliant schoolfriend whose story he thought he understood.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of The Sense of an Ending
An Artist of the Floating World
In the years after World War II, a once-celebrated Japanese painter tries to arrange his daughter's marriage while slowly facing the propaganda he made for the imperial cause.
The Remains of the Day
An ageing English butler reflects on a lifetime of service, repressed love, and the moral compromises of loyalty to a flawed master.
Tirra Lirra by the River
Nora Porteous, in her seventies, comes home to the Brisbane house where she grew up after decades in Sydney and London, and remembers her life.
A Legacy of Spies
Retired spy Peter Guillam is summoned back to London when the children of agents who died in a Cold War operation sue the Service, and he has to answer for what he and George Smiley did.
Embers
Two old friends meet after 41 years to confront betrayal, love, and a night that ended everything.
Kokoro
A student in Meiji-era Tokyo befriends a withdrawn older man he calls Sensei, whose long final letter reveals the betrayal that hollowed out his life.
The Good Soldier
A naive American narrator tries to tell the 'saddest story' of his friendship with Edward Ashburnham and the four-way adultery he failed to notice until it had ended them all.
The Ebony Tower
A novella and four shorter pieces about concealment and desire: a young English painter's visit to an old master and his two young companions in Brittany, a medieval lay retold, a burglary, a vanished politician and a picnic.
The Optimist's Daughter
A woman returns to Mississippi after her father's death and has to contend with his young second wife and her own memories of home.
The Details
A bedridden woman with a fever recalls four people who shaped her life, turning each encounter over in compact, precise portraits.
The Go-Between
An old man in 1952 revisits the summer of 1900 when, as a 12-year-old houseguest, he carried secret messages between a Norfolk farmer and the daughter of the big house.
Daniel Martin
A middle-aged screenwriter retreats to the English countryside and Devon, reflecting on a lifetime of creative compromise and lost love.