Help me make sense of an ending, or a middle, actually.

June 11, 2012 9:09 AM

Question about a key plot point in Julian Barnes' Sense of an Ending (spoilers inside, obviously)

So I've read the whole book, I understand the plot, except for the £500. Why did Sarah bequeath the narrator £500? I understand that Victoria says it's "blood money," which doesn't quite make sense (Adrian wasn't "his" in any sense that she'd recognize), and I'm not sure why Sarah would think she owed him anything? His contribution to the whole ... central series of events, such as it was, would not even have been visible to her, would it?

The whole book is formally pretty rigorous and (what I see as) this rough edge is really bothering me.

posted by chesty_a_arthur to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

I wondered that too, and though I forget some of the plot at this point, I think I interpreted it as a recompense for the nasty way the daughter treated him (which the mother maybe thought she could have warned him more about?). And even though Adrian wasn't "his," he was still a close friend, so the blood money was also / or may have been for whatever contribution family made to his suicide.
posted by Jon44 at 9:16 AM on June 11, 2012

I wondered too. We are not alone.
posted by thinkpiece at 11:49 AM on June 11, 2012

So much of Barnes' writing feels a bit antiseptic and overly "crafted." I wonder if this slight mystery, along with the mysterious "you don't get it...never did," was a self-conscious attempt at literary ambiguity.
posted by Jon44 at 12:07 PM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]