On The Sense of an Ending

"when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others"

Read Julian Barnes's 2011 novel The Sense of an Ending. A lovely read of a twisted plot which lets the cat out of the bag right at the end.

A treasure trove of meditations on time, nostalgia, memory, history and ageing. But at another level, it's a narrative of friendship and love which eventually admits the illegible cipher in the figure of 'a woman' evoking the central enigma of desire at large and feminine jouissance in a specific way. Mrs. Ford's secret 'horizontal gesture at waist level' remains the Real of feminine jouissance, never to be penetrated by the male narrator.

What gives sense to the ending is a strictly senseless point where the signifier plays a pure equivoke in the form of the letter. And the letter belongs to 'a woman'!