Novels that excite remorse in the reader are rare, and The Sense of an Ending does service to its kind. The length works in its favor, setting out a tightly-coiled plot that then unfurls over the remainder of the novel (and further unfurls in your own experience of the book).

Even at 25, I still keenly feel the themes of this book: I feel like my own personality has changed dramatically since high-school, and my own memory overfull since I was around 21 or so. I can feel the years slipping away from me, both in mortality and in remembrance. Can hardly remember what I did some years of college, and hardly imagine how that was a way to live. Even now I gyrate between too much time and too little, unable to account for all the moments that make up a day.