End of the Book

                In the beginning, I strongly enjoyed this book. Not only was it entertaining and easy to read, I felt like I could relate to it because it dealt with kids around my same age. There was a lot of action at first between different people and then it just stopped, then the reader was trapped inside Tony’s head, which by the end drove me crazy. His thoughts became extremely repetitive and the way he spoke about himself made me actually feel sorry for him. I was honestly getting mad at Tony for having such low self confidence and being obsessed with a woman who obviously did not want him and had hurt him before. The worst part of it was, in my opinion that his obsession and Veronica’s bitchy attitude was never really explained. I guess one can infer that Tony could not help himself because he was madly in love with her and that Veronica was furious at Tony for Adrian’s suicide, her mother’s betrayal and her new brother. And although Tony did sent a horrible letter to Veronica and Adrian, we do not know if that took any part in why Adrian decided to take his own life. Maybe it was because he was too clever and could force his mind to do anything, or maybe he was just like Robson and could not handle the responsibility of a child; whatever the connection between both suicides is, I cannot figure it out.

The ending of the sense of an ending made no sense. For me, the book was based around the topics that memory is inherently unreliable, the passage of time, and the purpose of life. Over and over again, Tony mentioned that he was unsure if his memory was correct by saying “or at least as I remember” at the end of a sentence. That short line makes the reader doubt if what he said was ever true at all. We all know that two people can share the same experience, together and remember it completely different twenty years later. I learned in psychology last year that the mind fills in gaps in your memory with events that you might have thought happened and therefore cause you to think they are real. Regarding time, it is different for everyone at different ages. As we get older, time seems to pass by quicker due to the fact that we are aware of it. When we are young, time did not mean much to us. All we cared about was waking up, lunch time, and going to sleep. Nowadays, our lives are revolved around time, especially in such a highly developed technological era; everything moves at such a tremendous pace and that is why I believe that long ago, that time didn’t seem to pass as fast. One line that really stuck out to me was “I thought about all the things that happened to me over the years, and of how little I made happen”. Whether he states it directly or not, Tony seems to be disappointed with how he lived his life. He just let time pass, not creating any waves; he did not do anything exciting our unordinary, he was an extremely average man with an awkward obsession for a girl. I think Barnes is trying to tell readers that you must make things happen or eventually time will make them happen for you.