By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse. This short, intense new novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about--until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he'd left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his career has delivered him into a secure retirement much as an amicable divorce has left him still fond of his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But suddenly Tony is presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he'd understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.