The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes

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Plot: At the swinging end of '60s England, two school-friends become boyfriend in succession to a young woman.

Verdict: In this Man Booker-prize winning novel (the fourth time the author was short-listed), 65-year old Julian Barnes comes on a little like an English Richard Ford. Indeed his protagonist Tony Webster has a penchant for the 'life's like that' type of homespun philosophy perfected by Ford's best-known character Frank Bascombe.

In this 150-page yarn, Tony recalls the school friendship he formed decades ago with 'new boy' Adrian Finn. The relationship has preoccupied him throughout his long life, given that Tony's girlfriend Veronica abandoned him for the ostensibly more self-assured and unconventional Adrian.

But Adrian commits suicide, and there are twists in the highly-elaborate tale, involving the identity and paternity of the baby born to Veronica - or is it Veronica's baby after all?

Barnes defiantly ups the intellectual ante with a kind of high-class literary sleuthing, which even involves a mathematical equation at one point. Brave, surely when so many readers of fiction hate maths, but happily a mere embroidery. But you will be gripped and want to to see how the plot resolves itself in this captivating tale.

Paddy Kehoe