The author Julian Barnes would kill me, and defacing books is a terrible thing, but don’t you think this is also an AMAZING idea?

While attending a book club recently, a woman told me that the book they read before my book was Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending.

“And something really strange happened with that book,” she said.

Almost as soon as the discussion began, the woman became confused. “It was as if they had all read a different book than me. They were talking about an ending that I hadn’t read.’

After some investigation, she discovered that the last ten pages in her book were missing.

The Sense of an Ending has lost its ending.

When I asked her if she thought it strange that the book stopped midsentence and ended so abruptly, she said, “Of course. But the book is called The Sense of an Ending. I thought the author was trying to say something specific by ending it like that. Like maybe this is the true sense of an ending. Without fanfare. In life, things stop suddenly. We don’t get neatly wrapped endings.”

Then I had an idea. The author in me despises this idea.

The rest of me adores it.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to go to the bookstores and tear out the last 5-10 pages in every copy of The Sense of an Ending that you could find? Give every reader the same experience that this woman had when she can to the false ending of the book.

Tear out the ending in The Sense of an Ending.

It’s a great prank. Don’t you think?