A Sense of an Ending and an ending that makes no sense

So, let's be kind. Maybe it was Julian Barnes's year to win the Booker, maybe they figure, hey, there are only about 20 British writers anyway, so let's just rotate the award among them - and Barnes's turn came up in 2011, even though the only book he published in 2011 was, is - pretty dreadful. (I also note that apparently there are only 3 British actresses over 50 and that every British movie or TV show exported to the U.S. must star at least one of them.) I've liked a lot of work by Barnes over the years, particularly some of his stories and Flaubert's Parrot - but his latest, "The Sense of an Ending"? The first half, as noted in earlier posts, is an older man's account of his prep-school and college life in the 60s, and it's so devoid of texture and detail that it reads like an outline for a novel rather than chapters of a novel. Also, pretty familiar ground covered by dozens, maybe thousands of other novels: cliques and suicides and sexual yearnings and frustrations. Then the novel jumps to the present life of the narrator, Tony Webster, as he reconnects with his college girlfriend when he receives a strange bequest in the will of her mother. This plot development raises some obvious questions: why did the mom leave Tony $ in her will? What is the secret behind the early suicide of Tony's school-age friend Adrian? Is he about to build a new relation with old girlfriend Veronica? Barnes answers these questions to a degree - but the answers are utterly preposterous, and they're presented in about the clunkiest narrative sequence you can imagine - plot and factual details withheld from us for no reason other that Barnes's attempt to create some conflict or drama, wildly improbable coincidences and conclusions, and ultimately, I can't avoid saying it: An ending that makes no sense.