McEwan, Ian

Average customer rating:

BORING and contrived
Best Novel of Our Time
Wonderful Book--once you read to the end of it.
A great attempt, but tiresome for me...
a startling return to form

Atonement: A Novel
Ian McEwan
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 038572179X
Release Date: 2003-02-25

Amazon.com

Ian McEwan's Booker Prize-nominated Atonement is his first novel since Amsterdam took home the prize in 1998. But while Amsterdam was a slim, sleek piece, Atonement is a more sturdy, more ambitious work, allowing McEwan more room to play, think, and experiment.

We meet 13-year-old Briony Tallis in the summer of 1935, as she attempts to stage a production of her new drama "The Trials of Arabella" to welcome home her older, idolized brother Leon. But she soon discovers that her cousins, the glamorous Lola and the twin boys Jackson and Pierrot, aren't up to the task, and directorial ambitions are abandoned as more interesting prospects of preoccupation come onto the scene. The charlady's son, Robbie Turner, appears to be forcing Briony's sister Cecilia to strip in the fountain and sends her obscene letters; Leon has brought home a dim chocolate magnate keen for a war to promote his new "Army Ammo" chocolate bar; and upstairs, Briony's migraine-stricken mother Emily keeps tabs on the house from her bed. Soon, secrets emerge that change the lives of everyone present....

The interwar, upper-middle-class setting of the book's long, masterfully sustained opening section might recall Virginia Woolf or Henry Green, but as we move forward--eventually to the turn of the 21st century--the novel's central concerns emerge, and McEwan's voice becomes clear, even personal. For at heart, Atonement is about the pleasures, pains, and dangers of writing, and perhaps even more, about the challenge of controlling what readers make of your writing. McEwan shouldn't have any doubts about readers of Atonement: this is a thoughtful, provocative, and at times moving book that will have readers applauding. --Alan Stewart, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from this master of English prose.

On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives–together with her precocious literary gifts–brings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.

Customer Reviews:

BORING and contrived.......2007-06-20

I simply cannot understand how people can rave about this book and give it anything more than one star!

It seems like the author can't focus on anything; the description weighs down what already is a contrived and generally annoying plot. The endless imagery and descriptions of nothing that matters distract from what is actually going on and make it hard to want to turn the page.

Anyone could see the ending coming from the time Lola was raped... it was painfully obvious at that moment what happened and there was no need for the author to go on a hundred more pages or so to add to the "suspense" of discovering the ending. I felt as though the whole second part of the novel is unnecessary, and that the characters in the book aren't likeable or developed enough to make you care about them.

DON'T READ THIS!!
You'll end up wishing you'd spent a few hours of your life reading something better. Try the daily weather forecast next time.

Best Novel of Our Time.......2007-06-20

Ian McEwan is possibly the most adept novelist of the current era. His craftsmanship is on full display in this, his best developed, book.

As a fan of McEwan's canon of work, I think Atonement serves as the best example of his creative maturation. Unlike other authors of this period in fiction, his skill is never over-the-top, always subtly present. One image, the description of pond scum in a battlesight, is breathtaking in its simplicity and directness.

There were several times throughout this book that my breath was stolen. McEwan gets it so right so often, it is like taking a masters class in fiction. The characters are well-developed, the dialogue is beautiful and accurate, the history is never over-bearing and the themes are wonderfully crafted. I highly recommend this book!

Wonderful Book--once you read to the end of it........2007-06-20

This is a novel is very well done. If this book is representative of McEwan's other work, his acclaim is warranted.

The novel is divided into three main parts with epilogue at the end. The first and third parts are the longest--170 and 100 pages respectively. The second part is the shortest, but the most visually and emotionally intense.

The first part is domestic. It takes place in the summer of 1935 and we meet the characters and experience their day-to-day lives. This domesticity is believable to the point of tedium. This section stretches on for some 170 pages. There is a lot of internal dialogue, lots of psychological and emotional landscape. Not a whole lot of scene. Not much of anything really happening. I nearly put the book down. It read like Jane Austin or Virginia Wolff or perhaps James Joyce. And I struggle with this sort of writing. That said, this first section establishes the character's relationships and their pre-war world. The first part also establishes something else that I will address later. This first part ends with a violent crime and the false accusation of a young man who is just beginning his life. It is here, some 150 pages into the book, that things start to get interesting.

I've encountered such set-ups before and I wonder if it is wise in a novel to wait quite so long.

The second section is all war and flashbacks to prison. It is visually arresting and emotionally terrifying. It is ugly and painful and all the things that a good war narrative should be. It shows an attempt to hold on the previous world.

The third section is the section of atonement. And, interestingly it reads a bit too much like fiction. Though it is always engaging and well done, free of sentimentality (though it does sometimes come close). I could not help but feel shadings of contrivance, as though the work balanced on the precarious edge between realism and drama. The narrative held certain contrivances and hinted at others--it was at times self-aware. But still good. And if it had ended there, it would have been a fine novel.

But then, in the final small section, the novel moves from good to something remarkable. And though this structure is hinted at from the beginning, it arrives as something of a welcome revelation. We discover the narrator in her later years. She is losing her mind to some degenerative disease and this is her last work. She explains her writing of the novel and her reasons. The tone of the opening sections, though never deeply inappropriate in and of itself, becomes woven into the overall narrative of the larger story that then includes the story's creation. The narrator tells us what really happened to the two young lovers, which is anything but romantic, which is all too real and like any real tragedy would make lousy fiction--it would not fulfill the reader's expectations. It is just a damn senseless tragedy. This final section in effect tips the scale back into balance, redefines the tension between fiction and reality. My jumbled explanation does not do the structure of this novel justice.

It was interesting reading Gilead and Atonement in succession. The interesting thing was the way in which the telling became a part of the story. The narration folded in upon itself and revealed deeper tensions and motivations.

A great attempt, but tiresome for me..........2007-06-11

I have a problem with the Brit "precious" thing...it's a sort of tone of ironic cuteness around children or anyone "heroic" that bugs me. It's like biting into something rich and finding it too sweet. After all, didn't they invent treacle and Christmas pudding and sweet meats and all that kind of stuff? I just finished a brilliant Brit thriller, however, that I did like - it's called "Falling Off Air," by Catherine Sampson. Very straightforward, clear, not pretentiously wordy. Henry James and Virginia Woolf did "wordy" - and I loved it. Now I'm getting tired of it. I find I'm attracted to a more minimalist style these days. I want to say "Get on with it!" And, too, I am a bit prejudiced by the whole class thing they do in GB. I find it a bore because I can't identify with it. I don't find it either amusing or instructive and frankly, at this point in history, to belabor it feels a bit sour.

a startling return to form.......2007-05-05

After The Child in Time McEwan went slightly off-course with Black Dogs, Amsterdam and Enduring Love. Despite the awards, critical acclaim and film adaptations, the coterie of fans who have grown with McEwan suspected his powers to be on the wane. Then along comes Atonement. There is no more engrossing, heart-wrenching and insightful contemporary novel. McEwan's social criticism, so skillfully deployed against the ravages of Thatcherism in The Child in Time, here disassembles the arrogance and stupidity of the British upper-classes, the pathos, heroism and squalor of Dunkirk, and the cycle of guilt and forgiveness that writers excise through their work. Both a love story and summation of Britain's 20th century, this novel climaxes with a stunning literary device at once simple and sublime. McEwan is the finest English-language writer and is at the top of his game here. The theme of fractured families struggling against social and psychological oppression, so darkly introduced in The Cement Garden, comes to full fruition in Atonement. Highly recommended, but not as a first introduction to McEwan. Read First Love, Last Rights, the short stories, then go on to The Cement Garden. The journey to Atonement's explosive, wholly satisfying conclusion does not start on the first page of the novel, but decades earlier in McEwan's iconoclastic early musings. Start there, and the experience of Atonement will be worth waiting for, and so much richer.

Average customer rating:

A honeymoon like Prince Charles and Diana's
Short but enjoyable...
He has done it once again:
Not a novel.
In Need of a Fast Buck

On Chesil Beach: A Novel
Ian McEwan
Manufacturer: Nan A. Talese
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0385522401
Release Date: 2007-06-05

Book Description

A novel of remarkable depth and poignancy from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.

It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence’s response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence’s anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite.

Ian McEwan has caught with understanding and compassion the innocence of Edward and Florence at a time when marriage was presumed to be the outward sign of maturity and independence. On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from McEwan—a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.</p>

Customer Reviews:

A honeymoon like Prince Charles and Diana's.......2007-06-25

The Stern Librarian read an excerpt from this novel when it was published in the New Yorker several months ago, and wondered how Ian McEwan would ever forge an Ian McEwan novel by vividly describing a dull honeymoon. But he has done it. In the magazine excerpt, I noticed only the comedy in the situation of a couple in the early 1960's, on the first night of their honeymoon, contemplating the consummation that lay ahead of them over a dinner of pre-Gordon Ramsey British cuisine. Improbably, however, the novel is something of a page turner, which delivers a stunning ending. Tick off all the things you expect from McEwan--a dash of politics, a pervasive aura of menace, some melodramatic back story, class conflict, all can be found here. For the groom in this novel, the sacrament of marriage, the mutual promise, is a concession to society that will result in absolute freedom with his wife. For the bride, marriage offers a veil of privacy over more revolutionary types of freedom. I spent four hours reading this book, and many more hours thinking about issues it raises about what marriage is, should be and for whom. The Stern Librarian (I can recommend some good books to take on your honeymoon).

Short but enjoyable..........2007-06-24

I decided to read this after I read a review in S.F. Chronicle. This book is definitely a short novel, a very tight read, at just a bit over 200 pages. But the story is very well written and I enjoyed it.

It's the wedding night of Edward and Florence. As they are trying to enjoy their first wedded dinner, the apprehension of their first night together and tension surrounding this important intimate encounter is the basis for this novel. A story that makes you laugh while cringing all at the same, you can't help but feel for these people and their desperate situation. It's definitely a little treasure from Ian McEwan.

He has done it once again: .......2007-06-24

Ian McEwan is a brilliant writer. I have read most of what he has written and truly believed he could not produce a book of such brilliance, once again. This is a sad book in some ways. Lost opportunities by the lack of the ability to express oneself, however, that was what and how it was back then. He has captured the feelings and fears as well as the lack of communication and patience of two people truly in love. The anger of their own innocence is captured on paper as well as all of the deep emotions, and frustrations.

This is so clearly before the sexual revolution and these lovers are trapped in that time. A few years and all would change.

The writing is brilliant. I envy such a great talent. I hope he is working on the next one. This book is well worth reading.

Not a novel........2007-06-24

This book is not a novel at barely 200 pages long. I was uninterested in the characters and the silly plot. I was disturbed by McEwan's repetitive use (or, as I feel, misuse) of the word "nauseous." The worst line in the book being on page 121, "He was nauseous with desire and indecision." Ugh, awful writing. I like Ian McEwan, and am a fan of his unusual plots and great character driven stories, but this book was downright painful to read. After incredible books like Atonement, Saturday and Enduring Love, this one is just plain bad. Poor Florence, she is treated very poorly by both her new husband and Ian McEwan; he is totally unsynmpathetic towards her. I, too, am in the majority of not liking this book, but it just doesn't compare with his other works, at all. Don't be "nauseated" by reading this book and wasting time that could be spent on another much better novel. Read Abundance (Sena Jeter Naslund) if you want to read about a real dysfunctional marriage! Louis and Marie worked a heck of a lot harder than these two! Very disappointing.

In Need of a Fast Buck.......2007-06-24

I'm a great fan of Mr.McEwan. I thought his novel "Saturday" was superb, an allegory for our time. However, in his newest novel he must have wanted to cash in on his famous literary name and make a fast buck, that's how slipshod On "Chesil Beach" is. Clearly its cardboard characters and slick facile philosophy was dashed off. Two pre-sixties sexual revolution characters meet, marry, encounter a moment of sexual difficulty on their wedding night and part. That's the plot. At the end the author dashes off 30 years of history of the male of the novel in about two pages, giving his point of view of the moment when he and his wife of a few hours parted company. The lady's point of view is totally ignored. "This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing", the author tells us. If Edward had run after Florence things would have been different. But would it? What would have been more courageous and more interesting from the novelist's and reader's point of view would have been to stay with these two characters and seen how life worked out for them. A very disappointing novel.

Average customer rating:

One Long Saturday..even I was glad when it was Sunday
why I quit reading fiction 30 years ago
Sabbath, or Resting on Laurels
Give me McEwan every day of the week
simply stunning

Saturday
Ian Mcewan
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1400076196
Release Date: 2006-04-11

Book Description

In his triumphant new novel, Ian McEwan, the bestselling author of Atonement, follows an ordinary man through a Saturday whose high promise gradually turns nightmarish. Henry Perowne–a neurosurgeon, urbane, privileged, deeply in love with his wife and grown-up children–plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderly mother, and cook dinner for his family. But after a minor traffic accident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne must set aside his plans and summon a strength greater than he knew he had in order to preserve the life that is dear to him.

Download Description

Ian McEwan is the author of nine novels, including Amsterdam, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1998, and of Atonement, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the WHSmith Literary Award.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

One Long Saturday..even I was glad when it was Sunday.......2007-06-22

This is one long day in the life of Henry Perowne (a neurosurgeon). McEwan is a brilliant writer; his skills are exceptional and that is why this long drawn out account of Saturday, Feb. 15, 2003 is bearable.

The novel occurs on the Saturday associated with Iraq and anti-war demonstrations in London.

"In neurosurgery he chose a safe and simple profession." "If anything can happen, then everything matters". Perowne was safe in his world, snug as a bug in a rug...until...he was allowed to turn down a street which had been allegedly closed off to traffic.

Aside from the fact that the novel was also bogged down with medical jargon/details/gore, the reader still wanted to find out how the day ended and if it ever would. I frankly learned so many details about neurosurgery that I am convinced that I could do the operations myself.

For diehard McEwan fans and I am still one, this book was not exactly his finest; but it nevertheless was satisfactory and can be enjoyed.

Having now read On Chesil Beach which I enjoyed even less, I cannot understand the high marks associated with that novella over Saturday which to me was better though very dark and foreboding.

The ending of Saturday was more uplifting than expected and there was hope for the years ahead...which is more than other McEwan novels. If you are looking for a page turner, you will not find it in this book. If you are looking for beautiful and skillful writing done by a great storyteller and gifted novelist, then you will be satisfied with what you will find in this novel and its display of lovely prose and the exacting detail of the medical research that must have been involved.

Either "Amsterdam" (1998 Man Booker Prize winner) or "Atonement" are both great McEwan books and are the best places to start in reading this master.

Bentley/2007

why I quit reading fiction 30 years ago.......2007-06-12

I picked this book off the rack at an airport and paid nearly $17 for this literary version of urticaria. This book is bloated with adjectives and distracting disquisitions on foods, wines,music, and squash which add little to the storyline, merely prove that an erudite writer with time on his hands can find abundant filler.
A cast of uncompelling characters mixed with discussions of 9-11 politics makes for a forgettable experience (at least I hope so).
Non-fiction is so much more interesting.

Sabbath, or Resting on Laurels.......2007-06-10

Over the years, Ian McEwan has managed to build for himself a considerable reputation as a writer. Saturday's success illustrates the extent of this reputation: only a large fan base and an array of critics predisposed to praise can make a smashing bestseller out of such a mediocre book. Dull, overlong, and shallow, Saturday reads like the fruit of chore rather than inspiration.

Saturday's whole story is circumscribed to the events of a single day, February 15, 2003. Throughout that day, neurosurgeon and all-around blessed Henry Perowne watches a plane go down in flames in the solitary calmness of night; is annoyed by a protest of thousands against the Iraq war (which he feebly supports); confronts an unstable thug who happens to be afflicted with a degenerative mental illness; and sees how his peaceful, cocoon-like existence is threatened by abrupt violence. Although this may sound like an action-packed day, the truth is that whatever excitement Saturday arouses in the reader it immediately smothers with its painful minuteness and plodding pace. Furthermore, there is not a single character in the book which can be said to be believable. A novel is as interesting as its characters, and Saturday's are flat, clichéd, or both.

The idea of making a whole novel out of a single day's events was epitomized by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, next to whom McEwan cannot but be dwarfed. That is the price of treading on ground already claimed by literary giants: comparisons will be made, and they will invariably do to the author more harm than good. But if it would be unfair and unrealistic to ask him for a classic, it is nevertheless disappointing to receive something merely average.

And yet, flawed as it is, Saturday does have its fair share of niceties. The way in which several recurrent themes run one into the other, and in which certain images and thoughts are overlapped and disposed so as to suggest interesting parallelisms; the idea of having one man's ordeal as a metaphor or 9-11; and McEwan's skillful prose, are all things worthy of, if not admiration, at least some respect. But they do not suffice. The narrative's habit of derailing into farragoes of superficial ramblings and a displeasing amount of padding overshadow most of the achievements of the book; the far-fetched ending practically overshadow the rest.

Much has been said about Saturday showing McEwan's ponderings on the Iraq War, so apparently the Iraq War is a topic McEwan does not think about too often or too much. There is hardly a single though on the war or about any transcendental issue whatsoever which does not come off as either bland or frustratingly tangential. After reading it one finds out that, contrary to those who have deemed it "profound", Saturday is actually a rather shallow book. Readers looking for depth will therefore have to look elsewhere - or dig for themselves.

Sadly, it seems that with this book McEwan has rode on his success instead trying to live up to it. One can only hope that next time around he will care more about trimming his work down to perfection than puffing it up with medical jargon and unabashed filler.

Give me McEwan every day of the week.......2007-06-06

In order to truly appreciate this brilliant book, each sentence must be slowly savored, like a fine wine. SATURDAY is nothing short of brilliant. So what if Dr. Perowne isn't the most likeable chap (how many doctors really are?).
P.S. For all you squash enthusiasts out there, McEwan's description of battle for the T is classic.

simply stunning.......2007-06-03

Saturday is Ian McEwan at the top of his game, and whatever claims are made for the Rushdies and Ishiguros of this world, no living British author can match an on-form McEwan. He takes the mundane and everyday - buying fish, picking up the ball after a squash point - and carresses it, plays with it, turns it inside out and upside down, speeds it up and slows it down, zooms in and dollies out, till what starts as an insignificant passing moment suddenly has you feeling, in the pit of your stomach, the planet in motion, the Earth tipping on its axis. The Child in Time is the quintessential critique of the flame-thrower Margaret Thatcher took to British society. McEwan now turns the same withering glare on Blair's Britain and produces an equally seminal tome. For Henry Perowne, brain surgery is a breeze but communicating with a daughter is a minefield to be delicately negotiated. This is a novel to savour, discuss, return to and pass on to future generations.

Average customer rating:

slim, but satisfactory; McEwan always keeps high standards
Disappointed
McEwan, a Master of Simplicity
Fun, interesting, absorbing, and entertaining
This won a Booker and Atonement didn't?

Amsterdam: A Novel
Ian McEwan
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0385494246
Release Date: 1999-11-02

Amazon.com

When good-time, fortysomething Molly Lane dies of an unspecified degenerative illness, her many friends and numerous lovers are led to think about their own mortality. Vernon Halliday, editor of the upmarket newspaper the Judge, persuades his old friend Clive Linley, a self-indulgent composer of some reputation, to enter into a euthanasia pact with him. Should either of them be stricken with such an illness, the other will bring about his death. From this point onward we are in little doubt as to Amsterdam's outcome--it's only a matter of who will kill whom. In the meantime, compromising photographs of Molly's most distinguished lover, foreign secretary Julian Garmony, have found their way into the hands of the press, and as rumors circulate he teeters on the edge of disgrace. However, this is McEwan, so it is no surprise to find that the rather unsavory Garmony comes out on top. Ian McEwan is master of the writer's craft, and while this is the sort of novel that wins prizes, his characters remain curiously soulless amidst the twists and turns of plot. --Lisa Jardine

Book Description

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is editor of the newspaper The Judge. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister.

In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life. A sharp contemporary morality tale, cleverly disguised as a comic novel, Amsterdam is "as sheerly enjoyable a book as one is likely to pick up this year" (The Washington Post Book World).

Customer Reviews:

slim, but satisfactory; McEwan always keeps high standards.......2007-05-08

This story starts with a funeral. Does it predict the ending?

Molly Lane, a beautiful, charismatic woman, special for many men, died of a debilitating neurodegenerative disease in her forties. Two of her former lovers, now old friends, Clive Linley, a famous, internationally recognized composer, and Vernon Halliday, the main editor of the daily newspaper "Judge" are deeply affected by Molly's descent into illness and her end in her home, guarded by her husband, George, and far from her numerous friends. Both Vernon and Clive dislike George, but more than him they despise another lover of Molly's, Julian Garmony, a politician who has a chance to become the Prime Minister.

As the novel goes on, the two characters, Clive and Vernon, become central; their psychological portraits are very detailed and, despite the opinions of some of the reviewers, they are real, living men, not paper figures. They are intellectuals and live with true European style of the end of the twentieth century; there are many people like them among my acquaintances, devoted to their passions, not interested in family life or any kind of traditional life, but in the achievement of their goals. And yes, extramarital affairs are more visible, perhaps for lack of hypocrisy? Maybe here lies the problem for American readers?

Clive and Vernon are intellectuals, focused on their goals, but here ends the similarity between them. Clive is interested only in his music and dreaming of being a great composer, he tries to discipline himself and concentrates in solitude. In order to recover his creative ability to write the Millennium Symphony on time, he decides to go for a hiking trip to the Lake District (I was delighted that McEwan decided to place a part of the novel in this region - I visited it once and loved it, so it was great to read its description by someone so skilled in writing), where he witnesses something important, but thinking only about his music, he decides to ignore it.

Vernon wants to be the best editor of the best newspaper; he treats journalism as his own path to fame and does not hesitate when he has a choice to get involved in a political scandal. When George Lane calls him with an offer, which would expose and ruin Julian Garmony, he decides to publish it against the opinion of his staff and Clive... His decision marks the beginning of an end.

Because of an agreement, Clive and Vernon are tied to each other not only through Molly and old acquaintance, but also by the promise not to let each other die after a long, debilitating illness, but to end each other's suffering, if necessary. Indeed, this pact makes the ending of the novel clear and McEwan guides the reader towards it masterfully.

I like McEwan's prose for the simplicity of the plot, which is never too branched, there are no loose ends, it is very well balanced, never too much happens, but at the same time it is twisted enough to keep the reader intrigued till the end. I love his ability to use the language and to make the most of it, it is minimalistic, but at the same time rich, simple yet sophisticated, never failing to express his point precisely. I love his choice of characters and the slow, detailed development of their psychological portraits. I think "Amsterdam" is not worse than "Atonement" or "Saturday" - it is an art to put so much in such a short literary form.

Disappointed.......2007-04-11

Given the book is the winner of the Booker Prize (though almost a decade ago), I was looking forward to reading a masterpiece. Unfortunately, just as McEwan describes the lack of creativity and surprises in the final movement of Clive Linley's 'Millennial Symphony', its creation stalled by Vernon's setting the police on Clive for helping with an attempted rape case, I find the ending of the book awkward and far from reality. It's hard to believe how two long-standing friends can be driven by such intense hatred that they kill each other by mutual poisoning. The novel does twist and turn unexpectedly, but also unreasonably.
To be fair to McEwan, a lot of the paragraphs about the inner feelings of Clive and Vernon are very well-written, and the whole book is entertaining till the improbable ending.

McEwan, a Master of Simplicity.......2007-02-18

Amsterdam, though no Atonement, shows McEwan in complete control of his story--where to start it, where to take it without veering off into 100-page digressions, where to end it (though perhaps not how). His ability to blend genre and literary fiction is technically near-seamless.

In Amsterdam, McEwan tackles the 1990s and fin de siecle Western civilization. Clive Linley, an eminent composer, and Vernon Halliday, an ambitious newspaperman, are brought together by the funeral of a friend, Molly, who connects many disparate individuals--from politicians to entrepreneurs to artists. Though they despise one another, they found unblinking acceptance and tenderness in ever-tolerant Molly. But, with Molly gone, their relationships, even the friendship between Clive and Vernon, seem to unravel.

Some issues come straight from the front pages--euthanasia, tabloid journalism (replacing hard-hitting investigative reporting). McEwan seems more concerned, however, with the underlying modern moral decline--conceit replacing conscience, ego replacing courage, self-righteousness replacing ethics. It's an open-deck bus tour of life at the close of the twentieth century.

Fun, interesting, absorbing, and entertaining.......2007-02-05

Are extra-marital affairs really the norm among upper-middle-class families? Seems every novel I read these days assumes that everyone is having them--multiple affairs with fascinating partners while spouse is presumably doing the same. Somehow this does not connect with my view and experience of family life. Amsterdam is another novel based on affairs; in this case two successful Londoners with elegant, fascinating Molly. Molly, the wife of a vastly wealthy London media mogul, has recently died apparently of early-onset Alzheimer's disease and the friends, Clive the composer and Vernon the newspaper editor, are faced now with their own late-middle-age anxieties and insecurities, partly provoked by Molly's untimely and humiliating demise. Clive's and Vernon's anxieties and career stumblings give the plot its motive force and point. (I also find it surprising that characters in this novel as well as in some others, mostly British or Irish e.g. Shroud by Banville, that I have read recently can drink such gargantuan amounts of alcohol without keeling over. Do people in the arts and media really drink that much, or is this just another fantasy?)

Despite having a very different view of family and social life than I have experienced in my mundane life, I found this novel to be entertaining and absorbing. In fact I loved it. Amsterdam is not great literature but it is fun and interesting, and provokes nods of amusement and recognition as one avidly reads along.

The ending that so many other reviewers complain about is obviously a spoof. But it is not without value in that it provokes just a tinkle of worry about the ethics and practice of euthanasia. Other interesting ethical issues are gently raised and focused in the course of this short novel.

(American readers, of which I am one, should be aware that a central portion of the plot turns on issues of newspaper publication that could not arise in the USA where First Amendments rights hold force. In the USA the pictures could just be published without the injunctions, court case, and so on. This would make a huge difference to the outcome.)

I recommend this book highly especially to those of us facing a somewhat wobbly aging process and diminishing careers.

This won a Booker and Atonement didn't?.......2007-01-04

Ian McEwan is obviously a major literary talent, but the praise garnered by Amsterdam puzzles me. It is the slightest of novellas, as others have noted, and while it has its charms, the book feels dated and contrived. As McEwan is no fool, one assumes the outlandish and improbable ending is intended as an ironic and/or symbolic commentary on his two utterly self-involved main characters, Vernon and Clive. Even so, it's not particularly clever and is mildly irritating. It should hearten authors everywhere to realize (if they didn't before)that even the most talented writers hit the occasional weak fly ball. After reading several McEwan novels (this one, Enduring Love, Saturday), the achievement of Atonement is all the more remarkable. This review is not supposed to be about Atonement, but I would encourage anyone who was disappointed by Amsterdam (considering its Booker Prize, etc.)not to let that dissuade him or her from picking up Atonement. It is one of the most beautifully written, profound, surprising, and heartbreaking novels of the last quarter century.

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The menace under the surface
Religious obsessive falls for creationist
Enduring Literature
compelling
Enduring Love, Ian McEwan

Enduring Love: A Novel
Ian Mcewan
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Amsterdam: A Novel
Comfort of Strangers
The Innocent
Atonement: A Novel
Black Dogs: A Novel

ASIN: 0385494149
Release Date: 1998-12-29

Amazon.com

Joe Rose has planned a postcard-perfect afternoon in the English countryside to celebrate his lover's return after six weeks in the States. To complete the picture, there's even a "helium balloon drifting dreamily across the wooded valley." But as Joe and Clarissa watch the balloon touch down, their idyll comes to an abrupt end. The pilot catches his leg in the anchor rope, while the only passenger, a boy, is too scared to jump down. As the wind whips into action, Joe and four other men rush to secure the basket. Mother Nature, however, isn't feeling very maternal. "A mighty fist socked the balloon in two rapid blows, one-two, the second more vicious than the first," and at once the rescuers are airborne. Joe manages to drop to the ground, as do most of his companions, but one man is lifted sky-high, only to fall to his death.

In itself, the accident would change the survivors' lives, filling them with an uneasy combination of shame, happiness, and endless self-reproach. (In one of the novel's many ironies, the balloon eventually lands safely, the boy unscathed.) But fate has far more unpleasant things in store for Joe. Meeting the eye of fellow rescuer Jed Parry, for example, turns out to be a very bad move. For Jed is instantly obsessed, making the first of many calls to Joe and Clarissa's London flat that very night. Soon he's openly shadowing Joe and writing him endless letters. (One insane epistle begins, "I feel happiness running through me like an electrical current. I close my eyes and see you as you were last night in the rain, across the road from me, with the unspoken love between us as strong as steel cable.") Worst of all, Jed's version of love comes to seem a distortion of Joe's feelings for Clarissa.

Apart from the incessant stalking, it is the conditionals--the contingencies--that most frustrate Joe, a scientific journalist. If only he and Clarissa had gone straight home from the airport... If only the wind hadn't picked up... If only he had saved Jed's 29 messages in a single day... Ian McEwan has long been a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others' fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and--worst of all--becoming strangers to those who love them. Even his prose itself is a masterful and methodical exercise in defamiliarization. But Enduring Love and its underrated predecessor, Black Dogs, are also meditations on knowledge and perception as well as brilliant manipulations of our own expectations. By the novel's end, you will be surprisingly unafraid of hot-air balloons, but you won't be too keen on looking a stranger in the eye.

Book Description

On a windy spring day in the Chilterns, the calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he witnesses a tragic accident: a hot-air balloon with a boy trapped in its basket is being tossed by the wind, and in the attempt to save the child, a man is killed. A stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety. But unknown to Rose, something passes between Parry and himself on that day--something that gives birth to an obsession in Parry so powerful that it will test the limits of Rose's beloved rationalism, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to the brink of murder and madness. Brilliant and compassionate, this is a novel of love, faith, and suspense, and of how life can change in an instant.

Customer Reviews:

The menace under the surface.......2007-06-15

I had always thought Ian McEwan to be a bit of an overrated author. Good, undoubtedly, but 'the supreme novelist of his generation' as posters all over London, promoting his new novel 'On Chesil Beach' proclaim? Certainly not. For me, he has a bit too much of the fusty middle class headmaster about him. Someone who has a servicable prose style, with the odd stylistic hit, and a constructor of reasonable stories usually based on sinister or tragic events occuring to civilized middle class people, but nothing more.

Having not read anything by him for a couple of years, I recently picked up Enduring Love from my local library. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there is more to Ian McEwan than I initially suspected. His prose, clearly inspired, like so many British novelists, by Bellow, is invested with the absolute authority of reality. On the first page, as he swoops into the memorable first scene description, he depicts a bottle of wine being handed over at a Chilterns picnic. His talent for pointing out the visceral detail makes us feel we are there - we can vicariously feel the cool wine bottle, we want to taste the centerpiece of the Carluccio's picnic - 'a great ball of mozarella which the assistant fished out of an earthenware vat with a wooden claw'. With a roving cinematic eye, McEwan describes a tragic balloon accident in that first chapter - a child is trapped inside an unstable hot air baloon gusting in the wind, and Joe Rose, his wife Clarissa and various others find themselves embroiled in a tense, finely balanced moral dilemma - one of those 'if you see a train heading towards another train do you divert the points so it turns into the siding, where a child is trapped' type ethical issues so typical of freshman philosophy classes. Five men find themselves holding onto the balloon ropes as it lifts over an escarpment. If they all hold tight, they can bring the balloon down to safety, but nerves fail as the balloon lifts and the men fall away. Only one of the men, John Logan, remains holding, and he grips on until he is lifted 'almost black against the sky'. He can't hold on, and falls to his death.

For Joe Rose, a successful science journalist, this tragedy is only the beginning of a series of bizzare and troubling events. One of the other men, Jed Parry, phones him up that night and declares his undying love for him. Joe Rose tries to deflect him, but his pathalogical attentions grow deeper, and more threatening, which drives a splinter through the seams of Joe Rose's civilized, urbane existence. His stable relationship with his wife, Clarissa, a beautiful Keat's scholar, comes under strain as Joe musters all his rational might to comprehend Jed's complex, which he rightly deduces is a form of Clerambault's syndrome. He goes to visit Jean Logan, John's widow, who suspects John of being with a woman on the day he died based on a scarf that was left in his car. Clarissa becomes more and more wary of Joe's behaviour as Jed becomes more and more diligent in his stalking of Joe, fuelled by the delusional belief that he is carrying out the will of God. The middle of the book continues in a string of elegant, dark set pieces: Joe has a Kafkaesque encounter at the police station as the inspector refuses to take his case seriously, a birthday celebration at a smart restaurant culminates in a spray of blood, and Joe decides to pursue an old clapped out hippy trail to procure a gun for his self defence.

In the end, things resume focus, and closure of sorts is effected. In a detailed appendix McEwan draws back the curtain and reveals the wheels and pulleys behind his plot device - the whole novel is a fictional recasting of a real life case of de Clerembault's syndrome, concerning a 28 year old unmarried man P who pursued a successful scientific writer, R in circumstances very similar to those outlined in Enduring Love. This is a brave decision by McEwan. His novel would have stood up fine without revealing the workings in the appendix, though his decision to do so by no means diminishes his artistic achievement - Ha! He nearly had us there. The appendix is actually a clever hoax, which fooled a number of prominent psychologists who believed it was a genuine case history. So McEwan redresses some of the balance against all those pranks played by Puckish scientists who like to get one over on their woolly brained artistic peers.

Enduring Love convinced me that there is something powerful in McEwan's writing. He writes about rationality and science superbly: he finds a voice for Joe that gives a convincing portrayal inside the mind of a rational man beset with emotional difficulties, many times he references everyday events to scientific theories - for instance when he is giving evidence in the police station after the restaurant incident, he laments the 'pitiless objectivity' humans delude themselves into believing as he is told his version of events differs from that of the waiter. McEwan is a great scientist of literature. He is a cool, clinical and rational stylist, and he expertly draws on his scientific reading to create a plausible and gripping piece of fiction.

Religious obsessive falls for creationist .......2007-05-03

Science writer Joe Rose and his wife Clarissa are enjoying a day out in the Chilterns when a hot air balloon is about to crash. Joe becomes involved in attempts to save the balloon, but also unwittingly becomes involved with another would be rescuer, Jed Parry. Believing it is God's way of reaching him, Jed becomes obsessed with Joe, making phone calls, writing letters, waylaying him in the street; all the time declaring his love for Joe. Jed's irrational love and obsession reach dangerous levels, threatening the stability of Joe's marriage, and eventually driving Joe to taking extreme measures. Clarissa however has a different view of events, and questions Joe's sanity.
A tense and dramatic tale that keeps one guessing throughout; is Joe's perception of events to be believed, or is all in his mind, or even his own fabrication? The first chapter is especially gripping, and the element of surprise is maintained as the story unfolds.

Enduring Literature.......2007-04-02

This novel belongs on the shelf of enduring literature. It is a great novel. I found the characters to be alive and fascinating, the events and plot gripping, the writing superb, and in general the entire experience of reading this book to be edifying and stimulating (but see the final paragraph of my review).

I will not try to summarize the story as other reviewers have done it well. I just want to make a few points about Enduring Love that other reviewers seem to have missed.

Firstly, the title is clever. There are three love stories here, and one of them, the psychotic one, is apparently the most enduring. Of the other two, the main one, the heart of the novel, is perhaps enduring, but its "enduringness" is very much in question.

Secondly, Appendix I is made up. It is fiction.

Thirdly, this novel like the others by McEwan that I have read is very grounded in London, and it helps to be familiar with that infinite city and its surrounding area to fully appreciate what McEwan is about. The beat of teeming London is present throughout and colors the novel. Joe and Clarissa live in Maida Vale, others in Hampstead; Camden Town, Islington, Bloomsbury, etc. etc. are locales in the story. None of this is entirely irrelevant. Even Oxford and the Chiltern Hills where some of the story takes place are in what I consider to be the Greater London area (within an hour by car of central London).

Thirdly and lastly, this novel is very disturbing and readers should be aware of that. I find that I am having trouble suppressing frightening and sickening images and thoughts aroused by my reading of this book. I do not think this is a reason not to read Enduring Love and I'm not sorry I did, but readers should be warned: Reading Enduring Love Can be Dangerous to Your Equanimity!

compelling.......2007-04-01

It's great to pick up a five-star book again after a while. This was a compelling, fun read that took off for me once I got past 30 pages or so. It took me that little time to get used to the authors unusual introspective style. Sometimes I wondered if he was trying too hard to use big words or flowery prose but, like I say, he eases off with it after the first couple of chapters and it's then a great read. It's mainly about the relationship of a couple (Joe and Clarissa) during the course of a week or so while getting over witnessing an accident. Also, a nutter becoming obsessed with the man (Joe)and how, despite being in a long-term relationship, Joe is left on his own to deal with this problem himself. He finds that Clarissa lets him down when he needs her most and that his relationship with her is weaker than he thought. The authors voice is very strong and so the main character comes across as very intelligent. Told in the first person, this does show Clarissa to be comparatively rather shallow. The obsessive is brilliantly shown, especially via his letters, and a little frightening. But it's a great, fresh book that I can't imagine anyone not liking.

Enduring Love, Ian McEwan.......2007-01-03

I was extremely excited about reading my first Ian McEwan book but was sorely disappointed.

The married couple in this book, Clarissa and Joe are portrayed as having a very close, very connected, loving and bonded relationship in the first few chapters of the book. Within twenty-four hours of a tragic accident, Clarissa is suddenlty accusing her husband of being delusional and dishonest. Joe, as we've been told, is an extremely stable, methodical research scientist without a hint of a troubled mental health history.

So why the sudden mistrust? I hoped that perhaps this would be explained to me as I read further but alas, it just becomes more ridiculous and unbelievable as the pages turn.

Clarissa finally ends her relationship with Joe, at least temporarily. This is after there is irrefutable evidence that Joe has been sane from the very beginning. Still, apparently, she perceives him as "cutting her out" and going it alone, despite the fact he spends most of the book trying to communicate his concerns to her.
I am so baffled. What was this book really about?

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Amazing
Pales in comparison
Astonishing!
Gut-wrenchingly worthwhile.
The Importance of Childhood

The Child in Time
Ian Mcewan
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Black Dogs: A Novel
The Innocent
Comfort of Strangers
The Cement Garden
Enduring Love

ASIN: 0385497520
Release Date: 1999-11-02

Amazon.com

The Child in Time opens with a harrowing event. Stephen Lewis, a successful author of children's books, takes his 3-year-old daughter on a routine Saturday morning trip to the supermarket. While waiting in line, his attention is distracted and his daughter is kidnapped. Just like that. From there, Lewis spirals into bereavement that has effects on his relationship with his wife, his psyche and time itself: "It was a wonder there could be so much movement, so much purpose, all the time. He himself had none." This beautifully haunting book won a 1987 Whitbread Prize.

Book Description

Stephen Lewis, a successful writer of children's books, is confronted with the unthinkable: his only child, three-year-old Kate, is snatched from him in a supermarket. In one horrifying moment that replays itself over the years that follow, Stephen realizes his daughter is gone.

With extraordinary tenderness and insight, Booker Prize–winning author Ian McEwan takes us into the dark territory of a marriage devastated by the loss of a child. Kate's absence sets Stephen and his wife, Julie, on diverging paths as they each struggle with a grief that only seems to intensify with the passage of time. Eloquent and passionate, the novel concludes in a triumphant scene of love and hope that gives full rein to the author's remarkable gifts. The winner of the Whitbread Prize, The Child in Time is an astonishing novel by one of the finest writers of his generation.

Customer Reviews:

Amazing.......2007-02-27

Even though I was forced to read this for my A level.. I loved it. I was in floods of tears by the end of the first chapter and stayed with the plot to the end. The emotions that this book brought to the surface stayed with me for hours after I'd finished.

Pales in comparison.......2007-02-15

When this book first came out, it represented a leap for McEwan. He had moved from dark, pathological novels to this, which is clearly a more mainstream approach to novel writing. However, when put on the bookshelf next to the later classics, Atonement, Saturday, Amsterdam, Enduring Love, etc., it clearly will never be considered one of this writer's better novels. As a reader, the problem stems from too many vignettes and story lines occuring at once. The structure fits the topic, that is, an author playing with the concepts of time. There are beautifully-written passages, a hallmark of McEwan's writing, but together, they make somewhat of a patchwork quilt. There is no doubt that the book is representative of a youngish author about to blossom and, perhaps for that reason, is certainly significant in the McEwan stream of books. But as a standalone novel, it suffers from the known beauty of what is to come.

Astonishing!.......2006-05-31

There are few novelists as articulate as Ian McEwan. In THE CHILD IN TIME, McEwan frequently uses this great gift to lift the perfect observation from familiar situations so that a reader reacts: "Yes, that is exactly so." Or, his articulateness breaks down a moment--a quick progression of moods, for example--so that a reader can identify the swell, surge, and flood of emotion that initiates, say, honest mourning. With McEwan, this articulateness achieves moments of poetic realism that are on a par with the best writing of John Updike. It's absolutely great!

Even so, the psychology of McEwan's characters can be unfamiliar in THE CHILD IN TIME, sometimes veering into the strange terrains of depression, madness, or extra-dimensional experience. Or, his characters may embody an element of an argument that the articulate McEwan, master of this universe, decides to examine and build into the flow. Then, the articulate and persuasive McEwan crashes against stonewall of my skeptical common sense.

Regardless, read the spellbinding THE CHILD IN TIME and watch Stephen Lewis take the blow and then heal emotionally after the kidnapping and disappearance of his wee daughter. An excellent read and highly recommended!

Gut-wrenchingly worthwhile........2006-03-16

It's the seventh McEwan book I have read and he never ceases to amaze me, but this one was exceptionally good.
It is a story that works on so many levels... overall it is somewhat of a psychological-thriller/love-romance thing. It is bracketed with intensely fever-pitch emotionally charged opening and closing chapters, with some really magical magical realism interspersed throughout the body of the story.
Stephen Lewis is a writer of children's books. Successful. Happily married. Tickety-boo!
One sunny morning he trots off to the supermarket with his three-year old daughter, Kate. Later, at the checkout line, in a flash, in an instant, she is gone.
Vanished.
[Don't worry, I will say no more along these lines... will not spoil the story for you, but even the jacket-blurb will tell you the same as what I have just revealed....]
This is only Chapter One! I have rarely read anything so real. So vividly drawn my heart raced, I was frantic, and I am not even the parent of a child.
What will happen to Stephen's marriage as a result of this loss? Or to his career as a writer? How will Stephen and his wife Julie cope, as the Kateless years begin to unravel around them?
Will Kate ever be found? The possibilities are endless, and McEwan keeps the inner tension equally endless. It is amazing what McEwan is able to do with the last few pages of the book. [Don't peek. DO NOT peek].
It is a hauntingly good read.
A journey to the very depths of profound grief. Rising towards hope.
You know how sometimes you finish a novel and you set it down and you are a bit underwhelmed, and you regret having spent that much time to be rewarded with just that final disappointed sigh? [Same thing happens at movies, when the credits start rolling and you stare at the screen and think "What?"]
Well, when I set down The Child In Time, just last evening, my thoughts were more like, "Wow! That was seriously gut-wrenchingly worthwhile."
This is one of his best.
McEwan is definitely one of the very best authors out there.

The Importance of Childhood.......2005-12-18

Stephen Lewis is a writer of children's books, haunted by the abduction of his three year old daughter Kate. While working on a Government Commission on childcare, memories of the abduction come back to him strongly, bringing into question whether or not he has come to terms with his loss.

There's much to be said for this novel: the author shows a careful and sympathetic examination of loss and grief, also of the importance of both childhood and parenthood in charcter formation. What spoils the book slightly is the parallel plot concerning Stephen's friend Charles Darke - a politician in mental decline. McEwan never weaves this plot and the main one successfully together. I think this is because the plot centered on Darke is weaker and less convincing than the main one as well as being of doubtful relevance to it.

Nonetheless, it's a novel worthy of a read.

G Rodgers

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The conflict of responding to conflict...
An early gem
Bull's eye
An Ominous Commentary on the Lurking Threat of Evil
A fun way to learn about post WW II Europe

Black Dogs: A Novel
Ian McEwan
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Similar Items:

The Innocent
The Child in Time
Comfort of Strangers
The Cement Garden
Amsterdam: A Novel

ASIN: 0385494327
Release Date: 1998-12-29

Book Description

Set in late 1980s Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Black Dogs is the intimate story of the crumbling of a marriage, as witnessed by an outsider. Jeremy is the son-in-law of Bernard and June Tremaine, whose union and estrangement began almost simultaneously. Seeking to comprehend how their deep love could be defeated by ideological differences Bernard and June cannot reconcile, Jeremy undertakes writing June's memoirs, only to be led back again and again to one terrifying encouner forty years earlier--a moment that, for June, was as devastating and irreversible in its consequences as the changes sweeping Europe in Jeremy's own time. In a finely crafted, compelling examination of evil and grace, Ian McEwan weaves the sinister reality of civiliation's darkest moods--its black dogs--with the tensions that both create love and destroy it.

Customer Reviews:

The conflict of responding to conflict..........2006-05-01

McEwan again assembles an artful masterpiece of characters and events that the reader cannot help but internalize as though it were a chronicle of his own struggle. Narrated with insight by a son-in-law who recognized the raw embattlement we all encounter when we find ourselves evolving around the love that once defined us. Bernard and June, once the subjects of a passionate love story, find themselves changing as any person would with age and education; but the ongoing change in each, in how the world is seen and how what is seen is responded to, becomes irreconcilable with the other, leaving in the dust of a trail their relationship but not their love or respect for each other.

Another exilerating installment from a genuine gift to our language, McEwan again demonstrates what the written word is capable of.

An early gem.......2006-01-16

There simply is no such thing as a bad -- or mediocre, for that matter -- McEwan book. McEwan uses the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin wall to serve as a historical context to his examination of the lives of June and Bernard Tremaine. While on her honeymoon, June experiences a life-altering event with two black dogs that takes her on a lifelong spiritual path. Her relationship with her husband Bernard, a committed member of the British Communist party, will never be the same. McEwan uses this splintered relationship as a touchpoint for an examination of matters of the soul and matters of the mind. In McEwan's world, the two are capable of co-existing, but barely. We can only surmise that the wall's fall and the resultant diminishment of Communism tips McEwan's hand in terms of where he comes down on this relevant argument and metaphor. As with all of McEwan's books, the action can take place on numerous levels and playing fields. The language, as always, is beautiful; every sentence a gem.

Bull's eye.......2006-01-08

Set in post second world war Europe (mostly France) and extending to the late eighties, Ian McEwan's Black Dogs is the memoir of protagonist Jeremy, who diligently sets about to chronicle the lives of his in-laws, Bernard and June Tremaine. Jeremy was an orphan with a proclivity for insinuating himself into the families of his friends and, lately, his wife.

As we see in McEwan's Atonement, Black Dogs is also about the writing of a novel. Jeremy attempts to set the record straight about his in-laws, intellectuals on opposing surfaces of the same coin. June is a romantic, a mystic, who sees life as a journey through the inner space of reflective meditation and personal awareness. Her husband is an organizer, a thinker who feels the world can be set right only through the right application of right ideas. Since both June and Bernard would rather be right than happy, and since neither could see the conceit and limitations of their own viewpoints, they wasted a lifetime of love in separate but parallel existences.

The black dogs, the central allegorical feature of the novel, are either a fact, a historical event that evolved out of the depravity of humankind (dogs tend to be rather like their handlers), or they are more symbolic features, a mythological construction representing evil, manifest as personal depression and cultural depravity. Could they be both?

Could Bernard, the arcane intellectual who would rather spend hours talking about the plight of the poor than a half our in their company, could he be a courageous, understanding man after all? Where does love go, after it has filtered through a thousand grand but irrelevant arguments? How do we stumble upon who we are and how we got here?

McEwan is a delight to read. He has exceptional insight into human frailty and how it plays out in personal and national tragedy. His prose is razor sharp and his palette is rich and warm. The voices he gives his characters will remain with us.

An Ominous Commentary on the Lurking Threat of Evil.......2005-05-07

Ian McEwan proves once again in BLACK DOGS to be a master of literary understatement, a writer whose power (like that of fellow Brit Kazuo Ishiguro) derives from an ability to thread hints of mindless evil through even the most well-heeled, socially-ordered circumstances. In McEwan's modern world, newlyweds, happy families, and prosperous businessmen and professionals live, often blissfully unaware, on a cliff edge, always just a short step from a precipitous drop into loss or chaos. Even the most comfortable lives are far more fragile and more easily disrupted than those who live them ever imagine.

In BLACK DOGS, McEwan has trained his sights on the world-shattering events of the mid-20th Century, from World War II and the rise of fascism and communism to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He chooses as his narrator a young man named Jeremy, orphaned at an early age by an auto accident, raised by his older sister (herself trapped in a dysfunctional marriage), and bookishly educated in an English prep school. Inordinately attached to the parents of his school friends, Jeremy meets and marries Jenny Tremaine and becomes equally, if not more attached, to Jenny's free-spirited, socially and politically liberal parents, Bernard and June. It is Bernard and June who provide the core of this novel, their story unfolding on dual tracks through Jeremy and Bernard's attendance at the fall of the Berlin Wall and Jeremy's interviews with June as background for publication of her memoirs.

Throughout the novel, McEwan hints at a transformational event in June's life, something that occurred when she and Bernard were newlyweds hiking through south France. Because of this mysterious event, which took place near a dolmen, an ancient tomb or burial ground, June had abandoned communism for a form of religious mysticism, she and Bernard separated (but never divorced) for nearly their entire adult lives, and they bought a country home near the site of the life-changing incident. McEwan alludes repeatedly to black dogs and the story of the local village mayor, but it is not until the end that we learn the nature of the event itself. More significant, we learn the source of these ominous black dogs and their historical and metaphorical meanings. Only in the last third of the book does the true horror of those amorphous dogs come to light, and even then, McEwan leaves their meaning ambiguous - perhaps real, perhaps the lewd imaginings of a few country farmers. Similarly, June's transformation can be seen as realization of life's fragility or as a religious epiphany with echoes of the lightning that struck Saul in the New Testament and converted him to Paul the Apostle.

McEwan's message is inescapable. Whether we view life through a rational, scientific lens or a religious, mystical one, we must be on guard against the emergence of evil, whether modestly benign or umimaginably malevolent. The human potential for evil rests within everyone, and it lurks at the fringes of society, hidden from sight like black dogs roaming a sparsely-populated countryside, until we turn a corner and stare it face to face. How we respond (compare June's direct actions to Bernard's simultaneously intellectualized ponderings over a parade of caterpillars) says everything about who we are, how we influence the course of events around us, and how those events affect us (could Jenny's atrophied sixth finger be a byproduct of June's experience with pure evil at the dolmen?). BLACK DOGS masterfully contemplates the issues of good and evil and faith versus rationalism while leaving readers plenty of room to argue either side. The pacing is almost too controlled, but the resulting explosion of irrationality into an ordered world is all the more powerful for it.

A fun way to learn about post WW II Europe.......2005-04-30

It is fairly well-known among people who know about it, that Churchill had bouts of depression (whether it was the clinical type of depression as described in the DSM-IV will probably never be known, which he referred to as the "black dog." McEwan cleverly appropriates the term and uses it as a metaphor--applying it to the title of this book. Its relevance becomes clear in a dangerous encounter with two real black dogs by Jane, one-half of a sixty-something Euro-leftist couple whom the narrator, a studious young man, befriends. Through this trio, the narrator, Howard, and Jane we get glimpses of some milestones in post WW-II European history from 1946 up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Howard recollects the couple's political and private experiences during that era, and one chapter is devoted to the older man and the narrator strolling around Berlin, circa 1990 as the wall comes down. This symbol of liberation is complemented setting for some of the book when the two sort of walk around and observe the event as some sort of turning point in European history. The avuncular if a bit intense older man discusses British and Continental politics, the ups and downs of his marriage to his wife (he's an intellectual sort; she's an artiste type), he more the realist; she the idealist Toward the end of the novel, Jane encounters two threatening black dogs along the British coast while they are on holiday (the woman, I believe, not the dogs), thus providing the reader with a loose metaphor for the hidden beast lurking beneath the veneer of human civility and European enlightenment. The characters seem rather boring and wan. It's not clear whether this is McEwan's way of showing the dissolution of the hopes of the "revolution" or whether he just writes about characters he thinks are more interesting than they are. The stroll along the Berlin Wall is so anemic and contrived, I'd have preferred to have read a narrative about a couple of kids playing handball against it. The author seems to feel that revealing the disappointments of idealism and rationalism is some sort of original or significant statement. One might call this message a secular, fictional eqivalent of "Why bad things happen to good people." These characters are the sort of people that characters in Saul Bellow's books or Hemingway's would probably enjoy railing against or better yet, yell "Get a Life" across a bar--whether it be Paris, Washington, DC, or Pamplona. Happily the book is short.

Average customer rating:

Beware the child-welfare agencies!!!
Good but brief
McEwan at his most hauntingly shocking.
Not For Me
If left unsupervised, do children sink into depravity?

The Cement Garden
Ian Mcewan
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679750185
Release Date: 1994-01-13

Book Description

In this tour de force of psychological unease--now a major motion picture starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Sinead Cusack--McEwan excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting--or denying. "Possesses the suspense and chilling impact of Lord of the Flies."--Washington Post Book World.

Customer Reviews:

Beware the child-welfare agencies!!!.......2006-08-25

As a good Christian and upstanding Republican it warmed my heart to read this book and its charming story of four resourceful children wisely heeding the dying wishes of their parents not to notify authorities of their orphan-hood. Indeed, had they run to the authorities they would have been separated from each other and not experienced the oneness and unity which concludes this book in the best finishing scene since "The Waltons" back in the seventies. And yes, as many have pointed out, this book is a ripoff of that heartwarming scouting tale "Lord of the Flies". Yeah, so Led Zeppelin's "the Lemon Song" is also a ripoff of Howlin' Wolf's "the Killing Floor". Some things bear repeating.

Good but brief.......2006-08-16

Although Atonement was probably the book that put Ian McEwan "on the map", he's actually been around for quite a while. The Cement Garden is one of his earliest books, a brief novel that is more than a little reminiscent of The Lord of the Flies.

Jack, the narrator, is a boy in his mid-teens with three siblings: an older sister Julie, a younger sister Sue and his far younger brother Tom. Their father dies as the story opens and soon thereafter, their mother begins to waste away and finally dies herself. Determined to stay together as a family, the four hide her body in the cellar.

Like The Lord of the Flies, this lack of adult supervision leads to a descent into savagery. Actually, it's not that bad, but the four are unable to keep things running smoothly. The two boys are especially affected: Tom begins to lose his own identity, first dressing as a girl and later reverting to a more childlike state. As for Jack, he becomes nastier both in behavior and in appearance, refusing to bathe or even change clothes; he is torn between mind-numbing apathy and a darkly physical attraction towards Julie, which she at times encourages.

Glimpses of the life before they became orphans show that their parents (especially their father) were rather distant and sometimes it seems like the four kids stay together more out of habit than any real love. McEwan's writing is good, but the story itself is a little sparse, especially for a novel. For that reason, I'm giving this a low four stars; it's good, but it's not very filling.

McEwan at his most hauntingly shocking........2006-08-10

This was Ian McEwan's first novel, a brilliantly written and beguiling little fable on the tragic inability of individuals to escape from society's rules and create their own world and values.

At this early stage of his career, McEwen was heavily influenced by feminism, but rather than writing a simplistic allegory on the evils of patriarchism (as a superficial reading might lead one to interpret this as), here, as in most of his works, there is something far more unsettling at the heart of the story.

Many will find the subject matter quite disturbing, and its unlikely that McEwen will ever dare to be as shocking again (British authors seem to have left that prerogative entirely to Houellebeq). Still, this is authentic McEwen, if your only experience of him is through his last novel 'Saturday', then read this and discover something much darker, yet something far more beautiful.

Not For Me.......2006-07-08

This is probably one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. I don't mean disturbing as in thought provoking and edgy, I mean disturbing as in tasteless and barbaric. I found nothing redeeming about this novel whatsoever. McEwan may be a fine writer, but his choice of subject matter and plot, in my eyes, leaves much to be desired.

In The Cement Garden, four children, a boy and two girls in their early and mid-teens, as well as one very young boy, lose their father and then, not much later, their mother as well. Faced with the prospect of what to do with their mother's body, they make a very unusual decision and find themselves without any supervision at all. The novel describes in detail the slow descent these children experience as they do not employ any self-discipline or civility.

Our narrator, a young boy in his mid-teens, is truly one of the most despicable narrators I've ever come across. He is not evil, but he is the portrait of apathy. He refuses to keep himself clean, he is sexually perverse, he is mean-spirited, and he is lazy beyond words. I'm afraid the rest of the characters are not far behind him in likeability.

If McEwan wanted to present a story with completely unpleasant characters committing one odious act after another, well then, he succeeded unfalteringly. I did not enjoy this very brief novel in any way, shape, or form.

If left unsupervised, do children sink into depravity?.......2006-07-04

Ian McEwan's "The Cement Garden" is the ultimate perversion, a tale of four siblings whose lives decend into incest and other vices. The subject matter is shocking, but as I read the book I found the events becoming obvious.
Take the father, for instance. He's vile, stoic, and stubborn, and though there's no mention of his age, he comes across as a mean old man. The mother comes across as a weak-willed, emotionless middle-class British housewife, who gives her son the most inane warnins against masturbation and all the horrible things it does to you ("it takes a full pint of blood to replace it"). I knew from the get-go that both parents would die off quickly, since they are of such little consequence other than keeping up the apearance of a nuclear family. It came as no surprise that the children would hide the mother's body in the basement. Forget what she tells them about avoiding the orphanages; they seem to bury her in the basement as though they were casting her off. What do we dump in the basement? Here's some ideas; old furniture, old bikes, an old crib, the guitar you gave up, excess dishes, etc. The children dump the mother's corpse in the basement as though it were old furniture!
With the parents dead, the children do the usual kid stuff; they go to school, read, watch TV. But they don't seem to have any friends, and no adults inhabit the landscape. We don't see the friendly old grocer, the wise old newsagent, the milkman, or any of the adults or businesses that inhabit the world. It seems as though their home is alone in a vast prairie of concrete.
Left alone, the children engage in sexualized play that doesn't seem healthy. Julie, the oldest, indulges her 6 year old brother's infantilism and takes an older man as a boyfriend. Jack, the teenage boy, fantasizes (and eventualy has sex with) his older sister. Tom, the youngest boy, "experiments" with transvestism and degresses to infantilism. But there's another child, a 13 year old named Sue. She rarely figures in the book, spending most of her time alone. I wonder what she's thinking.
Why does Tom want to dress like a girl and be treated as an infant? Does he want attention? His older sisters don't just give him girl's clothes; they actively dress him in them. Is he looking for the attention his mother never showed? Julie eventualy tires of Tom's demands for attention, but after all, she indulged it in the first place.
I will not reveal the three events that take place at the end. But I will make the observation of the parents' influence (before they're quickly killed off). The mother tells Jack that masturbation can damage your health, but he learns from a teacher that it's natural. Has a burden been lifted off his head, or has he learned that vices have no drawbacks? If so, does he believe that other "perversions" are safe as well?

Average customer rating:

Really good when you think back over it
Dark Days
The thrill lies not where you expect
A startling and fascinating tale
I have conflicting feelings about this book

The Innocent: A Novel
Ian McEwan
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0385494335
Release Date: 1998-12-29

Book Description

Leonard Marnham is assigned to a British-American surveillance team in Cold War Berlin. His intelligence work—tunneling under a Russian communications center to tap the phone lines to Moscow—offers him a welcome opportunity to begin shedding his own unwanted innocence, even if he is only a bit player in a grim international comedy of errors. Leonard's relationship with Maria Eckdorf, an enigmatic and beautiful West Berliner, likewise promises to loosen the bonds of his ordinary life. But the promise turns to horror in the course of one terrible evening—a night when Leonard Marnham learns just how much of his innocence he's willing to shed.

Customer Reviews:

Really good when you think back over it.......2006-04-19

I'll agree with everyone else in that for the first 3/4 of the book, I had no idea where I was headed. And then 'it' happened and the last 1/4 redeemed the entire story.

Although the first 3/4 is a bit lacking in action, it contains images of war-torn Europe and wonderful characterizations of the people who lived among the ruins that I will never forget.

Begin it, stick with it, and enjoy it.

Dark Days.......2006-02-23

In bleak 1950s Berlin, a top secret Anglo-American tunnelling project is under way with the aim of tapping secret Soviet phone traffic. Involved in the project is Leonard Marnham, who although in his mid-20s is a virgin, uncomfortable both with his role in the US-run project and especially with women. Leonard's life is changed by a chance meeting with a local German woman. The only threat to their happiness is her ex-husband Otto, a violent drunk.

McEwan paints a picture of a bleak Cold War Berlin filled with unsure Britains, cocksure Americans and Germans caught inbetween. The novel becomes gradually more gruesome and macabre, and I suppose that each reader's judgement of the novel will in a large part depend on the reaction to those sections. I thought the novel succeeds by its sense of place, time and atmosphere, of people caught in events they find alomost impossible to control, leading them to act in ways they would not have thought possible. Or perhaps is that really the case? Is Leonard really that much of an innocent?

An interesting and at times disturbing read.

G Rodgers

The thrill lies not where you expect.......2005-08-14

McEwan creates well the atmosphere of a post-war, pre-wall Berlin, amplifying our imaginings. The interaction between Brits and Americans is full of subtle humor, and as it later turns out, great regard and humane understanding. The narrative is smooth and concerns an everyman, virgin, British geek assigned to an American intelligence project consisting of building a tunnel crossing the border into the Russian zone to tap underground phone cables through which presumably important matters are discussed (remember, we are in 1948, almost a decade before Sputnik). Love interest and sexual education is provided by an experienced German girl to our Brit, the virgin geek. The writing is so smooth that one doesn't realize one is turning pages and reading on at a rate as if one were reading a chock-full-of-events thriller when in fact not much is really happening; the tunnel is just chugging along. But McEwan is a "smooth operator" and he is moving you along, hinting at tension, to the point you are expectant of actions or revelations in the intelligence component of the novel to pop-up any minute and throw everything topsy-turvy.

Rest assured McEwan is too smart to do that. Nothing happens as such that you are aware of for three quarters of the book until our everyman, the somewhat endearing British geek is plunged into a grand guignol not of his making and totally alien to the place where you would have expected the excitement you were owed to come from.(After all, you bought the book and it was sold to you as a thriller, and after all, it takes place in thriller-city and all major protagonists except two are freeks and geeks and goons and guards mostly in uniform and with varying levels of security clearance in the intelligence services of the powers which split this city. At times it looks as if each agent has his little black book which lists the interests they are called uypon to protect, investigate, eliminate, whatever, and thus move quickly about, talk with other similar blokes and keep moving about. The Tunnel provides a country-club of sorts for those connected with the project. There are body parts indeed, but they do not come from there.

So, much activity occurs in our atmospheric tunnel, yes. But nothing happens there really. The unwelcomed death occurs elsewhere, has nothing to do with Military Intelligence. The neatly wrapped body parts do not bring the Tunnel down, it's the disguise they wear. But the story does not end there.

Many years later a mature, no longer virginal Brit geek comes back to Berlin, post wall, to revisit sites, and carries with him a letter explaining what precipitated events at the tunnel and freed him of any trace of guilt, if any such he held.

The explication at the end of the book is clear, surprising, and truly closes the nattarive in an intelligent, satisfying way.

Endearing Love, after such an unforgettable opening and the obsessive development remains my favourite McEwan novel so far. Saturday is contrived, feels Thatcherite and stacked against the lower orders. Nonetheless I appreciated the medical tracts. (It's up for a Booker). In short, I liked "The Innocent" Better.

A startling and fascinating tale.......2005-06-15

The term "breath-taking" is one that book reviewers toss about with more ease than readers believe. but McEwan's post-war/thriller/romance can leave you breathless as it slips cannily from the everyday to the astonishing. People who could not imagine being caught up in webs of intrigue and deception find their lives turned topsy-turvy in most imaginative and startling ways. The more I read of the McEwan list the more I am amazed by his artistry, and variety of plot and characters. Every bit as fine a read as "Amsterdam" and "Atonement."

I have conflicting feelings about this book.......2005-04-27

This is such an old school novel. I was thinking for the first half that it bore a striking resemblance to the better Graham Green. But as I kept working my way through the pages, the laconic prose kept putting me off. Don't get me wrong, the pages in this book flow like a molasses dream. But the story builds so slowly that it becomes frustrating. The main character is not very intelligent, and as a reader you will be jumping ahead of him, screaming at him like he was the blond bimbo in a horror flick to run out of the house. So as the story builds at its slooooow pace, and the `unsophisticated postal technician' Leonard Marnham frustratingly gets batted about like a moth in a box, we are left not as entranced readers, but as frustrated onlookers. That is my main beef with this story. I could not enjoy myself spending time with this character or the circumstances. McEwan did a remarkable job in writing this and pacing the story, he just never gave us a character that we as readers could relate to.

I have never read McEwan before, and I am looking forwards to trying my hand at another of his novels. It was courageous on his part to create such a novel as this, and I respect him greatly for doing so. But I just don't think that this book worked very well.

Average customer rating:

Interesting and recommended (mainly for its brevity)
WHY?
So-so McEwan
Very disappointed
Going for shock value

The Comfort of Strangers
Ian Mcewan
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679749845
Release Date: 1994-11-01

Book Description

As their holiday unfolds, Colin and Maria are locked into their own intimacy. They groom themselves meticulously, as though someone is waiting for them who cares deeply about how they appear. When they meet a man with a disturbing story to tell, they become drawn into a fantasy of violence and obsession.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting and recommended (mainly for its brevity).......2007-05-30

This was an interesting story that caused me to think about and question the main characters motivations. It moved along at a nice pace and McEwan did not get overly bogged down in minute details of surroundings or histories.

I was just a little bit dissapointed in the ending simply because it didn't seem to make a heck of a lot of sense to me and the old ' i will leave things rather vague and open to interpretation' ending can be annoying.

But overall it was an enjoyable read and did whet my appetite to try another of his works.

WHY?.......2007-05-19

I was disappointed by this book. I think a short novel like this has to sparkle and it didn't at all. Most of the book concerns a couple on holiday walking about the shops and restaurants etc. In the latter part they get to know this couple who seem overly keen to be friendly and then there is the ending, which I won't spoil for you, that just left me thinking why on earth write such an empty, zero of a book.

So-so McEwan.......2006-11-15

Ian McEwan is a good writer, but not every one of his books is a worthwhile read. The Comfort of Strangers, a brief novel of less than 130 pages, is slightly above average, but is not really as deep nor compelling as some of his other books (such as Atonement or Enduring Love).

In an unnamed European city, Mary and Colin vacation. Lovers for a while, they have never gone as far as marriage or even living together, and as the book opens, they have drifted into a blandly content relationship that often fades into tedium. More than being bored with each other, these are just bored people; on this vacation, they seem to meander aimlessly, unable to really enjoy anything.

Into their lives appears Robert, a local who becomes friendly with them very quickly and tries to show them a better time. Although generally obnoxious, he somehow does help Mary and Colin get closer. Robert, however, is not as nice as he seems, nor is his wife Caroline. By the time Mary and Colin realize this, they are already ensnared.

McEwan's minimalist approach to this story is only partially effective. There are no other characters of note beyond these four, and even they have no last names. Robert and Caroline, in fact, have more detailed backgrounds than Mary and Colin, of whom we know little of substance. On the one hand, this bare-bones approach gives the story a nice starkness that is reminiscent of authors like Hemingway; on the other hand, the lack of detail makes it harder to really empathize with either of the two protagonists. There is nothing truly bad in this book, but little to make it really stand out either. This one is probably for McEwan fans only who want to read his early works.

Very disappointed.......2006-09-28

My bookclub picked this out based on the exciting description. It was very diappointing. The main characters, Colin and Mary, are one dimensional and seem to have very little chemistry between the two of them. There were a few times in the book that I wondered if Mary had multiple personalities. It is unclear what their history is or what is the full story about her kids, why they are vacationing there, etc.

Robert and Carolyn reek of creepy, creepy from the first moment that the reader meets them. However, they are more interesting then the main characters of Mary and Colin. At least Robert had a bit more dimension to him than the other characters.

The ending was the most exciting part of the book. The rest just goes on and on about nothing. Even with an exciting ending it leaves so many holes and unanswered questions that just leave you wondering "What the ? ? ?"

Going for shock value.......2006-04-28

Our book club all read this as our first Ian Mcewan book. It was so short that the exact history/relationship of the couple is never established. You don't know enough about the couple to care much about them, so the ending seems disturbing as it comes out of nowhere and seems to be the ONLY interesting thing to happen in the book.

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