Ian McEwan: Black Dogs

My favourite McEwan so far I think, because there was nothing in it that seemed left hanging, or superfluous, or whatever it's been that's slightly bothered me about his books. This is just all the best of him. He has this wonderful way of writing a book about one event while adding on all these other bits that might not be that relevant, but that combine to make a lovely literary experience. Here, the narrator is a man who was orphaned early and spent a lot of time cozying up to other people's parents, so when he finally marries he is very keen that his wife's parents should get along again, despite them having been more or less estranged for years. The black dogs of the title attacked his mother-in-law on the honeymoon, and were responsible for a spiritual experience that set her off in a different direction than her husband. So that's really the story, more than half of it is the narrator describing his life, and how he talks to his parents-in-law, ponders their estrangement, tells us how he meets his wife, relates how he tries to write a biography of his mother-in-law, and thus how he gets the full story, and with that story he ends the book. It's very likeable and somehow, despite the scattered events in it, very succinct. I liked it a lot.

Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach

It is, I suppose, really a rather moving little story (more novella than novel) of how desire, inexperience and fear of sex drive a wedge between two young people on their wedding night. In his customary manner McEwan tells the short tale in minute detail, handling and turning over every detail of what is being felt and thought and sensed and said, and afterwards finishes off with a sort of epilogue where we find out how it all ended for the two. Did they sort things out or was this it?

Of the McEwans I've read I actually think it's the best one. There is no discrepancy in it really, no bit that seems shoved in there leaving me wondering whether it belongs. I'm still debating inside whether he's overrated or not - right now leaning towards not. I'm kind of struck by a feeling that he has done historical research even for this little thing set in 1962 - there's a description at the start of how mediocre English cuisine of the time is, and how their wedding dinner's starter is a slice of melon with a glacé cherry on top. Somehow seems rather detailed, as though he'd read an old hotel menu.

I didn't hate it, nor was I that enamoured. I suppose he's not really my kind of writer. Something is lacking. Mostly I'm annoyed that I finished the book before 2 am and I didn't finish work until 8. What was I supposed to do - play Bubbleshooter all that time? Like, omgz.

Ian McEwan: Atonement

Just as I finished my last blog entry approx. ten million years ago I also finished this book. Since then I have not read much at all - well, I reread all my Mma Ramotswe books, but that hardly counts. Not because I don't like them, but because they're so easy to read and all.

Atonement is also easy to read, albeit considerably wordier. It's a better novel than the last McEwan I read, definitely, and this could be why the cover blurb labels it McEwan's masterpiece. But it hasn't stuck with me. I wonder why this is - isn't it funny how some things you read cement themselves into your brain, but others do not? Even if they're objectively speaking better literature...? I think I'm just not a huge fan of the rather wordy, introspective style that McEwan is an example of. Briony, who is 12 or so when the story begins, has an incredibly profound lightbulb moment about her writing which goes on for a good few pages and baffles me a little because is she thinking this as a 12-year-old? Really? Is the author interpreting her confusion into this succinct form? I wonder I wonder. Then Briony commits her crime, her false accusation, and that bit is great, it was hard to turn the pages knowing that she was going to go down that route - please Briony don't! but she does. Then comes very good descriptions of being in the war, very blunt and without hero-worshiping - I liked those bits a lot too, and then a lot of bits about how tough it was to be a nurse in those days, and then it sort of ends. And I'm not sure if I really liked it as a package. I've spent more time thinking about what to write about this book than I've spent remembering the book itself.

Maybe I'm just thick though. Not impossible.

Ian McEwan: Enduring Love

Another of mr Bani's buys. On the cover is a quote from Bill Bryson saying that it's "beautifully written" and "utterly compelling from the very first page". I suspect that Bryson is very attracted to our main character, Joe Rose, who is a scientist-turned-writer/television persona. Now, it is well written - but it ain't all that, all the same.

The storyline is that Joe Rose and his wife witness a hot-air balloon accident, resulting in one death. Another man present, Jed, meets Joe's eyes immediately afterwards, and this results in a sickly romantic fixation (on behalf of Jed, not Joe). So while Joe and his wife are trying to cope with the trauma of witnessing the tragedy and the guilt, they also have to cope with Jed stalking Joe. And Joe's wife is none too sure that it's not all in Joe's head, or that he isn't in some way causing it.

The novel starts out very philosophical. A lot of thinking, a lot of what-ifs and if-onlys. Sort of like Jonathan Safran Foer, whom I must now admit that I never finished reading (but I blame the fact that it was a translation and I never got sucked in). I liked this bit, and by the time it started becoming a more conventional thriller-type story I still had high hopes that it would be original, thanks to the pensive beginning. However, it doesn't live up to expectation IMO, but sort of peters out into a predictable showdown. And then we get some sort of epilogue that purports to be written by the psychologists in charge of Jed, who sum up the nature of his fixation, describe its causes and cures, and also slip in the "what happened next".

I'm not sure what to make of that. I usually quite like that kind of genre-mixing, but I was disappointed this time.