Amsterdam

From the sublime to the ridiculous.This dark comedy is drastically and disastrously unlike my very first McEwan book, Atonement. A story about two smug, self-absorbed friends, Clive and Vernon, who contemplate their own mortality after the painful and untimely death of their common friend, Molly, at 46. It seems that the passing away of Molly Lane, a vivacious, pleasure-seeking, free spirited photographer, diminishes the spark from their own lives, compels them to ponder their future and come up with an unusual pact for a less disgraceful exit. What follows is a ridiculous plot decorated with charitable self-reflections, humorous observations, weighty moral conundrums, holier-than-thou moans and groans, unexpected spins, and a very, very mediocre ending -- all of it in the superior and elegant prose of McEwan. I could somehow endure the anticlimactic end as it could be remotely amusing for their pact to come full circle but what about the implausible characterization? Why would two sane grownups who have been life-long friends turn dangerously and irrevocably hostile?

One redeeming point for me was the sly commentary on the cultural decline in the society using the falling standards of news and music as examples. McEwan's clever portrayal of hypocrisy and opportunistic behavior made me chuckle. Also, the witty and eloquent prose was a consolation. And since I'm partial to self-reflections, more so when there are indulgent justifications of selective morality and flashes of casual misanthropy, I enjoyed their mental rants quite a bit.

As I wrap up, some profound thoughts on life and death from Amsterdam:

n  

He knew so many people who had died that in his present state of dissociation he could begin to contemplate his own end as commonplace -- a flurry of burying or cremating, a welt of grief raised, then subsiding as life swept on. 

There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die. 

We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white. Here was a rare sight below the waves, of a man's privacy and turmoil, of his dignity upended by the overpowering necessity of pure fantasy, pure thought, by the irreducible human element -- mind.

n

And, a couple of amusing quotes which made me squeeze some pleasure out of this Booker winner:

n  Was it boredom or sadism that made the shirt service people do up every single button? 

(In the meeting) Everyone nodded, nobody agreed.n

In summary: Disappointment wrapped in scintillating prose; never to be recommended as an introduction to the author. Also, Mr. McEwan's interest in music runs deep.

After all is said and done, I can't solely blame the author for my disillusionment with the book. My interest in it diminished midway, partly because I became increasingly obsessed with Kate Winslet's Mare of Easttown -- a rare occurrence for me as I can't sustain binge-watching, it makes me incapable and useless for everything else around me. Do check it out if you like bleak crime dramas.

8 días y 208 páginas después (leía varios libros a la par). El segundo libro que leo del autor, y que entiendo que es el más famoso que tiene. Desde que leí Máquinas como yo, me quedé pensando mucho en McEwan y quería leer algo más de él. Esto no fue necesariamente lo que quería leer, pero me agradó, pese a que es muy diferente al otro libro.

Es un libro que nos habla de la amistad, de lo mala o buena que puede ser, y de ese último derecho que se tiene. Así que uno nunca sabrá los límites de la misma hasta que los cruza.

Creo que deseo volver a leer a McEwan en el corto plazo, sus propuestas me parecen muy interesantes, y de pronto tengo un crush con la literatura ingles.

Me ha gustado la elección del punto de partida, el funeral de Molly y reunir en él a los hombres que la acompañaron de un modo u otro en su vida.

Me ha gustado cómo está narrada la novela.

Me ha gustado la evolución de los personajes, su decadencia y observar cómo la “a” que precede a “mistad” puede convertirse en “ene”.

Me ha gustado cómo la sociedad también involuciona en cuanto a valores en paralelo a los personajes.

Me ha gustado el final. Duro y afilado como un estilete.

Habiéndome gustado tantas cosas, venía de acompañar a McEwan en Chesil Beach y esperaba más de Amsterdam… Mea culpa.

Deliciosamente mordaz esta novela de McEwan, una crítica emponzoñada en la que los protagonistas, la sociedad y la Humanidad en general, no conseguen salir indemnes aún cuando se recurra a los tópicos habituales: Una buena dosis de hipocresía y doble moral.
Un cuentito con moraleja apabullante y cruel, una fábula, nada optimista por cierto, de la condición humana.

A novella rather than a full length book, this was a very quick read. It’s my first McEwan and I didn’t know what to expect. I enjoyed the black humour and the satire - vaguely reminiscent of Muriel Spark but not so clever - and some of the writing is excellent. I thought the premise of the book and the ending were silly though. It just pushes itself into 4 stars because it’s made me want to read more of this author’s work and I did generally enjoy it.

This was an average enjoyable thriller until it turned into a tacky euthanasia joke. The disappointment is all the more bitter as the book does raise a few good ethical questions particularly the ones pertaining to the political subplot: are the private lives of political candidates off limits when the interests of the country are involved? Is it reprehensible for journalists to disclose personal information in order to save the country from a future of regressive politics?

The opening sequence of Molly’s funeral starts a short dialogue about assisted suicide that is quickly shut down and the opportunity to explore a great topic is wasted. Instead, McEwan opts, shockingly, for a punch line. And he makes sure that punch line involves euthanasia just because. With plenty of other options, he chooses euthanasia as a prop, to spice things up, to appear original and be allowed to give the book a cool title. It is shocking to see what seemed to be a serious narrative degenerate into farce.

Maybe I could see myself accepting the distasteful resolution if at least one character wasn’t morally repulsive and counterbalanced the loathsomeness of others or if McEwan didn’t seem to think that euthanasia is such a barrel of laughs. Because the ending goes like this: thanks to Dutch doctors exploiting the euthanasia law two idiots poison each other for trivial reasons, win a Darwin Award, and everyone’s like heh, the crazy Dutch and their silly laws. This is not a flattering last image:

Such a pleasant, well-ordered street. On the corner was a spruce little coffeehouse, probably selling drugs. "Ah," he sighed at last. "The Dutch and their reasonable laws." "Quite," Garmony said. "When it comes to being reasonable, they rather go over the top."

Based on his writing, I feel that McEwan has a good book somewhere out there, maybe the next one.

This book made me want to scream.... On finishing it, I *literally* threw it against the wall in anger.

This is my third McEwan, all read in a row. I truly adored this book - while reading it, I saw it becoming his masterpiece. It was going to be a 5-star read. He writes simply, but the register of feelings is not simple in the least, his delicate probings into human neurosis is, while restrained, almost always and surprisingly on target -- I think one needs to have a bit of middle-age, perhaps, and experience in vicious bureauocratic infighting to fully appreciate how on target McEwn is in parts of this .... (after all, he WAS 50 when he wrote it; so why should a 23 year old fully 'get' it...?!) -- until I got to p. 161, the last 30 pages of this little book, and suddenly the author (who was to win a coveted prize for this book - the Man Booker) took a plot turn so implausibly ridiculous that one can only say that it was utterly stupid -- comically stupid -- or try to argue that, like one of his characters, he deliberately sought to destroy his own masterpiece... (a rather implausible argument itself).

Acht...!!!

What were you thinking, McEwan...!!??!

Music In Amsterdam

Ian McEwan's novel "Amsterdam" begins with the death of a married woman named Molly Lane who has had many lovers. Among her lovers are Clive Linely, a successful British composer, Vernon Halliday, the editor of a formerly highbrow but failing paper called The Judge, and Julian Garamony, a foreign secretary with even higher political aspirations. The story revolves around the relationships of Linely, Halliday, and Garamony, and their ties to Molly.

Each of the three men is involved in a moral crisis. Linely is working on a symphony he hopes will prove his masterpiece when he has to decide whether to interfere in what may be a rape. Halliday has to decide whether to compromise his failing paper by publishing sexually explicit and compromising pictures of Garamony that Molly had taken. Linely and Halliday sign a euthanasia pact and then quarrel over the moral choices each man must face.

The book is slender, elegant, and, alas, superficial. It is pleasant to read but lacks depth. The most interesting part of the book for me is the interest the author shows in music through the composer Linely. Music became the focus of my attention in the book, even though Linely is basically arrogant and mediocre and only one of three or four characters that figure in the tangled plot.

At the outset of "Amsterdam", Linely is writing a commissioned symphony to celebrate the millennium but is experiencing difficulty in finishing the work and in finding an appropriately lyrical theme to end the last movement. He wants a theme that will capture both the horrors of the 20th Century and mankind's hopes and aspirations for the future -- shades of the Beethoven Ninth in more ways than one. Also like Beethoven, Linely derives inspiration from nature. To find an environment enabling him to complete his symphony, Linely takes a break to visit a wild, lonely place where he witnesses an apparent rape. Linely fancies himself a genius -- which he is not -- and displays something of an imitation of Beethoven's attitude and work habits -- such as the trip to nature. Of course this is hardly the first time a musician has defined himself in reference to Beethoven.

Other works of Linely are mentioned in the course of the novel as are other composers. Linely has set a series of poems called "rage" by an American beat named Hart Pullman. (Hart has also slept with Molly in his younger days.) He has written a piece which was performed only once called "Symphonic Dervishes for Virtuoso Strings." Linely has also written a book called "Reading Beauty" which claims that blues, rock, jazz, and folk have been the truly innovative music of the 20th Century.

One critic dubs Linely the "thinking man's Gorecki" and then recants to call Gorecki the "thinking man's Linely." Gorecki is a mid-20th century composer whose third symphony ("Lamentations") has won deserved fame. There are references to English composers such as Britten, Williams and Purcell. At one point, when his own symphony is about to be trashed, Linely expresses disdain for concertgoers attending a program of Schubert. "Hadn't the world heard enough from syphilitic Schubert?" Linely asks.

I was taken with the discussion of music in the book much more than with the plot and with the egoism, arrogance, and lust that the characters convey. The author has many interesting things to say about music even though they are basically said in passing. Altogether, this is an entertaining book but little more. The novel's treatment of music for me is the tail that wags the dog.

Robin Friedman