"Sappiamo così poco gli uni degli altri. Viviamo la nostra esistenza semisommersi e spingiamo a galla soltanto la parte di noi presentabile, quella più bianca e compatta."

È proprio vero: non sempre si riesce a conoscere bene gli altri vicino a noi perché c'è sempre qualcosa che può sfuggire e non essere comprensibile fino in fondo.
La morte di Molly, la donna amata da Clive, compositore d'orchestra, Vernon, giornalista, Julian, uomo politico e George, l'uomo tradito, apre interrogativi e crisi mettendo in luce tutti gli aspetti, la maggior parte negativi. Un romanzo breve, ma essenziale che pone l'accento sull'egoismo, la cattiveria, l'invidia, l'arrivismo e la voglia di raggiungere il successo a qualunque costo. In poche pagine, neanche 200, emerge il peggio dell'animo umano senza possibilità di redenzione e speranza per nessuno dei protagonisti. Rimane solo una terribile e tremenda resa dei conti ad Amsterdam, sede dello scontro e dell'epilogo finale che non porta né vinti e vincitori.

رواية للكاتب البريطاني إيان مكيوان نال عنها جائزة بوكر عام 1998
فكرة المسئولية الأخلاقية التي يراها كل شخص من وجهة نظر مختلفة بحسب المصالح والعلاقات
تبدأ الرواية في جنازة مولي ونتعرف على زوجها, وثلاثة من عُشاقها السابقين
مؤلف موسيقي ورئيس تحرير وسياسي, تجمع الصداقة بين اثنين منهم
كل منهم يحدد الواجب الأخلاقي للآخر ويعفي نفسه منه إذا تعارض مع عمله ومكاسبه
يعرض الكاتب المظاهر السياسية والصحافية الزائفة المختفية وراء صور خادعة وقيم غير حقيقية
ويختم روايته بنهاية قد تبدو غريبة لكنها تتفق مع عبثية العداوات والتناقضات والمطامع

I needed something starting with A to read for the A to Z book challenge and this has been sitting on my shelf since I went through a frenzy of buying booker shortlisted novels several years ago, back when I was still keen to impress myself and fellow commuters with my reading choices.

The books starts with a funeral of Molly Lane, a member of that happy breed of fabulous women who has a horde of ex and current lovers with all of whom she remains friends. We never learn much else about her but she is not important, since she is merely a plot device and the people who matter are the three ex-lovers who attend her funeral. Every single one of them is a self-absorbed, self-aggrandising selfish snob and they set on their course towards a resolution which is both hilarious and tragic.

I was surprised, because I enjoyed this quite a lot more than I thought I would. I settled on three stars but it's somewhere in between three and four. I didn't expect it to be funny yet it was. Not in an obvious laugh out loud kind of way but the more I think about it the funnier it is. It's a great example of an enjoyable read about despicable people and it's under 200 pages long.

3.5
Have you ever picked up a novel that initially gripped you but found the conclusion so disappointing that it altered your view of the book? Unfortunately, that was my experience with Ian McEwan's Amsterdam.

The novel focuses on the unbridled ambitions and questionable ethics of two friends from the British elite, Vernon, a newspaper editor, and Clive, a classical music composer. McEwan, a master of satire and nuanced characterization, deftly chronicles their rise and decline and then fizzles out. However, I still recommend this book, especially if you are a McEwan fan.

I really enjoyed this clever and dark little tale, which won the Booker Prize in 1998.
Friends Clive Linley, a celebrated composer, and Vernon Halliday, the editor of a newspaper, meet at the rather glum London funeral of Molly Lane, whom both fondly remember as a former mistress and longtime social confidante. Along with Molly's frosty widower, George, the two also re-encounter the prickly Julian Garmony, another of Molly's former lovers, a political conservative who is the current Foreign Secretary. The funeral puts both Clive and Vernon into a reflective mood, considering Molly's life and death and their own mortality. A secret pact, more ruminations and a couple of moral conundra later, we reach the dramatic climax in the titular Dutch capital.
Ian McEwan's writing is sublime, and the darkly comedic conclusion is worthy of Roald Dahl (think the brilliant Kiss Kiss) at the height of his powers.
Highly recommended.

I'm beginning to think that the shorter a book is, the less I have to say about it. Amsterdam is a very short book and, while I enjoyed it, at the end I felt more like I'd finished a short story than an actual novel. It's the tale of two friends - Clive, a successful composer troubled by (the musical equivalent of) writer's block, and Vernon, a newspaper editor whose career is beginning to flounder - and their involvement in a plot to terminate the career of Julian Garmony, a right-wing politician tipped to become the next prime minister. All three men are linked by their affection for mutual ex-lover Molly Lane, at whose funeral they first re-encounter one another. What follows is a tale of morality and mortality, with a deliciously dark ending.

I read this straight after finishing Enduring Love, and of the two, I think I prefer Amsterdam - I really enjoyed the element of political satire, Vernon's stressful days at the offices of his newspaper, Clive's bombastic self-belief. There's a strong element of humour throughout the book, most obviously evident in both men's increasingly hysterical and distorted perceptions of their own actions (Vernon thinks his Garmony front page will change the face of reporting; Clive begins to imagine himself a genius on a par with Beethoven) and the somewhat macabre but very funny ending. But all in all, there just isn't very much to it. I appreciate the cleverness of the plot and how events are steered towards the conclusion, but it hasn't left much of an impression on me at all, and I expect I will probably have forgotten it completely in a few weeks.

This was a brilliant read, the second Ian McEwan novel I have read. I am tantalised by his dexterity as a writer, his ability to write in a completely different style from that employed in Atonement. This was utterly gripping. I read this as I am going to be leading discussion on this in the book group I lead at my former school, with sixth form students who are studying Atonement. McEwan manages to captivate the attention of readers so forcefully, though the characters are questionable in their morals and attitudes. The dry wit, black humour, satire and sparse, sharp prose combine to make this a biting, thrilling read. McEwan is a master of writing intricate, compelling twists and powerful denouements, a much better composer than Clive Linley, and unlike Linley, a true artistic genius.

It has to be sad that McEwan is a fabulous writer- I dare anyone to read On Chesil Beach and try to deny that. Unfortunately, as well written as this one is, it just didn't connect with me. A shame, too, as I had high hopes. I can kinda see why it won the Booker, but even with that major accomplishment, I didn't really find anything that would warrant me recommending it to anyone. Read Atonement instead.

A dry, mean-spirited little story, with hateful, amoral male characters. This is what happens when straight white male writers of a certain generation exclude women from their stories. Yuck!

another booker prize winner, amsterdam is a tightly constructed little novel filled with black humor and sharp satire. it begins with four men, ex-lovers of a dead woman, meeting up at her funeral. two of them, old friends, make a pact to kill each other if they become as insane as the recently deceased became toward the end of her life. that pact, unsurprisingly, has unexpected consequences as their friendship begins to spin out of control, devolving into hatred and revenge. many complain that the plot of the novel is too predictable and the characters too unlikeable, and though i agree somewhat, i thought those aspects of the novel added to it rather than subtracted. the moderate predictability of the plot really underscored the fatalistic tone taken by the narrator, and i found the characters realistically flawed rather than simply despicable. overall, i personally thought the book was a thought-provoking fable about the consequences of morally bankrupt life decisions and their resulting fallout, as well as the emotional instability that lurks within even the most self-composed of us, driving us to the brink in the heat of anger. this was my first introduction to ian mcewan. i've heard that this book isn't his best, that the booker prize was awarded to it more as a recognition of his overall body of work. however, i thoroughly enjoyed this one, so i look forward to reading more of his work.

The richly air conditioned and plushly carpetted conference halls, bottles of water and pieces of chocolate on the table, writing pads & pens, the rich buffet lunch, tea & coffee in a timely fashion.

I can sum up many a professional training session at best in these words. In most cases, what happens afterwards is that on getting home and reflecting a bit on the days spent, I invariably end up remembering close to nothing from those glitzy presentations nor the content. I am sometimes left to wonder at the sheer pointlessness of it all. These mirror my feelings after this book. Why Mr. McEwan ? What was the bloody point in this story ?

There are four principal characters in the story and the entire thing could have been wrapped up in well under 100 pages. The author however chooses to elongate this into a novella that tries to push into the novel genre. The end result being that it's like underwear that is neither here nor there ! One of the major characters-cum-plot drivers is dead at the time of the opening of the book and we are given passing references to her details. It's like that frustrating experience when someone points out Oh Oh ! Look who's there ! and you turn around to see the back of a white shirt disappearing into the crowd. This main character is more of a caricature and is quite absurd in what she does and how she does it. The book blurb calls this a contemporary morality tale but it's more of a befuddling sludge of nothingness ! The male protagonists get a lot of background built up around them and a load of verbal furniture get strewn around in the rooms that they inhabit as characters to be finally let down in a disastrous climax. There was an attempt to build a twist into the climax but frankly I had given up interest in the book a long time ago.

The two stars are for McEwan's writing prowess for I find a lot of good writing in an otherwise unremarkable book.

How can someone who writes so well (like McEwan) make me so ambivalent about his prize winning book? By drawing darker, more degenerate characters than I would ever hope to know. I just didn't buy that people McEwan imbued with human thoughts and emotions to begin with could turn out to be so void of humanity in the end.