as a break from reading proust's in a budding grove i quickly found the characters intriguing,the sparse bare prose admirable, and the narrative witty and gripping. then mcewan began leaving his fingerprints all over the manuscript, practically announcing, i am planting this here so you can predict what will soon unfold. i found the ending crossing the line from witty to slapstick absurd. my disbelief had already been suspended to the point of snapping. i think that mcewan could not make up his mind whether to write a novel of taut wit and suspense or a book that is outlandish and funny. the indecisive mixture did not work for me. however, my need for escape from proust-a book i love but i am somewhat exhausted-might be more than amsterdam or possibly any book right now can provide. i'm going to give it a 1-i feel like an assassin-but after my disappointment fades i may well come back with greater generosity.

I really enjoyed Amsterdam until about the 80% mark. Prior to that point, I absolutely loved the subtle humour generously laced throughout the book. I’d owned the book for years, but knew virtually nothing about it, which was both a blessing and a curse. I almost exclusively read Literary Fiction and, by choice, had never read books in the Crime, Thriller, or Mystery genres. Amsterdam is Literary Fiction, to be sure but, at that 80% mark, I felt it had drifted over the line and taken a sharp left down “Mystery Lane”.

My least favourite book ever. How did this book win the Booker Prize FFS?

توی داستان چهار شخصیت مرد اصلی وجود داره، یک سردبیر روزنامه، یک آهنگساز، یک پیرمرد پولدار و سهامدار جزٕ روزنامه و فرد چهارم وزیر امور خارجه. آهنگساز داره مهمترین اثر زندگیش رو میسازه، سردبیر سعی می‌کنه روزنامه رو از سقوط و تعطیلی نجات بده و جناب وزیر در تدارک نخست وزیری برای چند ماه آینده هست. این چهار نفر هول محور یک‌ زن دور‌ هم جمع میشن. مالی همسر فعلی پیرمرد پولدار و معشوقه‌ی سابق سه نفر دیگه. داستان با مرگ مالی شروع میشه، مرگی در اثر بیماری مغزی که طی مدت کوتاهی تمام توانایی های مالی رو ازش میگیره و اون هیچ کنترلی روی خودش نداره تا اینکه میمیره. اولین صحنه‌ی داستان مراسم سوزوندن جسد مالی هست. آقای آهنگساز و سردبیر با هم دوست هستند ولی بقیه‌ی روابط بین این چهار نفر تیره و تار هست. با پیدا شدن چند عکس زندگی این افراد به هم‌‌ گره میخوره و اتفاقات جالبی می افته.
ایده‌ی داستان واقعا عالی بود. یه جاهایی برای درک بهتر داستان نیاز به آگاهی بیشتر از معمول از تاریخ هنر و موسیقی حس میشد. یکی دو قسمت از داستان به نظرم اومد توضیحات داره کش میاد اما نه زیاد. اشاره های به اخلاقیات توی داستان جالب بود و آدم رو به فکر وا می‌داشت و در نهایت از خواندن این کتاب خوشحالم.ه

Clever and well-written in McEwan’s usual precise style but a bit too contrived, especially at the end. I think really only 2.5 stars.

Two friends, ex-lovers of the recently deceased Molly, duke it out when Molly’s husband lets them know about some compromising transvestite photos of a third lover, who is slated to become Britain’s next PM. There is a fair bit of sardonic humour involving the two friends – Clive, a musician commissioned to compose an Opus for the Millennium (this is 1998) and Vernon, chief editor of a declining newspaper with an eye for an explosive front page. Clive is appalled at Vernon’s intention to use the photos, however everything changes when the to-be-PM’s wife releases the photos first, bringing with it a national wave of sympathy and support, and corresponding revilement of the paper. Through a bit of contrivance the two friends are then at each others' throats, and within a few pages, the novella ends abruptly in Amsterdam with mutual though unintended euthanasia.

Throughout, the humour tends to be a bit laboured, veering at several points into farcical set pieces about gutter-press style front pages or vapid lifestyle columns; in many ways Amsterdam reads more like a film script than an actual book.

Think of the shittiest, stupidest, most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done in your life. There now, I’m sure it was still classy, whatever it was, because you are a perfectly intelligent human being. You’ve read quite a number of complicated books; surely that elevates you above the lot of the Homo sapiens. You’re a Homo superior, a sapiosexual, a polymath, a refined member of the species whose primary attribute is a ridiculous tolerance for countless words. You’re the thinking man’s Jedi Knight or banana ketchup. Wait, is that a compliment? Let’s just say it is. So you made a rash decision, whatever it was I’m certain that what you did is tolerable. It was a mental mix-up, tame compared to what others do. You’re fine. You’re a solid human being. NAHHHHH! Who are we kidding?!! I bet the thing you did was so mothafucking insane that even dear old Adolf grinned in his grave. I’m thinking total mindfuck that you turned Sense and Sensibility from Austen to Trollope. Something so inherently out there, like unwittingly thinking that adding Zombies to Pride and Prejudice is a marvelous idea. Basically, you fucked up. Big time! So… did it involve a dabble into nudity? A botched public performance, perhaps? A drunken spree? Or did you give five stars to Twilight or some other raunchy, gaudy, teenage vampire novel? Or is it secretly liking Fifty Shades of Grey? Come on out now. Don’t be shy. We all did a lot of incipiently stupid things. No reason to feel bad at all. Unless it was the thing about Twilight and Fifty Shades, that’s god awful. You rot in hell. Haha! Just kidding. Whatever floats your boat, you freak. Alright, alright, I’ll stop there. Really, I’m kidding. Don’t get angry, just unfriend me or something, you Vampire lover! Hehehehe. There, I think I’m about done. Oh, wait a minute, there’s this last bit of insult coming out. Vampire Sex is the most ridiculous thing to have ever happened to the history of literature since David Hasselhoff’s Don’t Hassle the Hoff or even since dear old Adolf’s Mein Kampf!!! Sadly though, I think Harry Style’s Every Piece of Me is on par with the pathetic-ness of Twilight. Ughhh. Gross. Now, we’ve gotten really off track here. Bloody idiotic autobiographies! So, I was saying something about your top embarrassing thing. Sometimes though, your most embarrassing, stupidest decision can be getting into a relationship with someone who, so to speak, is a nut-job. We’ve all had that relationship with someone, who looking back, is so really awful that we keep saying to ourselves. “What were you thinking, you mindless twit?!!” Whoever it was, whatever it was, it should be pretty fucking miserable to remember. And when one of your old friends bring it up, God help their soul, you feel like hell will break loose. Ahh, the idiocy of our past selves can be sincerely comical and infuriating at the same time. But here’s where you question the morality of certain things. Can your former relationships dictate the outcome of your life? Can the most embarrassing things secretly take hold of the reigns controlling your metaphorical chariot? In case you were wondering, this really is a review of McEwan’s Amsterdam. It just occurred to me that McEwan started this book thinking of one thing, but proceeded to make something completely different as he ended. He started out with an intricate scene, the funeral of Molly, the woman who, all four main characters fucked at one point or another; I guess you could even say loved. McEwan goes on to complexly develop these four characters, four intellectuals, only to later on turn them into idiots and complete fuck-ups. I guess there were certain things that pushed them off the edge. But you can’t really say that this was done gracefully. The turn from top-notch human beings into the mindless morons was a little too briskly done for my taste. Somehow, it can be argued that a part of their insanity can be attributed to the death of Molly, but this is just speculation. It’s more likely that they were mercilessly given the insanity gene by almighty Ian. Loose morals and a complete disregard for anyone other than the self is the balmy target of this erratically weird tale. It’s like listening to an opera that suddenly takes a turn into disco-pop. I saw the signs, but I actually refused to believe that the great McEwan would be so.. so.. tacky. I was surprised by something I had dismissed as beneath the author. It’s like when you look at a person from afar and think: that’s an attractive human being. But when you arrive at close proximity, alas, your eyes hath deceiveth you. I hate it when this happens to me. I’m giving this novella a three just because of the brilliant prose and some scattered laughs. Still, the unfulfilled potential of this book makes me sad. The fact that this won the Man Booker makes me sadder. But, thinking about my embarrassing moments make me saddest.

I suppose my experience of reading this book can be best compared to hearing Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, then the Ninth Symphony, and then being played the Moonlight Sonata. It isn't that this book is any less deserving of praise than Atonement or Enduring Love (I shall leave it to you to figure out which one I classed as the Eroica and which one as the Ninth. :)), but I believe the purpose and the scale of those two books are on a completely different plane than Amsterdam, but intentionally so.

Both the plot and the scope of Amsterdam are very tightly controlled, and clearly driven towards the point at the end. One could feel the prose moving you along McEwan's intended course towards the proper mood to find the end. This is not to say that the language isn't as important as his other novels. I think in fact that it is even more important here. Rather than the sometimes beautifully rambling tone of his other work that could take a bit of a scenic route to get towards its point, letting it creep up on you unawares, McEwan instead makes his piercingly described and chosen words serve a double purpose. This would make Amsterdam perhaps the most poetic of his novels in technique, considering how carefully every word seemed to be chosen.

McEwan still manages to deal with very big themes here. The basic plotline his patented single event with a moral problem and the various consequences for the people involved. In this case, it is the death of Molly Lane, a woman beloved of at least four of the men featured, and how their reactions to her death shape all of their lives. His standard dilemma of moral decisions gone wrong is present, of course. He writes about the meaning of friendship, how mere moods and selfishness change our entire worldview, love lost, the effect of one's death upon loved ones, and embodies three different kinds of need in the three major male characters in the novel. I won't elaborate too much but I think it is debatable which of these men feels love, which desire, which the need to be saved. Or if it is a combination of all three. He still manages to sneak in a bit of black comedy (for some reason all the reviews on the book seemed to focus on this one point. Perhaps because it is so unusual in a McEwan novel.) as these characters start to unravel over the course of the novel into a horrible, twisted joke upon themselves and the world. This book is heartbreaking, make no mistake, but in a quieter way. In an awful, unexpected way that is no less touching for the brevity of his treatment of it. In a way, I think it makes it more powerful that the book is so short. We miss so much, we are left to imagine and fill in the gaps.

I don't know if you've seen Casablanca, those reading this. But if you have... in some ways, I believe that this novel was McEwan's answer to Bogart's famous quote near the end of the movie when he's trying to make Ingrid Bergman leave with her husband: "I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

I think Amsterdam both tragically agrees with that and ironically, laughingly disagrees at the same time. This little short statement is by no means his grandest novel, either in tone or subject, but I do not think that detracts from its value. In any case- very much recommended. I would read Enduring Love or Atonement first so as to understand the scope of what the author is capable of, but then this, to show the lovely, little, other end of the spectrum. I think that this has value, too.

What is this absurd nonsense. Everything I wrote yesterday about n  Black Dogsn in terms of plot and characterisation applies equally to Amsterdam, except where Black Dogs attempts (but fails) to be a good novel, Amsterdam seems to lack even the intention. It is impossible to take this novel seriously. The characters are ridiculous. The plot is ridiculous. The entire novel is a setup to a conclusion so laughably stupid, that it made me want reevaluate my ratings of McEwan's other novels. Sure, it kept me turning the pages, but for what?

A cheap thriller, and not even a good one. This won the Booker?

Al funerale di Molly Lane si ritrovano alcuni suoi ex amanti e il marito, fresco vedovo, che farà partire di lì a poco la vendetta, dalla quale i rivali, personaggi ambiziosi-egocentrici, protagonisti e vittime di un mondo fatto di mediocrità e cattiveria, avranno irreparabili danni. Ghigno sarcastico e fiato sospeso, fino all'ultima pagina: sempre caro mi fu quest'Ian McEwan...

Amsterdam is one of my favorite cities, and Ian McEwen's 1998 novel Amsterdam is a deft and interesting little novel - even though a first-time reader might be forgiven for wondering, for a time, why a book that seems so thoroughly British is named after the largest city in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The setting is late-1990's London, and the book's action centers around the friendship and eventual enmity of two middle-aged Londoners who came of age during the Swinging Sixties and find themselves making critical career and life decisions as the millennium draws toward its end.

The first of these men, Clive Linley, is a successful composer; while his work has been criticized by some as being overly traditionalist and even "premodern," he has been commissioned to write an official millennial symphony. His pride in this task, his belief that he may finally have achieved greatness as a composer, and his absolute dedication to his art take up much of his reflections.

The second of these men, Vernon Halliday, is the editor of a London newspaper, the Judge, that faces declining circulation and is pressured to adopt the tabloids' strategies in order to survive. Vernon sees himself as a tough-minded journalist who knows what must be done if the paper is to continue publishing, and dismisses as "grammarians" those who deplore the idea of abandoning the Judge's tradition of strict, Times-style propriety for the sake of solvency.

Clive and Vernon meet at the funeral of a woman named Molly; she was a spontaneous and free-spirited woman, until the onset of a sudden and unexpected illness took away her physical and mental self-sufficiency and eventually her life. Both Clive and Vernon were once lovers of Molly, and the suddenness with which she became ill and died shakes both men sufficiently that they make a pact that becomes important later in the novel.

Before that, however, both characters face crucial moral choices. Vernon comes into possession of compromising photographs of a far-right politician whose policies Vernon opposes, and must choose whether to publish them. Clive, while hiking in the Lake District in search of inspiration for the finale for his symphony, observes a man and a woman engaged in what could be a domestic argument or could be the prelude to an assault against the woman, and must decide whether to intervene.

Clive's and Vernon's choices have consequences beyond what either man anticipated, and set the two old friends on a path toward hostility, feelings of grievance, and thoughts of revenge. So far, so good. But the manner in which McEwan resolved this tangled dramatic situation did not work for me. Without going into details, I will simply say that the climax and resolution involve a degree of dramatic irony and poetic justice that "out-O. Henry's" O. Henry. Perhaps McEwan re-read "The Gift of the Magi" a little too soon before writing this book. Fifteen pages before the end, one particular detail made me think to myself, "No. He can't be planning on ending the book that way." But he did.

And yet the novel has many beauties that still make me glad to have read it. McEwen's literary style is graceful and elegant; his picture of late-20th-century British life is dead-on. The dialogue is trenchant, and the book's descriptive passages are often poetic. One example of McEwen's excellence in descriptive writing occurs when this book called Amsterdam finally reaches Amsterdam, where Clive's symphony is scheduled for a performance. Here is McEwen's description of the impression that Amsterdam makes upon Clive just after the composer arrives in the city:

The flight was two hours late into Schiphol airport. Clive took the train to Centraal Station and from there set off on foot for his hotel in the soft gray afternoon light. While he was crossing his first bridge, it came back to him what a calm and civilized city Amsterdam was. He took a wide detour westward in order to stroll along Brouwersgracht....So consoling, to have a body of water down the middle of a street. Such a tolerant, open-minded, grown-up sort of place: the beautiful brick and carved timber warehouses converted into tasteful apartments, the modest Van Gogh bridges, the understated street furniture, the intelligent, unstuffy-looking Dutch on their bikes with their level-headed children sitting behind. Even the shopkeepers looked like professors, the street sweepers like jazz musicians. There was never a city more rationally ordered. (p. 168)

I found this book in Amsterdam, at the American Book Center, a large and excellent English-language bookstore in the heart of the city, and am glad finally to have read Amsterdam. It is a quick and rewarding read. But you may want to take a break 25 or 30 pages before the end and decide how you would have resolved the conflict between Clive and Vernon. Your answer to that question may be different from Ian McEwan's.

رمان قشنگی بود؛ البته به دلیل حجم بالای اطلاعات موسیقی، میشه توی ژانر موزیک هم گذاشتش.

Kitabın adına aldanmayın. Benim gibi Amsterdam hayranı iseniz hayal kırıklığı olmasın diye belirtiyorum. Kitabın hikayesi sağlam, özel bir kurgusu yok ancak yazarın seller sular gibi akan dili ile çok rahat ve heyecanla okunuyor.
Yazar düşüncelerle olgular arasındaki gel-gitleri, ikilemde kalma, kararsızlık kavramlarını o kadar sade ama anlamlı cümlelerle anlatıyor ki, sanki yazarın hiç edebi kaygısı veya iddiası yokmuş sanılabilir. Aslında çok titizce yazılmış ve çok emek verilmiş cümleler dökülüyor yazarın kaleminden.
Bir politikacıyı gözden düşürmek için onun cinsel tercihini kamuoyu ile paylaşıp paylaşmamak, tacize uğrayan bir kadına olay anında yardım edip etmemek arasındaki gel-gitler etik olarak okuyucunun gözünün içine sokulmadan sorgulanıyor.
Ötanazi konusunda da bir eleştirel dokunma var ki ötanazi yanlısı olmama rağmen yazarın ustalıklı yaklaşımı beni rahatsız etmedi. Kafanızı dinlendirmek, düşünerek beyninizi zonklatmadan keyifle bir kitap okumak isterseniz öneririm.