“I mean, to die that way, with no awareness, like an animal. To be reduced, humiliated, before making arrangements, or even say goodbye. It crept up on her, and then..."

“Just supposing I did get ill in a major way, like Molly, and I started to go downhill and make terrible mistakes, not knowing the names of things or who I was. I'd like to know there was someone who'd help me to finish it ... I mean, help me to die. Especially if I got to the point where I couldn't make the decision for myself, or act on it.”

“What fascinated Clive was the promise, the aspiration, the yearning to climb up and finally arrive at a concluding melody, a valediction of a piercing beauty that would transcend and seem both to mourn the passing century and all its senseless cruelty and to celebrate its brilliant inventiveness. Long after the excitement of the first performance, the millennial celebrations, fireworks and potted histories, this irresistible melody would remain as the dead century's elegy.”

“Vernon had already made up his mind about the copy he wanted. The obituaries editor pushed a few pages into Vernon's hand in case Garmony offed himself. Vernon was again about to cut away a cancer from the body politic. Hypocrisy would be exposed, the country stay in Europe, capital punishment and compulsory conscription remain a dream, social welfare survive, global environment get a decent chance. Vernon was on the point of breaking into song.”

“Vernon was on his way across his office to turn it off when asked whether she had any message for the editor of The Judge. Yes, she said, she did, and she looked at him, and he froze in front of the television. "Mr. Halliday, you have the mentality of a blackmailer, and the moral stature of a flea." Vernon gasped in pained admiration, he knew a soundbite when he heard one. The question was a plant, the line was scripted. What consummate artistry!”

************

British author Ian McEwan won the Booker Prize in 1998 for this novel. It begins with two friends who attend a funeral in London for a woman they both had relations with and who died enduring advanced dementia. Vernon a newspaper editor and Clive a classical composer have both been a success in their careers. At the funerary proceedings they reminisce about Molly with other men who had met her. They meet a Foreign Minister vying for PM, who had also been with her, pointlessly pontificating. Clive returns home to his piano and tries to resume composing.

Clive digresses on a internal discourse against avant garde Soviet classical music. He counts Noam Chomsky as a personal friend and borrows from his manuscripts. Suffice it to say he is an intellectual of high stature, chosen over the Beatles to commemorate the millennium. Almost finished with his magnum opus, even after several missed deadlines, he is stymied by the grand finale. Alone he has no one to comfort his mental and physical anquish. Envisioning a decline he decides to take matters into his own hands when the time comes.

As the editor of a failing newspaper Vernon by mid morning has spoken to some forty people offering opinions, insights, delegations and criticisms. He has begun to wonder if he even exists, married for a third time he feels like a non-entity at work and home. Constantly harrassed he gets a phone call from Lane, part owner of the rag and Molly’s former husband, who has something important to show him but it must be in person. He’s served cease and desist orders from foreign minister Garmony’s lawyers. He leaves work at 9:30 PM and wonders what’s up.

Clive had inherited a big house in 1970 at age 21 where Lennon, Yoko and Hendrix visited, Jimi settling fire to the banister. Over time his tastes changed and became more conservative. Vernon visits and Clive discusses his wish to die if he gets dementia and asks for his assistance. Vernon agrees to Clive’s request under a condition he would do the same for him. They have a moral difference about publishing the pictures and a falling out after Vernon had gone to the home of George, Molly’s former husband, as summoned and shown the photos of Garmony.

When Clive visits the Lakeland country to hike and find inspiration for his finale he observes a woman and man having a heated argument but doesn’t intervene. Vernon calls to tell him it was the Lakeland rapist and he should go to the cops. McEwan’s dialogue of the dispute between the two friends is believable and visceral. As the public sees the cross dressing scandal the reaction is immediate and sends newspaper circulation skyward. It is a critique of the tabloid press publishing private photos which backfires when the Minister’s family join to support him.

The Concertgebouw has been booked for the premiere when Vernon interrupts with more demands regarding the rapist he may have only seen. Clive is so distracted he is unable to complete the symphony. It becomes a folly of two opposed egos unwilling to concede to the other. Vernon calls the police and ruins Clive’s last day to complete the work. He is sacked as editor for misjudging the climate of public opinion. They travel separately to Amsterdam to reconcile at the rehearsals where the denouement will occur. McEwan is masterful in his approach to the end.

Lately he had realised he was learning to live with nonexistence. He could not mourn for long the passing of something-himself-that he could no longer quite recall.

Yeah, that ending.
What others have already said — though I did find it moderately entertaining, once I gave over to the contrivance of it all.
What impressed me was the quality of IM’s prose, the wit, the insight. Left me thinking I should give another of his novels a try. Then my partner reminded me that our local book club read Atonement several years ago, and that we saw the movie. Neither of which, apparently, made a durable impression, the movie a shade more than the book, which remains pretty much a blank.
So, maybe scratch that plan to read more.

The two characters in this were morally bankrupt in unsettling and distasteful ways. I spent most of the book sick to my stomach and with a two star rating in mind. But then the end happened. I loved the end. It even bumped it up to three stars :)

My 2nd book by Ian Russell McEwan (born 1948). I have a copy of all his 11 novels except his latest ones, On Chesil Beach and Solar. I am waiting for them to show up in my favorite second-hand books store.

Enduring Love was my first by him. I read it last year and I liked it so much that I would not want to read another of his book. I guess I was afraid I would be disappointed and considering that I have all his books, what would I do with them if I did not like the 2nd? That is possible, right? Many years ago, I read Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (born 1953) and I liked it so much. So much that I immediately bought - at regular price - his next two books, Charlotte Gray and On Green Dolphin Street. Sadly, those two books are miles away from his brilliance in Birdsong. It is as if Birdsong was written entirely by a different person.

Ian McEwan did not disappoint me in Amsterdam, his only Man Booker winning book (1998). His other nominations were for The Comfort of Strangers (1981, Shortlisted), Black Dogs (1992, Shortlisted), n  Atonementn (2001, Shortlisted), Saturday (2005, Shortlisted), and On Chesil Beach (2007, Shortlisted). I have all those in my bedroom side table except the last one.

Amsterdam is a story of three men who are all ex-lovers of Molly who they were burying at the novel's opening scene. There is Clive Linley the well-known composer who is tasked by the government to compose a symphonic piece to be used for millennium celebration. Clive's bestfriend is Vernon Halliday, the editor of the newspaper The Judge whose circulation is dwindling and he is tasked to reverse it so he was hired as the 6th editor just in a span of 3 years. Lastly, there is the foreign secretary, Julian Garmony who is eyeing the prime minister post in the next election.

The main theme is about how far will a man go for the sake of him ambition or objective. Can Vernon disregard his friendship with Clive just to put his newspaper back on the top? Can Vernon violate his cherish memories with Molly and derail the political ambition of Julian? Can Clive ignore a crime that he witnessed just to concentrate with his symphony?

Because of its theme of human frailty, this is a scary book. McEwan is so good that he can compete with Stephen King to scare the sh*t out of you. Just like Enduring Love his narration is crisp and seems to be so plain that, if you are not used to him, you could miss what is happening. It is like a still lake, so still that it seems to be inviting you to throw a stone and marvel at the ripples. Then suddenly, there is a monster that will spring out from the still water because your stone disturbed him from his century-long sleep. No exaggeration here. As you leaf through the pages, you will be surprised by the turns and twists of the story. You cannot second-guess McEwan's storytelling: to where will he is bringing you as you leaf one page after the next.

One lacking star only for my unfamiliarity with British stuff (my fault).

Mi-am făcut obiceiul (deformație profesională, probabil) de a răsfoi netul imediat ce am terminat de citit o carte, nu numai pentru a obține informații suplimentare (de tipul cînd a fost publicată pentru prima dată, dacă există vreo poveste legată de geneza și de difuzarea ei, etc.) ci și pentru a vedea dacă sînt sau nu în ton cu opinia generală asupra ei (nu că un raspuns negativ mi-ar schimba-o, dar mi-ar putea alimenta o eventuală recenzie

Spoiler vermiş gibi olmazsa Amsterdam'ın son birkaç sayfada yeraldığını belirteyim öncelikle, onun dışında olay Londra'da geçiyor. Farklı konuları ele aldığı kitaplarının çoğunu okuyup sevdiğim yazarın bu kitabını da severek okudum. Eski bir sevgilinin cenazesinde biraraya gelen biri ünlü bir besteci, diğeri bir gazetenin genel yayın yönetmeni olan iki arkadaş bir politikacının özel hayatı gündeme gelince anlaşmazlığa düşer ve ilişkiler ondan sonra yön değiştirmeye başlar. Gerisini merak ediyorsanız okuyun derim :)

نبرع دوما في نصح غيرنا، كما نبرع في التبرير لأنفسنا.

هل يمكن أن يقتل الإنسان صديقه انتقاما منه لصراحته معه!!!!

ذكرتني بفيلم غرام الأفاعي.

The only thing worse than a Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a Manic Pixie Dream girl created by Ian McEwan.

Having only read two of his novels so far (this one and Atonement), I obviously can't speak for his entire body of work, but at the moment I am astonished at McEwan's ability to make all female love interests in his stories utterly unappealing. First Cecilia Tallis, now Molly Lane.

At least Molly, for all intents and purposes, does not actually matter in the grand scope of this book. When it starts she's already dead, and her husband and numerous former lovers (the three main ones are a politician, a newspaper editor, and a composer) are gathered at her funeral. The men reminisce about Molly and will continue to do so at random throughout the story, but she is never a real presence in the book - I got the sense that none of these men actually knew her, so the reader doesn't get to either.

Anyway, the shit hits the fan when Molly's husband goes through her stuff and finds some very compromising photos of the previously-mentioned politician, taken by Molly. The husband wants to sell the photos to the newspaper editor, the editor talks it over with the composer, the politician freaks out...blah blah blah.

I had two big problems with this book, which I will try to describe as best I can.

1. I didn't like anyone in this story. Molly wasn't even a person, so she's out, and the two central characters (the composer and the editor) seemed to be competing for the prize of Most Horrible Human Being. It was a tight race, to be sure, but in the end I was forced to give the award to the composer, who witnesses a woman being attacked and walks away from it. Sir, Detectives Stadler and Benson of Law & Order: SVU would like to have a few words with you, and none of them are polite.

2. I still don't know what McEwan was trying to do with this book. Is is supposed to be a nostalgic love story? A political story? A twisted morality tale? At the end, which I guess is supposed to be a very emotionally gripping and powerful scene, just left me confused and annoyed because after all that trouble, I had very little idea of what the whole thing was supposed to be about. What, exactly, was the point?

A clear exercise on brevity, this is exactly what I mean when I say that contempo writers are cutting corners in telling their story with as little words, adornments, as possible, albeit establishing a more substantial umph! at the novel's conclusion. Sometimes.

The writer of "Amsterdam" used the same exact model to write a later book: an unsuccessful meditation on being filthy rich in modern London in "Saturday," an overall truly horrendous ordeal, & "On Chesil Beach", a work of repression...totally boring, in fact.

But this one, the one which was awarded the Booker Prize (!!!), is actually more of a fable stretched out to fit the parameters of the novel (it could easily be defined as a novella, the length of it being less than 200 pages but with megaprint)... and because it rings true to the baffling evils of modern politics and the customs of the rich elite, it's successful in striking a note on ethics of some kind in a reader, particularly, I would suppose, with the English. But here in the U.S., the story does not (usually always) belong to the rich... pretty much everyone strives for that pesky, muddled label, "Middle Class." Oh well. I grinned at the end of the novel, and for that maestro McEwan deserves commendation. The order of enjoyment of books of his that I've read through the years goes something like this:

1) Atonement
2) Enduring Love
3) The Cement Garden
4) Amsterdam
5) On Chesil Beach
6) The Comfort of Strangers
8) The Child in Time
7) Saturday

And right at the middle is this strange little book which, also like books 2, 5, 6 and 7 (even 1, come to think of it) describes the rich in all their insulting opulence. He also concentrates on the art of creating, probably feeding his own personal (and, again, it must be highlighted, ENGLISH) ego, & his sensitivities toward art.

This may be my favorite book by Ian McEwan yet. The story built with a tension that increased as the pages turned.
The themes of loyalty, friendship and career are intermixed throughout. A wonderful and well-written story. Of the three of his books that I've read, this one is by far the darkest.
None of these characters is likable but they all exist in real life. That's the scary, tension-filled part.

This might sound tautological, but McEwan certainly reads well -- you have got to hand it to him. There are no cracks to be found in his controlled composure: storyline and structure seamlessly combine to create a work of majestic, unquestionable virtuosity.

Amsterdam, winner of the 1998 Booker prize, is no different. The narrative largely follows -- at times exquisitely penetrating the interiority of -- two main protagonists: Clive Linley (classical composer) and Vernon Halliday (editor for The Judge newspaper). They have been friends since times past -- though we would have to redefine our conception of friendship here, giving it a 'twisted' twist -- and are both ex-lovers of Molly Lane, the character whose funeral they attend at the beginning of the novel and who figuratively haunts the narrative thereafter.

A very typical McEwan novel, both thematically and structurally. Though interspersed with the voices of supporting characters --politician Garmony and his family, as well as the rich, arrogant publisher George Lane, in particular -- the narrative is split in five parts that alternate between Clive and Vernon's respective perspectives. Throughout the novel, Clive grapples with writing the symphony for the new millennium, whereas Vernon is set on boosting the newspaper's circulation, not keen on making the list of sacked editors. But do their ends justify the means by them adopted? What are they willing to sacrifice towards achieving those ends? And at what cost?

Not uncharacteristically, this McEwan novel is callous, cutting, and very knowing. It knows the crookedness of humanity -- remembering Barnes' latest -- and it knows the ways of the world, in which what dominates is ruthlessness; the fickleness of politics and people. Because the contradiction between being human and human passions remains insoluble, and nothing stands a chance against the 'grip' of human ambition. Trying to save her husband's skin, Mrs Garmony argues that 'love is a greater force than spite'. And yet, there is no risk of equivocation here. 'Spite' and its equivalents overleap the confines of human consciousness, trample upon it, and remould its fate in ways that are difficult to decipher, ponder, articulate. The different manifestation of Vernon -- aka Vermin -- and Clive's moral depravity attests to this. What McEwan suggests is that there are other -- human though apparently inhuman -- forces that foreground any individual's understanding and acceptation of what is morally right or wrong. Indeed, this novel could be said to constitute a performance of (self-)deception and (self-)delusion...as well as self-centredness. Passions and ambitions make both protagonists mindless and oblivious to the scope or import of their (non-)actions. The figure of Clive, in particular, is reminiscent of Geoffrey Rush's phenomenal performance -- and representation of the genius's madness -- in Shine, one of the most beautiful films in existence. Clive's is also an acute caricature-representation of the creative process, and his Millennial Symphony itself is echoed in the build up -- or down, rather -- to Amsterdam, where all the loose ends are venomously tied up, with the intended, lasting aftertaste of phlegm.

There is no doubt that McEwan's writing is insightful and very refined -- consider, for example, the perfectly positioned and repeated phrase 'It's a spoiler'. But, if you ask me, flawlessness and brilliant literature are not to be interchangeably understood. And what is, for some, McEwan's irresistible and most impeccable accomplishment constitutes for me the real reason why I cannot love his work with the intensity of sustained study, time, and thought.