As with most of Ian McEwan's books, some characters are emotionally tormented. It's clear if you read the blurb on the book cover that a child is taken from her parents and they obviously suffer. Other story lines in the book are less straightforward, but in the end they are clarified and related to the title.


(I listened to a cassette, and I may have missed a few details.)

I was steered towards this—my first encounter with Ian McEwan—several years ago subsequent to discovering in an interview with troubled actor Tom Sizemore that he deemed this book one of the greatest novels he had ever read. Since at the time I was personally in a state of mind that allowed me to relate quite sympathetically with his particular struggle against demons, I impulsively purchased a copy of the book later that same day.

While I can't agree with him on the novel's relative merit, McEwan's look at both the struggles of a father who holds himself responsible for both the kidnapping (and presumed murder) of his young daughter and the subsequent fracturing of his marriage by the hammers of unreconciled guilt and unresolved grief, and those of his friend, a wealthy politician whose own childhood was abducted by a premature imposition of the demands and responsibilities of adulthood, is a haunting and sparse examination of the burdens of loss.

Stephen Lewis, the grieving father, listless and trudging through the days with the aid of the bottle, finds himself (somehow) visiting himself as a lad, reviewing happy days spent with his army father and secret-harboring mother—for in the course of his temporal eavesdropping he becomes aware of the shadow his mother is nursing. Conversely, Drake, his friend, straining under the demands of his position, reverts back to a fantasy childhood wherein all the carefree games he missed out on are recreated; he is humored in his increasingly inelastic delusions by his increasingly concerned wife. Two men, their lives crumbling, seeking solace in their childhood - one making the journey back in time through space, the other through the mind, all in an effort to rediscover those pivotal moments before childhood's end and draw them out, comb them, a deleterious regression to fantasy or a fantasy of penetrating to the essence of a cherished child's life, snatched away in one careless moment, that will forever be frozen in the mind by time's gelid stitching. The supporting cast becomes drawn into these movements as well: Drake's wife's conciliation will lead to estrangment; Lewis' estrangement from his wife will lead to a reconciliation.

I have read a few reviews that protested McEwan's sudden interposing of magical realism, the pat resolution; myself, I tend to grant the author a lot of magical leeway, and I thought the ending tied in with Stephen's awareness of his mother's then-painful decision, and that handful of sentences between sundered husband and wife that eased a tremendous accumulation of guilt. McEwan—informed by his ugly real life custody battle with his ex-wife—alternately takes a detached and elegiac tone, and the novel has moments (especially when Stephen mistakes another man's daughter for his own lost child) that are very moving. A worthwhile read, and a fine introduction to this English author's body of work.

Beware: this review contains some spoilers (although if you're thinking of reading this book for the plot, you should look elsewhere).

I have no idea how Ian McEwan did it, but he managed to take a bunch of interesting events (the loss of a child, a car crash, a friend going insane and committing suicide) and make them booooooring. Maybe the writing is absolutely brilliant. I can't tell. The figurative language is okay, the imagery is okay (I've seen far better from populist genre writers), the rhythm is nonexistent (to my tin ear), and it's boggy as hell. How can you make a car crash boring? How much psychological drivel can you add to a 245 page novel? A little bit goes a long way. I burned out.

And the ending? Oh, jeez, talk about dumb and laborious. Massively overwritten. It was so bad, I actually laughed.

I'm not sure if I'm ever going to read another Ian McEwan book. Maybe Atonement.

***1/2. Stephen Lewis è uno scrittore di libri per bambini e membro del “comitato governativo sull’educazione dell’infanzia”. Ha una moglie, Julie, violinista in un quartetto d’archi e una dolcissima bimba di 3 anni di nome Kate. L’equilibrio e la felicità familiare viene stravolta quando un giorno Kate sparisce nel nulla: una frazione di secondo di distrazione mentre Stephen è intento a pagare alla cassa di un supermercato. A niente servono le ricerche dei poliziotti che dopo breve tempo perdono interesse per il caso. La perdita di Kate porta i due genitori a separarsi, entrambi troppo presi dal proprio dolore per affrontarlo insieme. Nei due anni successivi osserviamo la vita di Stephen, il suo ricordare la propria infanzia e addirittura episodi accaduti prima della sua nascita. Osserviamo il suo rapporto con gli amici di una vita Charles e Thelma, lui suo primo editore e successivamente politico di spicco e lei, la moglie, astrofisica e teorica della fluidità del tempo e dello spazio. Ed è proprio in questa fluidità che si svolge la storia: una bambina scomparsa che negli anni rimane sempre uguale nella memoria, un uomo adulto che regredisce allo stadio infantile e un bambino non ancora
nato ma che è già vivido negli occhi della madre.

Quando ho iniziato questo libro ho pensato che avrei dovuto leggerlo anni prima quando potevo essere un po’ più “immune” sul tema bambini scomparsi. L’empatia che si prova verso Stephen è talmente forte che certe scene sono un vero e proprio macigno sul cuore. Alla fine, proprio perché non sono per niente immune emotivamente, ho potuto lasciarmi trasportare completamente nel dolore di un padre e di una madre che perdono inspiegabilmente la propria figlia e alla fine ho dato sfogo a lacrime che non versavo da tempo per un libro. Per chi conosce un po’ McEwan però sa che farcisce le sue storie anche di capitoli spesso un po’ prolissi e noiosi e per questo il mio giudizio non è altissimo. In questo caso in particolare infatti mi sono bloccata più volte e spesso leggevo senza ascoltare veramente. La prima parte è stata dunque un po’ pesantina anche per l’atmosfera più cupa e malinconica ma si riprende nella seconda metà risultando più scorrevole e volto a un messaggio finale di speranza.

C'è da chiedersi che esperienze debba aver mai attraversato McEwan per poter partorire libri così neri e, in qualche modo, senza speranza come questo o altri suoi (da Cortesie per gli ospiti a Giardino di cemento al suo capolavoro - a mio parere - Atonement).
E' vero che in questo caso particolare il cerchio sembra in qualche modo chiudersi con una anche se parziale consolazione, ma questa chiusura parziale a me ha lasciato la bocca anche più amara...
Interessante poi il concetto del tempo; forse il protagonista assoluto del libro.

During the reading of this book I was in two-minds for most of it.

Child in Time by Ian McEwan is another multi-layered story and it has played on my mind since completion.

The simple story is about the abduction of a little girl called Kate, taken in a supermarket and its massive impact on her two parents – Stephen and Julie. Both parents deal with this loss in very different ways, which very much illustrates the point that grief is very much a solo journey. Stephen is the character we follow more closely, he is a writer and participates on a UK Government Committee about child literacy, we get to know his friends and we witness his solitary downward spiral into the dark recesses of the heaviest of grieving processes.

Now this theme sounds like there’s enough to chew on, but true to form McEwen takes us on a journey touching on other topics such as quantum physics, time, psychology, literature theory amongst others. McEwen doesn’t just touch on these and other topics he deep dives, and goes into great detail. This detail was so great, at times I though it detracted from the main story – about Stephen and Julie – and found myself wondering where it was all heading. But in true McEwen form, there is reason behind his work, I should have known he doesn’t just put in content for the fun of it.

However, it all seemed to make sense once finished. But there is a lot to think about. Sure, grief is a major topic, but the theme of time (as stated in the title) comes to the fore, but maybe not in the way the reader may think. There are several ways this is weaved into this story, one of the threads was totally unexpected. Yes, the relativity and constancy of time comes through very strong.

Don’t rush this one, no mad dash to the end – I really should have slowed down a bit reading this one. I will certainly re-read this book and saviour it, as there is so much here. This is my third McEwen book and he is rapidly becoming my favourite. But that may be the recency effect talking, so I think I’ll take a breath, have a coffee, a ginger nut and ponder a bit longer.

4 Stars ……..It’s really 4.5 but I want room to move when I re-read it.

Less ambitious authors would be content to dedicate their novel to the immediate premise of The Child in Time: the loss of a family's innocence and its hopes for recovery after the theft of a child. McEwan works here as he does in later, more widely known novels, with layered presentations of theme and a greater effort to explore the loss of childhood to those stolen into adulthood, and how parents are often stolen from their own lives by childbirth. The decision to have a child becomes significant, and there are suggestions, more optimistic here, of the later novel,  On Chesil Beach, where the consequences of action (or inactivity) on later life are explored.

McEwan writes beautifully of the awe in which children hold their parents, and of adults' recognition of individuality within their children.

If you read this expecting a book of loss and recovery, I think you may miss the point: that life is ultimately defined by action over regret; and that there is no real recovery from loss every moment stolen. The novel is as touching in portraying its adult relationships as it is those between parent and child. A beautiful, complicated book that seeks to broaden its scope beyond the modern thirst for lives full of simply characterized regrets.

This would have been 3 stars without the cringe-worthy ending.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... oh yes, where was I? Mmm, reviewing The Child in Time by Ian McEwan...I remember now. To summarise; an overview of what it is to
a) be a child
b) have a child
c) lose a child
d) regress to a child like state (with the finally irony being that once you've gone through the first three and spend a lot of the book daydreaming about what it would be like to get your child back, you choose to ignore and abandon your friend who, for reasons of a personal/mental health/ sexual nature has decided to regress to child-like behaviour including the wearing of short pants but not before producing a government sanctioned idiots guide to child rearing along the way).

Yes, yes children are important. They remind us of that on a daily basis. Some do it by screaming bloody murder a lot of the time. Mind you some adults I know scream bloody murder a lot of the time too. Is that a sign of their inner child escaping? My inner child says me no like this book very much (and then threw it on the floor while having a small tantrum).

Aaahbsolute shite. The extra star is for the handsome writerly (Britishy) prose.* Other than that, yup: Shite!

Turns out McEwan is the most polarizing writer I've ever encountered. The more stuff of his I read the more I am convinced that someone else wrote the gorgeous epic Atonement, not this classicist douche bag. The dude will let you know which caste he belongs to, it is way above yours. Even the Prime Minister plays a part in our protagonist's "life."

REVOLTINGGG. Perhaps this aspect, my nausea, makes it ART??

*McEwan is an obvious mimic of Woolf--with near clinical insights that break narrative credibility and he loves the same story (Saturday, Comfort of Strangers, Enduring Love) about horrendous violent interchanges (fake!) between the rich and members of the general unwashed...

This was a bit bizarre and not what I expected from a novel with child abduction as the premise. And the final 20 pages are insane (not in a good way). But I reserve my right to fancy some IM prose.

I read "Child in Time" by Ian McEwan, and liked it a lot! I cannot, however, pinpoint some exact quotes. The style of writing is fluid and elegant, somehow visceral but also realistic in its condensation and extension of time. And the themes discussed are personal, presented in a crystallizing manner. Sometimes, as a reader, I felt like zooming in to see what happens with a character, beyond time and space, to his/her heart and to all that lies in close vicinity. There is also a constant feeling of pregnancy (as in being heavy with something) and abortion (as in missing something or having lost something), both individually and on a meta-fictional level. The ending is a tour-de-force, like any happy suffering would be.