McEwan'ın 1987'de yazdığı roman 2019'da Türkçe'ye maalesef özensiz bir çeviri ile kazandırılmış. İyi edebi çeviri yabancı dilde yetkinliğin yanı sıra anadile edebi bir sağduyu ile yazarın kendi dilindeki üslubuna yaklaşan bir dil incelmesini de gerektiriyor. Teknik şartname çevirir gibi yapınca maalesef okumak zorlaşıyor. İşin tuhaf yanı romanın ilk yarısındaki kuruluk ikinci yarıda belirgin şekilde ortadan kalkıyor ve çeviri akıcı ve yalın hâle geliyor. Bu dikkat çekici durumu yorumlamak mümkün ama haksız spekülasyon yapmaktan çekinirim. Mutlaka bir izahı vardır. Çevirmene çemkirmekten ziyade yayınevine dönüp bakmak gerek. YKY herhangi bir yayınevi değil. Çeviri editörü kullanmak konusunda mâli müşkülü olmasa gerek. Mesele sadece çeviri editörü eksikliği değil, düzelti eksikliği de kitap boyunca okumayı tatsızlaştırıyor. Tekrar eden cümleler bile var. YKY için utanç verici.
Bahis mevzuu Ian McEwan romanı olmasa yarım bırakırdım. Ama öyle güçlü bir kurmaca ki yakanızı bırakmıyor.

His endings always destroy me.

Ok, that's it. I'm done with Ian McEwan. This book was total bullshit.
This was my third book by the author, and this is why I don't like reading too much by the same writer, especially popular "NYT best-seller" authors. I purchased this book because I thought it was going to be about a three year old girl (Kate) who gets kidnapped at a supermarket while out with her dad. True, McEwan wastes no time in describing the kidnapping in the very first chapter of the book, but after that the rest is about inane shit that has little or nothing to do with the kidnapping, guilt, loss and anguish that would normally occur after such a tragic event. I despised the main character of the book. In true McEwan fashion Stephen Lewis (Kate's father) is a pretentious self-centered snob.
There was not an ounce of angst, despair, madness, or desperation you'd expect in a book about a child who has been kidnapped and whose parents are suppose to be in mourning. The story is about Stephen, who often visits his friends in the county. Who btw never bring up his daughter. He also saved a man from a car-wreck, and he's often in a meeting in which child welfare is the topic of discussion. It was a very flat, boring drawn-out story. The chapters were so long... so tedious. It's infuriating to be strung along so many chapters without so much of a mention of what these parents were supposedly going through! It didn't compel me to feel any sympathy for him or his wife. This was one of the worst novels I've ever read.

Ci ho messo più di un mese per portare a compimento la lettura di questo romanzo. Non è stata solo l’università a non permettermi di procedere speditamente nella lettura, e neanche problemi legati alla vita quotidiana, ma semplicemente ho trovato questo libro noioso e piatto.

Non starò qui a dilungarmi sulla trama, che si può leggere ovunque sul web, ma passo subito a sottolineare come la storia, che poteva offrire spunti interessanti per tutta la sua durata, sia alla fine troppo disorganica; ci sono troppi momenti che potevano tranquillamente non esistere, non essere implementati nella stesura finale del libro. Esempio su tutti: le scene della commissione. Questi momenti all’interno della storia rovinano il normale svolgersi degli eventi, sono dei meri riempitivi che non hanno alcun senso se non quello di far perdere tempo al lettore.

E’ proprio il tempo che gioca un ruolo di primo piano all’interno dell’economia del racconto e l’autore lo sottolinea costantemente per tutto l’arco della narrazione ripetendo il termine più volte all’interno di contesti sempre differenti. Ecco, qui sta la genialata – se così possiamo chiamarla – del libro, il suo elemento più interessante che porta il lettore a riflettere su come il tempo condizioni tutto, dalle cose più semplici a quelle più complesse. La vita stessa è scandita nel tempo: essa non è altro che una corsa contro il tempo, dove a vincere è inevitabilmente il tempo stesso. Ma prima della morte ci sono una serie di piccole scaglie di tempo che scandicono la vita in brevi momenti, positivi o negativi che siano. Ed ecco il tempo che corre veloce, lasciandosi alle spalle gli eventi che diventano ricordi; ed ecco anche la sensazione che il tempo si fermi, che scorra lentamente, durante un evento negativo come un incidente stradale; e poi c’è il tempo che guarisce le ferite, portando l’anima verso la rinascita. Tempo.

Accanto a questo mastodontico tema, che divora quasi ogni pagina del romanzo, ve n’è un altro che il lettore è portato a credere sia quello principale, ma che in realtà diventa ben presto un contorno: la perdita. La perdita di un figlio è una cosa straziante e se ciò avviene in circostanze misteriose, a cui non si riesce a dare una spiegazione, essa diventa allora intollerabile e andare avanti è difficile, quasi impossibile. Il protagonista, separatosi dalla moglie anche lei avvolta nel velo del lutto, cerca di rifarsi una vita, lotta ogni giorno con un macigno nello stomaco, la vita che scorre via in un fiume di domande senza risposta.

Qui lo scivolone dell’autore, secondo me: le emozioni dei personaggi, in particolare quelle dello stesso protagonista, sono ridotte all’osso. Si avverte il dolore, è quasi palpabile, ma solo per l’evento in sé descritto ad inizio romanzo, non per particolari azioni o per descrizioni dettagliate delle emozioni dei personaggi. E’ tutto “fermo”, passivo, statico, freddo.

Il tutto però si sblocca nel finale, secondo me riuscito, che lascia con una domanda di non poca importanza a livello filosofico [1] e una speranza rinnovata. (per questo vi rimando sotto alla parte spoiler).


SPOILER ALERT!
[1] Bambino o Bambina? Bambino come nuova vita, come definitiva troncatura rispetto al passato o bambina come sostituta spirituale di Kate, la bambina perduta? Questa è una cosa che mi è venuta in mente appena finito il romanzo. Certo, non è un quesito di particolare importanza, però mi sembrava giusto riportarlo: che l’autore abbia pensato a questo quando ha scritto il finale? Io voglio pensare sia così.

McEwan nearly stopped my clock during the first chapter, but by the end he spent too much time chasing the wrong child.

You really can't fault his way with a memorable opening chapter. Stephen Lewis, an author of children's books, takes his three year old daughter to the supermarket for a routine shop, turns his head away for one moment during which she is abducted. Thereafter he is haunted by her disappearance:

'Without the fantasy of her continued existence he was lost, time would stop. He was father of an invisible child.'

He and his partner separate, failing to share their sense of loss in communion. Stephen numbs the pain by taking part in a governmental commission aimed at compiling an Authorised Childcare Handbook, paragraphs from which head up each chapter and change their meaning as the novel reaches a conclusion.

The passages dealing with the psychological effects of their loss on Stephen and Julie were engrossing, everything else not so much. Obviously it was necessary to give Stephen a life outside of his overriding tragedy. However, the life McEwan gave him was dull and uninteresting, even though it broadened upon the central theme.

I'm not sure if there was an intended irony in Stephen finding solace while working on the government's Official Commission on Childcare, but any dramatic intention was lost in the dreariness of these scenes,. His friendship with a politician who resigns after receding into a second childhood never provided enough interest to justify drawing so much attention away from the central tragedy.

In fact I think McEwan included it so that his friend's wife, a theoretical physicist, could regurgitate some generalized information about quantum mechanics which the author, like his contemporary Amis around the same time, had just read in A Brief History of Time and felt compelled to include.

Maybe he had just read Hawksmoor as well because his treatment of time and place as a palimpsest populated by ghosts from the past was lifted right out of the pages of Peter Ackroyd, especially in one uncanny moment.

A bit of a mixed bag then, but apropos of nothing the novel does contain a particularly good paragraph about sex, which I think is worth quoting:

'He wondered, as he had many times before, how something so good and simple could be permitted, how they were allowed to get away with it, how the world could have taken for long and still be the way it was. Not governments, or publicity firms or research departments, but biology, existence, matter itself had dreamed this up for it's own pleasure and perpetuity, and this was exactly what you were meant to do, it wanted you to like it.'

It surely does.

Kayıp, adı üstünde bir kayıpla başlıyor fakat sonra daldan dala atlıyor. Yazarın metafiziği de dahil etmesi ilgimi çekti. Klasik McEwan kitapları gibi değildi fakat hem sonundan ötürü hem de hikayenin akıcılığından ötürü sevdim.

A routine, but joyful trip to the supermarket ends in tragedy. Steven Lewis's three year old daughter, Kate has disappeared from his side during a brief lapse of his attention.This book deals with the deep emotional turmoil and sorrow which he and his wife, Julie attempt to endure and to continue their existences following this loss.

Although at times the narrative seemed to drag and cause me to question the direction McEwan had taken, further analysis following my reading proved that it was quite evident. He adeptly conveyed to the reader the deep sense of loss and mourning for Kate's family.

The title, The Child in Time" relates to much symbolism throughout the novel. Kate's embodiment, as time goes on,is of the eternal three year old. Yet Steven begins to picture her at different ages and tries to glean some comfort from this. He also thinks of his parents and how he is their child. They, in turn, often view themselves as the young, courting couple prior to his birth. Also as the novel progresses,the concept of a child's relationship to time is questioned and explored. Of equal importance, McEwan portrays how heavily the hours and days pass for the grieving parents.

McEwan has drawn his characters vividly. Repeatedly throughout he was able to demonstrate how events alter people in many ways. The final pages successfully conclude this sensitive, emotional and insightful tale.

Nu știu cine a zis vorba asta, dar a avut mare dreptate : "Copilăria e singurul paradis pierdut".
O carte de o profunzime și o simplitate emoționante.

Three and a half stars. For a large part very convincing, the horror of losing your child and the effect on the marriage of the parents is described in painful detail. But there are elements in the story that seem too artificial. What does the futuristic, Orwellian type of society have to do with the story? And the entire story about the Darke character? And the mysterious hallucination of Stephen in which he ‘sees’ his parents in the moment when they decide about his fate as a yet unborn child? McEwan is playing around with ideas from the physics of time here but not in a very clear way.

Incipit

Da tempo ormai, tanto il governo quanto la maggioranza dei cittadini associavano mentalmente le sovvenzioni ai trasporti pubblici con la negazione della libertà individuale ...
Bambini nel tempo incipitmania.com

Childhood is magical.

There is a myth, or at least a misconception, that this is a result of children being innocent. If you have ever been a child, then if you look deep into your heart, you will recognize this as the lie we tell ourselves to conceal the painful truth. Childhood is magical because it is inaccessible. Once gone, it can never be reclaimed, revisited, redone. It is lost to us except through the unreliable route of memories and mementos. Childhood is almost like a separate, first lifetime—a dream of something we did in the past, before we grew up and entered the world of adults.

As children, our world is timeless. We perceive the passage of time, the measurement of time, quite differently. Summers are almost infinite stretches of warm days and improvised games. Winters are endless opportunities for snowmen and snowball fights. Time is fluid and flexible: friends forever, then enemies the next day. In the worlds we create in our backyards, it can be the day before yesterday just as easily as it can be years into the future: our narratives are seldom linear; we’ve yet to yield to the adult idea that fiction needs to “make sense”. Make-believe is a process, not a product, and best done when not entirely serious.

As adults, we can of course strive to retain some of these qualities. I know many people who possess childlike exuberance, as well as a sense of wonder and imagination that serves them well. I try to keep these qualities too. But unless we take the extreme measure, as Charles Darke does in this book, of opting out of adult society, we can never be children. As adults our lives are relentlessly scheduled: transit, meetings, classes, deadlines, duties, chores. We are, all of us, obsessed with the question, “What time is it?” and have developed ever more accurate and precise ways to measure the passage of time so we always know the answer. One might balk at this characterization, but who doesn’t have to be some place at some particular time sometimes? This necessity to be aware of time is a very adult thing, and it is what separates us from our childhood.

The Child in Time puts childhood under a microscope and peers at what separates us from children. Stephen Lewis’ three-year-old daughter was abducted from a supermarket. Years later, he has separated from his wife and finds himself serving on a government committee drafting a report for a new child-rearing document. The British government of the future Ian McEwan imagines is a somewhat paternalistic, authoritarian one: the government knows best. Lewis seems to be sleepwalking through his life, still unable to move on after losing his daughter. He is peculiarly apathetic toward everything: politics, his relationship with his wife, his career as an “accidental” children’s author.

Indeed, most of my issues with this book stem from its unremarkable narrative. Stephen Lewis seems to stumble from scene to scene, and with the story slipping from his past to the present without much knowledge, it can get confusing. His walk is largely aimless, for he does not seize upon a purpose or a desire until the end of the book. Meanwhile, most of the interesting things around him are told to us rather than shown. Thelma tells us about Charles, with Charles himself only briefly making an appearance. Stephen tells us about his parents; his mom tells us about Stephen’s conception … there is a lot of dialogue and exposition. I had trouble enjoying this book simply because it feels so bland.

But at the same time, there is so much happening! The government wants to release a creepy child-rearing manual that’s supposed to restore the morals of the nation. Beggars can get licenses to beg and must wear badges identifying them as such. Stephen’s best friend, Charles, resigns as a Member of Parliament so he can become a recluse seeking to recapture his lost childhood. (Although Thelma eventually explains the reasons, I didn’t find it entirely satisfactory.)

I guess The Child in Time is a fairly interesting smattering of ideas, all of which have something to do with childhood. There is a sense of regret over the loss of childhood, whether it is through maturity or through abduction. There is the difficulty associated with recovering from that trauma, the tension between Stephen and his wife Julie that finally crystallizes and shatters in the novel’s final pages. The ending of this book is really good—disproportionately so compared to the rest of the story.

Like so many other books, The Child in Time falls into that uncomfortable category of books that have some merit even though, alas, I didn’t really enjoy reading them. I can see why others would, but for reasons related to McEwan’s style and characterization, the greatness of this book eludes me.

(Also, I couldn’t stop thinking about Stephen Lewis as I read this.)

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