Credere una cosa coincide col vederla

L’incipit è un pezzo di bravura tale che leggendolo per caso in rete ho comprato il romanzo.
Narrazione in prima persona, scrittura superba, suspense misurata e funzionale. L’autore si prende i tempi giusti per raccontare, mette nella ciotola dei gatti lettori un po’ di croccantini a fine capitolo ma poi il capitolo successivo si apre e il cibo nella ciotola è sparito.. è un trucco, ricomparirà di lì a poco.
Joe Rose è un divulgatore scientifico e il suo mestiere lo fa piacevolmente anche in alcuni intermezzi del romanzo. La divulgazione è un ripiego, ha abbandonato la sperimentazione e benché guadagni lautamente sente di aver tradito i propri sogni. Ha avuto in sorte una donna letterata che ritiene troppo bella rapportata a sé. Un incidente spezzerà la lastra di ghiaccio dove ha camminato negli ultimi dieci anni della propria vita e lo farà in un modo impensabile.
Si definisce forma pura (o primaria) di sindrome di de Clérambault quella di un individuo i cui convincimenti religiosi risultano essere in stretta relazione con le manifestazioni deliranti. Si rilevano altresì tendenze auto ed eteroaggressive.
«la convinzione delirante di essere in comunicazione amorosa con un’altra persona; che tale persona sia di livello sociale più elevato; che per prima si sia innamorata e abbia scelto di dichiararsi; che l’esordio sia improvviso; che l’oggetto del delirio erotico resti invariato; che il paziente fornisca una spiegazione di ogni comportamento paradossale dell’oggetto; che il decorso della malattia sia cronico; che non vi siano allucinazioni né deterioramenti cognitivi».
Molto probabilmente McEwan è partito da questa interessante categorizzazione per imbastire il proprio romanzo. Essa è presente nella prima appendice a margine del testo insieme al riassunto della vicenda narrata, quasi si trattasse di un fatto realmente accaduto.
McEwan con la sua prima persona, facendosi protagonista, ha fornito una delle sue prove migliori. “Cani Neri” e “Giardino di cemento” mi son sembrati assai inferiori a questo romanzo.
L’inizio è facile da individuare…[…]
L’istante fu quello, quella la bandierina sulla mappa del tempo: tesi la mano e, nel momento in cui il collo freddo e la stagnola nera mi sfioravano la pelle, udimmo le grida di un uomo. Ci voltammo a guardare dall’altra parte del prato, e intuimmo il pericolo. L’attimo dopo, correvo in quella direzione […]
Che idiozia, lanciarmi dentro questa storia e i suoi labirinti […]

Scegliete se rischiare anche voi di compiere un’idiozia..

I don’t know why this book has such a “low” average rating here, I thought it was brilliant. After the long, intense, dramatic - and tragic, introduction with the ballooning accident (that you will know about if you know anything at all about this book), the aftermath with the seemingly smitten (later to prove obsessed) Jed feels much like a less important side track in the beginning. The pace of the story drops significantly (which is why, I assume, some readers lost interest), but I found the reverberations on the lives of all involved both painful and irresistible to learn more about.

The fact that some later developments and reactions may have been “easily” avoided had the protagonists just chosen different words, or slightly different actions is not making this story less believable - it’s actually the opposite - it makes it all the more real.

McEwan complicates things in a very challenging way, when we late in the day realise Joe is an unreliable narrator in more than one way. The letter from Clarissa is a game changer in that we finally get to see her side. This kind of makes her partner unreliable, in a way that I suppose all first person narrators are - he’s giving us his view - and with the few meaningful conversations the couple manages, that’s really all we have before this point.

It’s harder to explain how come Joe turns out to be unreliable when it comes to facts, and certainly seemingly less important facts. I’m still not sure what to make of this, but I’m sure it will stay with me for some time. As of right now, I have a tiny urge to start over and read it again (which in itself warrants the 5 stars, I guess).

The ending completes the story and the realism of it. It’s very dramatic, but not at all unexpected or illogic.

A first by the author for me, I’m sure I’ll seek out more.

Another brilliantly-written work that springs from a single defining event. McEwan does that a lot, this time it’s a ballooning tragedy, but the real purpose of it is to allow McEwan to explore his characters. Joe had been picnicking with his partner Clarissa when they see a man attempting to hold a balloon down to free a child trapped inside. Joe and five others run to help but through an unfortunate set of actions, one falls to his death. Thus two men meet: Jed is a lonely religious fundamentalist who falls obsessively in love with Joe, hounding and pestering him to return his love, yet maintains that Joe initiated the whole thing. Joe, a hyper-rational ex-physicist and respected science reporter, soon determines that Jed is suffering from de Clerambault’s Syndrome.

(At first I thought that that McEwan-esquely-named disorder and its symptoms must surely have been invented by the man himself, but no, it is a real illness; though McEwan does cleverly present the entire story of Enduring Love as the basis for a psychiatric case history in an appendix. That in itself is brilliant: it’s written as a perfect facsimile of a dry academic paper, complete with real references – yes, I checked! – but the British Review of Psychiatry that it was supposedly published in is fake. It is so convincing that it apparently fooled both physicians and book critics - one complaining that Enduring Love was a too-literal interpretation of a real case. See this Guardian article for more.).

Back to the story. But how much is Joe the cause and how much the victim of the unfolding drama? Because Joe is himself obsessed with proving that Jed is actually unbalanced, to the extent of destroying his relationship with Clarissa, who has never even seen Jed since the accident and points out that the daily letters Jed keeps sending him look suspiciously like Joe’s own handwriting.

There is a lot more going on – there is an important parallel story involving the widow of the man who was killed in the accident, which provides Joe with a mystery to solve – and the overall pace and tension is great; I found it hard to put down, although strangely it was not a fast read.

Actually some elements were a little far-fetched (I mean, really, if you were struggling to keep a balloon on the ground, would you notice how many doors were open on a car parked some distance away? But at least two of them supposedly did). And I thought the story did become a bit strained towards the end with Joe discovering that de Clerambault sufferers can become violent, just before that did actually happen, and immediately deciding he needed to get a gun for protection just as he discovered that Jed was holding Clarissa hostage.

But no matter; it’s not that I found the development unconvincing in any way, or that it wasn’t well-paced. Like many of McEwan’s works, there is a thread of unreality or rather dream-like menace through it which is thoroughly engrossing; so this may not be his best, but it’s damn good.

In a blink of an eye, life can drastically change through no doing of your own, and this is precisely what happens to Joe when he and a group of other people try to avert a hot air balloon accident. A study in OCD, this gripping story is based on a real-life case of Clerambault's syndrome: a homo-erotic obsession with religious overtones. Jed begins to stalk Joe, and his obsession threatens every aspect of Joe's life. Written with a sense of deep foreboding, this is one of my favorite novels despite, or perhaps due to, its overwhelming creepiness. Fantastic!

Another great piece of work by the much lauded McEwan. A very well written suspense driven fictionalised account of a victim of a man with De Clérambault's syndrome (erotomania) where the sufferer absolutely and truly believe that their target is in love with them, and also essentially made the first advances and continues to do so. On top of this the initial meeting of both erotomaniac and his victim was an innovative and gripping introduction to the characters. 7 out of 12, Three Star for my first read of this one (2010). Second read 2021 (better) 4-star review

2010 and 2021 read

Wow, ce carte!

Nu am mai stat de mult cu sufletul la gura să termin un roman.
E un fel de "Baby Reindeer", varianta queer. Și cu foarte multe detalii științifice despre tulburarea psihiatrică a hărțuitorului.

Mi-a plăcut foarte mult, mai ales că a fost prima întâlnire cu Ian McEwan.

Good book, nice attention to details...

I have to admit, however, that what won me over was the fact that Ian McEwan managed to pull one over most of his readers, including some renown doctors with the appendix which makes a near perfect case for a real condition... with unexpected medical vernacular... It turns out McEwan fabricated the entire story, including the premise that it was based on a true story; a true condition, De Clerambault's Syndrome.

To be able to pull that of... that is... well, genius...

Enduring Love has a simple but fascinating premise, which I was at least halfway familiar with before beginning the book (I think there's been a film version, which I haven't actually seen, but remember reading about whenever it came out). Joe Rose, a scientific journalist, is about to enjoy a reunion picnic with his girlfriend Clarissa when he witnesses an accident involving a hot-air balloon; he and a small group of strangers rush to help, but the incident results in a man's death. During these events, one of the group, Jed Parry, catches Joe's eye and thereafter develops an obsession with him. As the story progresses, Parry's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing and Joe finds his relationship with Clarissa disintegrating, leading to an inevitably dramatic climax.

At first I thought this was a fairly straightforward tale (rational man is harrassed by religious fanatic, relationship suffers) but to my delight, it became much more than that. Joe is a complicated character - obsessed by the rationality of science, he is nevertheless completely inept in the way he handles both Parry's behaviour and the problems in his relationship with Clarissa. In the first few chapters, his ruminations on matters scientific irritated and bored me, but later I began to understand that they are essential in establishing the basics of his character, the rationality that leads him to deal with his stalker in entirely the wrong way, only making matters worse. Parry's obsession, meanwhile, begins to reflect Joe's single-minded determination that he can restore Clarissa's love for him to its former state, creating a fascinating parallel between the two men - is Parry's love only categorised as madness because it has never been returned; does love require reciprocation to be validated as a normal mental state?

However, I couldn't help thinking it was all just too slight. Joe and Clarissa's relationship, Parry's obsessive behaviour, Joe's struggle to be taken seriously by Clarissa and the police - all would have benefited from further exploration, and the book could easily have been twice its actual length and still just as compelling. The opening of the book is incredibly effective - the reader is plunged straight into the action of the balloon incident - but because this is the first time Joe and Clarissa appear, and the problems between them start very soon afterwards, I found it difficult to get a handle on them as a couple deeply in love and happy (particularly as we only see Joe's viewpoint). I LOVED the element of uncertainty, the narrative's implication - as well as Clarissa's obvious suspicion - that Parry is actully a figment of Joe's imagination, some expression of post-traumatic stress, but again, this was resolved too quickly. Additionally, I didn't see much point in the sub-plot involving the balloon accident victim's family, which only made me want to jump back to the main narrative.

To sum up: very good, full of interesting themes and meanings, but simply not long or detailed enough for me.

Interesting to consider this as a precursor to Saturday: both have a scientist as the protagonist and get progressively darker through a slightly contrived stalker plot. Enduring Love opens, famously, with a ballooning accident that leaves its witnesses questioning whether they couldn’t have done more to prevent it. Freelance science journalist Joe Rose – on a picnic with his partner, Keats scholar Clarissa, at the time – was one of those who rushed to help, as was Jed Parry, a young Christian zealot who fixates on Joe. He seems to think that by loving Joe, a committed atheist, he can bring him to God. In turn, Joe’s obsession with Jed’s harassment campaign drives Clarissa away. It’s a deliciously creepy read that contrasts rationality with religion and inquires into what types of love are built to last.

Reviewed with five other “love” titles for a Valentine’s-themed post on my blog, Bookish Beck.

Ian McEwan's Enduring Love and Saturday have some similar ideas. Culpability, survivor's guilt, do we ever really know anybody?, haves versus the have-nots from not only position of material things and social stats, but uneven mental playing fields. Hell, they have similar stories. In Enduring Love, an idyllic afternoon is ruined after a freak hot air balloon accident. Only one man really attempts to save the kid. Joe cannot go back to living with blinders on about himself. Sure, the guy was a Billy trying to be a hero and died. It was that the rest of them let go that he died at all. It costs to be the only person who gives a damn. Guilt is a bitch. Another person involved develops an obsession with Joe based on the intensity of the experience. He's got erotomania, to put a label on it, and reads into everything biblical connections between himself and Joe. Joe's wife is the sitcom kind of connected. It's easy to go with the flow when you're both flowing the same way. Joe likewise becomes obsessed with figuring out his stalker's brain waves. Like trying to decode a radio frequency in someone else's soul, is how I saw it. Joe is a scientist and he'd try to use that to apply to another person. Saturday's Henry is a brain surgeon. His shark swimming through the void of life comes in the form of a wake up call (with a morning cup of guilt) of world events of 2003. The personal drama reflects something that was most aptly put (this is what my memory recalls, sorry to non-fans) on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. No one noticed teen Jonathan's problems because they were too busy living their own. It's not stopping to think about letting go of the balloon because you're too inside yourself. (My favorite parts of that book were the insights and everybody-dies-alone Alzheimer's suffering mom story. The Cosby show similar home life of careless privileged wasn't something I especially wanted to try on.) A freak fender bender accident puts Henry in the sights of a diseased criminal. Henry diagnoses what is wrong with him pretty quickly (he's fucked), yet lies about false cures to get out of the sticky situation. Like with Joe and Jed, his unfortunate attacker holds up the good doctor as representative of everything, good and bad. Henry's home life is threatened when he invades (literally, in this work of literature. {Side note: I hate it when people use the word "literally" wrong}) his home. Can they go back to living as they had before? Both Joe and Henry try to understand their invaders from the point of view of science. I don't know if I believe that Henry's family will really be there, in the waking up and smelling the shit sense (literally. Just kidding!). Joe's wife certainly wasn't. The weakest part of Enduring Love, for me, was that love story. I couldn't take it inside of me and feel anything for her. She was the person you see on the other side of the glass in an uptown place (living in her uptown world ohhhh ohhhhh) dressed up in fancy clothes who could be absolutely anyone. Magazine pristine. Cultured in the art textbook feel. I got into Joe's obsessive attempt to understand Jed more. I could use all sledgehammers over my head, or dead horses to beat, and I'd still never get it. I know that what one person has in mental capacities interests me a great deal. The mental haves versus the mental have nots. (Mentalists. I'm probably one.) If you could measure the soul, or hearts if they never got to grow three sizes bigger like in The Grinch. I only know that I'm subterranean low self-esteem. Not Titanic submerged 'cause that once existed. Make it the "lost" city of Atlantis. (Maybe it was there someday.) Yeah, I can get into these guys trying to find some sense of this stuff. Being lucky to have a brain that works (if Alzheimer's never happens *knock on wood*). Enduring Love is one of my favorites and Saturday is not, for all their similarities. Saturday feels like you could still go back to sleep... And means more than just doing it not to feel guilty. What the hell are wakeup calls, anyway? I feel it like trying to get somewhere, without losing more than you have to. Buffy was right. Enduring Love is one of those books I feel tries to understand other things in the way I try to understand them.

Enduring Love is a psychological literary thriller, in the truest sense of the words. The skill that evidently went into crafting this book is phenomenal; its balance of page-turning tension, eloquent prose, and thought-provoking thematic nuance so exact it’s like a masterclass of the genre.

The plot follows Joe Rose. Whilst enjoying a picnic with his wife, Clarissa, they become involved in a freak accident that ends in tragedy. Jed Parry, a fellow witness to the incident, becomes instantly and inexplicably obsessed with Joe from that moment. He begins to stalk him, testing Joe’s mental stamina, calling into question his rational outlook on life, and threatening to tear apart his relationship with Clarissa; all the while convincing him that Jed poses a serious threat to their safety.

What’s interesting from the off is the undercurrent of science versus religion. Our protagonist is a freelance scientific journalist. By contrast, his stalker is a religious fanatic, adamant that God has willed them together, and determined to convert Joe to the same line of thought. The dichotomy between Joe’s meticulous and rational approach to life, and Jed’s blind, overwhelming faith is stark, and serves as a major source of conflict and uncomfortable tension between the two. There’s also undoubtedly a note of critique in the way Joe’s harassment is handled, with the police uninterested given the initial lack of physical violence.

It becomes increasingly clear throughout the narrative that Joe is struggling to accept the role he played in the tragic event that began his ordeal, and to make peace with his sense of survivor’s guilt. As such, coping with trauma is another notable theme. It’s also true, however, that we can’t necessarily trust Joe as a narrator. He is telling us his story in first-person, after the fact, analysing events even as he describes them. Given that he frequently muses on the unreliability of memory, and how often people question his version of events with regards to his interactions with Jed, McEwan is clear that we shouldn’t necessarily take everything he says as gospel. This adds another interesting dynamic to the reading experience, and is represented well by this passage, which also shows McEwan’s prose at the height of its power:

‘No one could agree on anything. We lived in a mist of half-shared, unreliable perception, and our sense data came warped by a prism of desire and belief, which tilted our memories too. We saw and remembered in our own favour and we persuaded ourselves along the way. Pitiless objectivity, especially about ourselves, was always a doomed social strategy. We’re descended from the indignant, passionate tellers of half truths who in order to convince others, simultaneously convinced themselves. Over generations success had winnowed us out, and with success came our defect, carved deep in the genes like ruts in a cart track – when it didn’t suit us, we couldn’t agree on what was in front of us.’

How much is genuine harassment, and how much is self-projected victimhood, brought on to distract from latent guilt? This is the question central to Joe’s development as a character, our perception of him, and his interactions with those around him.

My only real criticism came at the end, where there is a brief section presented as an academic psychology essay, using the events of the novel as a case study. Though this is interestingly meta, given Joe’s line of work, I did find it a somewhat dry note to end on, and I can’t say it added much from a narrative standpoint.

That said, I thought this was an excellent book. I was gripped from the off by its almost unbearably drawn out recounting of the accident. This in itself was a stroke of tonal genius, perfectly capturing the sense of a horrific event playing out as though in slow motion. From there on, its look at psychosis; a relationship pushed to breaking point; and a man’s attempts to process a traumatising ordeal was utterly compelling. It reaffirmed for me how much I can enjoy McEwan’s work, and fuelled a desire to explore more of his back catalogue.

With an electrifying start this book takes you in with urgency. It sets the stage with intrigue, suspense and mystery. Starting the book with an edge of your seat "accident" where the protagonist Joe meets the antagonist Jed. McEwan sets a bold premise riding the line between science and religion. Delusion and reality. Love and obsession.
Central to the plot is the psychological disorder of de Clerambault or etotomania. A person's delusion, often carrying religious undertones, that a certain person is irrevocably in love with them and vice versa.
McEwan's has masterfully written this narrative, meticulously constructing the characters and their individual psychology. I witnessed this ability of his in Atonement and again in Nutshell. In Enduring Love he is at it again. The attention to detail is impressive. Characters and their human condition jumps off the pages and it's a wholly immersive experience. A delight for science and psychology enthusiasts. It will even please the readers who love their suspense thrillers