The air of menace that floats over this story seems to me to be out of proportion to the rather insignificant events which unfold. That so much fine writing serves such an unsatisfactory story puzzles me. I sometimes wonder if I don't live in a totally different universe to McEuan...

Wow, this book Enduring Love first published in 1997 by Ian McEwan had me riveted from beginning to end. This psychological thriller had one of the most explosive beginnings to a book that I have read in some time. Just a teaser:

n  

"The beginning is simple to mark. We were in sunlight under a turkey oak, partly protected from a strong, gusty wind. I was kneeling on the grass with a corkscrew in my hand, and Clarissa was passing me the bottle--a 1987 Daumas Gassac. This was the moment, this was the pinprick on the time map: I was stretching out my hand, and as the cook neck and the black foil touched my palm, we heard a man's shout. We turned to look across the field and saw the danger. Next thing, I was running toward it. The transformation was absolute: I don't recall dropping the corkscrew, or getting to my feet, or making a decision, or hearing the caution Clarissa called after me. What idiocy, to be racing into this story and its labyrinths, sprinting away from our happiness among the fresh spring grasses by the oak."

n

And so, it begins. As Joe Rose runs across the field, along with several others, to help a hot-air balloon high up in the sky and in distress, a series of life-changing events are put into motion seeming to have a life of their own. It is riveting reading as we see how the lives of Joe and Clarissa are irrevocably changed in the face of tragedy. And as we come to associate with Ian McEwan's writing there are literary references, in this book primarily that of William Keats and John Milton. Joe and Clarissa had been separated for the past six weeks, the longest in their seven years together.

n  

"On the way out to Heathrow I had made a detour into Covent Garden and found a semilegal place to park, near Caruccio's. I went in and put together a picnic whose centerpiece was a great ball of mozzarella, which the assistant fished out of an earthenware vat with a wooden claw. I also bought black olives, mixed salad and focaccia. Then I hurried up Long Acre to Bertram Rota's to take delivery of Clarissa's birthday present. Apart from the flat and our car, it was the most expensive single item I had ever bought. The rarity of this little book seemed to give off a heat I could feel through the thick brown wrapping paper as I walked back up the street."

n

And this is the why I have to keep exploring the works of Ian McEwan.

What happens when people confuse their own feelings of possession with love for another person, and expect the other person to buy into their delusion - a catastrophe in slow motion!

The scary part of this novel, one of Ian McEwan's better works, is not the mentally ill stalker and his eruptions of violence. That bit is a psychological thriller of quite conventional dimensions. The scary part is how stress from an external source can reveal the incompatibility of two passionate lovers, believing they are a team until they are thrown into a game where they find themselves alone, while their former teammate creates a third independent team on the field. There is no "winning" such a game, as the protagonists realise in the end, having spent their love and their energies on dealing in very different, yet equally lonely ways with the intrusion of a sexual and emotional predator. If you substitute the rare case of a stalker in your life for any kind of catastrophe putting your life on hold, what the stress does to your close relationhips is scarily plausible.

"The narrative compression of storytelling, especially in the movies, beguiles us with happy endings into forgetting that sustained stress is corrosive of feeling. It's the great deadener."

Those are the words of Joe, who saw the "happy ending" morph into an "unhappy continuation" without any power to change the course of the narrative. His partner, Clarissa, made an equally disturbing discovery:

"A stranger walked into our lives, and the first thing that happened was that you became a stranger to me."

Joe mirrored in Parry was not the man Clarissa loved and trusted. Joe mirrored in Parry was almost as scary and as isolated and obsessed as his opponent. "Overcoming the monster" - that old plot, slaying the Jabberwocky, o frabjous joy - in reality, we keep our own inner monster, and who has seen it is left broken, unhappily ever after.

Attention getting fast-paced first 3 chapters. Then the story gets a bit boring in the middle as the narration kept going on circles. I could not get the connection between the love of the couple for each other and the love that the crazy guy has for the male protagonist. However, the last 2 chapters including the 2 appendices really brilliant! It's my first time to read Ian McEwan and I am looking forward to read more of his works. I will be buying Atonement next month!

What a funny book. That's funny as in weird funny. You'd think I would know to expect this as this was my 5th McEwan novel, but I have to say this one was odder than I expected it to be.

The first chapter of this book was excellent, and probably one of the most memorable I have ever read (if you don't know what it's about the cover is a pretty helpful clue). After the first chapter there was a direction I expected the novel to take, but it instead focuses on one character involved in the "incident" becoming obsessed with another character who was also involved, someone who was a stranger to him before this catastrophic event.

This is written in the typical McEwan style, and felt quite similar in some ways to the last of his novels that I read, The Innocent. Although totally different in style and tone, both stories follow a man who has to deal with an uncomfortable and unfamiliar situation which forces him to make some big (and often questionable) decisions.

My rating of 3 stars is due to the fact that I found this to drag a little in the middle. We know that Parry is obsessed with Joe, there had been enough creepy stalker moments, but still they kept happening despite adding little to the story, and it was the same case with the disintegration of Joe's relationship with Clarissa. I suppose the reason that these parts annoyed me was because I just wanted to find out how the story ended, but I still feel that a few of these chapters were unnecessary.

I honestly don't know who I would recommend this to, although I don't regret reading it. If I was asked which McEwan novel to start with, I think I would suggest The Children Act, Nutshell or The Innocent over this one.

4 1/2 stars
Ian McEwan rarely disappoints me.

The third book in the Louise's picks arrangement – every quarter I get to pick a book she has to read and she gets to pick a book I have to read – Mutually Assured Reading. Again, she's chosen to introduce me to an author that I've not read before: Ian McEwan. I knew almost nothing about this novel before starting it, except that I'd seen about 10 minutes of the film (starring Daniel Craig) so I knew it featured a balloon, a stalker and a homosexual obsession – none of these four being key things I generally looked for in a novel.

Straight off the writing grabs you, more so than the plot. It's almost poetry rather than prose. Each sentence is so skilfully constructed, with absolutely no wasted exposition or descriptions. That's not to say the plot isn't also good – who wouldn't get hooked by a story about a group of people who try to avert a ballooning disaster only for one of them to develop a religious/homosexual fixation on another. The real dynamic of the story is the two relationships our main character, Joe, is trying to balance. The one he doesn't want, with Jed, but he can't seem to work out how to convince Jed of that – against the one with Clarissa, his partner, which he's struggling to hold together as a result of the pressure of Jed's presence. Pulled in two different directions, by two different changing relationship, he just wants the stability of the way things were, but he's unable to make either relationship be the way he really wants it to.

Not only was this a Louise recommendation, but it's also listed in the n  1,1001 Books to Read Before You Dien collection, so expectations were high. And, based on the beautiful writing and the first two-thirds of the novel this was a clear winner of a book. But, the longer the story went on, the more I was being led down a path of expecting something special at the end, after all nobody apart from Joe had even seen Jed, and the more I worried that I was going to feel let down. And, let down I felt. The ending, just wasn't one. It kind of just fizzled out leaving me feel a little bit cheated.

Joe and Clarissa are picnicking when they hear cries from a hot air balloon that was descending nearby. The man controlling it had tried to get out, the rope had caught round his leg and it was rising again dragging him with it. A few men converge on the balloon, grabbing hold of the ropes hanging down to try to hold it down, but one by one they drop off. One man, John Logan, hangs on for as long as he can before he drops off at a height that can only be fatal. They rush to him to see if they can help, but it is too late.
 
In this intense moment, the other man who got to the body at the same time asks him to pray about the situation, but Joe flatly refuses. Jed Parry though is a man possessed, he thinks that something has passed between him and Joe and in the moment that they shared that Joe has fallen deeply in love with him. He thinks nothing more of it and heads home but is slightly disturbed when he receives the first phone call from Parry at 2 am. From this moment Parry begins stalking Joe, writing letters to him, leaving countless messages on his answerphone and standing outside his flat. Joe is severely unnerved by it and Clarissa thinks he is losing his mind but the police aren't interested as he has done nothing wrong
 
He meets with Parry briefly, but it only exacerbates the situation. Pushed to that absolute limit, Joe snaps and sets about taking matters into his own hands. Then he gets a phone call from Clarissa; Parry is with her and wants Joe to come home to talk.

McEwan has written a book about those suffering from de Clerambault's syndrome a delusional disorder where an individual thinks that person is infatuated with him or her, thankfully it is rare, but as McEwan does in this book when coupled it with religious fervour, it has a deeply sinister edge. There is plenty of tension in the plot as Parry becomes more extreme in his actions to be with Joe. It is very creepy, as McEwan manages to convey just how disturbing stalking is for any victim of it. There are a couple of sub-plots that really didn't add much to the story either. However, there were several details that I couldn't get along with, in the book; I didn't quite understand as all these men ran to save the balloon with the child in, how they knew each other almost immediately, the balloon is described as a helium balloon later in the book too. Not bad, but could have been so much better.

Ugh, I hate giving such a low rating to a book by McEwan because he writes such beautiful prose, but the plot was such a letdown I also cannot justify giving it a higher one.

McEwan's writing is beautiful, there is no doubt about that. I’d read Atonement, and it was as good as the movie made the story out to be. This book also explores some interesting ideas about love, trust, faith and reason. However, as interesting as the plot's premise is...dear God, what a disappointment at the end.

I cannot believe the novel took that long for the plot to come to its conclusion - the element of suspense is at first intriguing, but later simply becomes frustrating. One is also built up with the idea that the plot has an unexpected conclusion, of “There must be something else going on here, right?” A story with writing of this much caliber must have a good ending, right? Unfortunately, totally wrong. Again, what an utter disappointment. The characters also lack a certain depth, and their motivations are not entirely believable.

I can see how some people may enjoy the elements of contrasting the main character’s belief in science with the antagonist’s religious leanings, and there are certainly some insightful passages about that topic, but I find his blatantness in writing about religion this way very annoying. There is no subtlety, and subtlety is key to manipulating the emotions of the reader. McEwan would have do better to write a non-fiction science book than to put his thoughts this way into a novel. As a fiction reader who was led on to think this was a thriller, I could not have been more wrong, and more angry.

Enduring Love is either a brilliant camp comedy or one of the worst attempts at serious fiction ever.

Joe and his wife Clarissa are having a picnic when they spot a falling baloon. A man tries desperately to pin the balloon to the ground to save his son who's inside, traumatized.; Joe and a group of men who happened to be at the place run to help. The experiment goes bad; the man rolls to the ground while Joe and other men let go of the balloon. The balloon goes up into the air with one of the strangers still holding it; nevertheless, he lets go too (at considerable height) and falls to the ground, dying instantly.
One of the stranger, Jed, starts looking at Joe. Joe doesn't know what's going on but we do: Jed has developed an obsession with Joe. He fell in love with him and wants to be happy with him under the watchful eye of God.
He's desperate.

The characters are so unsympathetic that the reader finds himself rooting for Jed to kill them all. Clarissa is the one of the worst and most boring women ever written. She likes kids (but she can't have one of her own) she likes books and is big on Keats (she's an university professor) and leaves traces of her perfume in a room. Yet when her stressed out husband confesses that he hid a phonecall from obsessed stranger for two whole days (that's like,um,48 hours) she goes full mad and offended. I mean it's not like an obsessed, religious-mad gay called this straight dude who had just see a man die by crashing into the earth! What? Ashamed? Confused? What NO! No way!
She acts like she was 3 years old who just learned to spell "hate" and what it means. To think that she lived with Joe for seven years is unthinkable. She acts like they were both fourteen year old and she had just let him have his first sideboob. They are described to be a very close couple, loving and connected.
Within 24 hours Clarissa accuses her husband of being delusional and dishonest. She doesn't want to hear Joe's side of the story.
And you know what? After it turns out that Jed is a real threat, Clarissa spuns out a 180 turn and accuses Joe of not talking to her, not wanting her help? I mean didn't she just rejected his fears as irrational and even delirious? She found out that Joe (oh gawd) was looking through her desk because he suspected that she was seeing someone else, and tells him that it was the last straw and she's leaving. Then she and Joe make love (?!?!?). When Joe takes matters into his hands she leaves.
Die bitch! KILL IT WITH FIRE!
All this is ornamented with the figure of maniacal Jed, who sends Joe letters that are supposed to be the evidence of his love, but only serve as unintentional hilarity. I was expecting a giant half-squirrel, half-cock to jump into the story anytime.
At the end there's a 5 page appendix describing the de Clerambault's syndrome from which Jed suffers. There's also a letter he sends from an Asylum that shows that he's still sick. Joe and Clarissa reconcile and I do hope he drives a stake banded with barbed wire straight through her anus. It might make her ealize what a pain in the butt she was.Is.
There's no point to this story altogether. None. Zero. Nada. Pretentious, pseudo intelectual, filled with superfluous science that's supposed to look smart but is only tedious.


Damn you, Mcewan. With On Chesil Beach you slapped me across the face; with Enduring Love you delivered a round-house kick straight to the nuts. Your luck they don't hit guys in glasses. But I warn you, McEwan.
I warn you.

This was a strange beast. The novel deals with many topics, but its story is triggered by one extraordinary and almost unlikely event (yet interesting in its very convoluted construction): a helium balloon accident in which a small group of strangers try to rescue a boy, ending in a death and a subsequent ‘love’ obsession between two of the strangers, one of them being the narrator, Joe Rose.

What follows is the story of the obsession, its effect on Joe’s relationship with his long-time girlfriend, his dealings with his stalker, his thoughts about his career and not least, his thoughts about science and science versus literature. This sounds like a strange mix, but it worked, mostly, and was rendered interesting through McEwan’s beautiful prose, although I’m not as intrigued by everything scientific in the world as McEwan is.

The story is told from Joe’s perspective, first person, which made it obvious to assume that some of the views expressed were actually the author’s, but perhaps that’s too easy to assume. There’s especially one sentence that made me stop and wonder. It went something like: “Do the scientific illiterates who run the National Library really believe that literature is mankind's greatest achievement?” On the one hand, Joe, being a scientific journalist, believes this, and it’s one of the differences between him and his girlfriend, who is a Keats scholar. On the other hand, McEwan himself is a writer, and since Joe is at times too full of himself and oblivious to his girlfriend’s take on things (at least in my opinion), perhaps it’s ironic? On the …well, I’m out of hands, but a third take could be that, given McEwan’s keen and lifelong interest in science (which he cannot understand why everyone isn’t interested in, since it’s all about life, I’ve read him say in an interview), maybe it really is the author’s own view.

Anyway, it was an interesting enough story, and his constant hinting at further calamities down the road kept me turning the pages (which was very useful on a ten-hour flight from China). I think I expected it to turn out differently, since for a long time only Joe sees and hears his stalker, and his girlfriend points out that the stalker’s handwriting looks a lot like Joe’s, but I guess that was an effective way of leading us astray, making us wonder if we were dealing with an unreliable narrator.

What I liked best was McEwan’s take on humanity, the little nuances in relationships and in life, the complexities we all have to deal with. The title, I realized when I was almost done with the book, was interesting as well in that it didn’t simply refer to Joe and his wife’s relationship, or that of the stalker’s love for Joe (‘enduring’ as an adjective), but also Joe’s acceptance (or not) of the love thrust at him (‘enduring’ as a verb). Very nifty.

I vacillated between 3 and 4 stars. The execution is certainly 4 stars, if not 5. McEwan really is a master (Atonement is one of my all-time favorite novels), but I didn’t like the characters much, and though there were times the story moved me (e.g. the parts about the dead man’s wife and children), there were parts that didn’t. But a solid and worthwhile read. 3,5 stars.

[25th book of 2021. No artist for this review, nothing occurred to me or made an impression.]

Near my house is a road that snakes off from the long and smooth tarmac of Queen Street. The change from Q. Street to this road is quite remarkable, being so sudden. The houses are all the same dirty white; there are bits of wood, tiles, tarpaulins and chunks of rubble in gardens and by the side of the road; the cars are all in the same state of disrepair, with taped bodies, sagging bumpers and flat tyres. One of the houses has a large garden that holds a tired and broken swing-set, an old trampoline and a slide that I've never seen upright. Amidst this pocket is a house with a gazebo outside, postered walls and leaflet boxes. I try and avoid the house as it usually puts me in a bad mood. The posters say things like "The Con-You Virus" or "Masks Won't Save You, But Jesus Will"; I have nothing against Christianity of course, only their perception of it. Their blind ignorance and, seemingly, lack of true Christian values reminded me of Jed Parry in this novel.

This is my 9th McEwan novel, which is quite a lot for an author I don't particularly like. I've told the story many times: my ex-housemate and I split his novels in half to read half each, because neither of us liked him. Why? Good question. Either way, halfway was 8 novels each; I've read my 8 and yet here I am still. I think part of us wanted to, 1. see if McEwan had any good novels and 2. have the right to argue our distaste for him by having read, at least between us, all his books. And yet, finishing my 8, I realised I hadn't read his two famous ones: Atonement and this. We are in the midst of McEwan March, which we did last year, where we try and read at least 2 of his books in this month. I'll get to Atonement before the month is out.

Enduring Love begins with a rather unique accident—a hot air balloon disaster. It's well written and gets the novel off to a compelling start. Narrator Joe Rose and his girlfriend Clarissa Mellon are present, as is Jed Parry, and others. This deadly accident they witness—have a part in?—brings Jed Parry and Joe Rose's lives together. The former is a stalker. He rings him. He waits outside his house. He follows him. This element of the plot was fairly interesting and Parry is well-written, his voice, his letters, they are disturbing and oddly believable.

Sadly, the rest of the novel is orbiting this. McEwan, as I've found, likes science. He also likes cramming science in wherever he can. A simple scene is derailed by scientific thought, scientific jargon, scientific history. His characters' think about science. I thought that in this novel it would make more sense: Joe Rose attempts to "identify", using science, why Jed Parry is obsessed with him. It has a part in the novel but it's so poorly executed. Then again, this is perhaps down to personal taste. I have zero interest in science and hate to read it because it bores me. Maybe McEwan writes brilliant novels to someone who loves reading and science in equal part.

On top of the science spiels, the plot also unwinds further from reality as it progresses, which is another McEwan trait I've found. The hot air balloon accident is unusual but not completely fantastical, but slowly things begin happening, the "drama" increases and I began losing interest. The "psychological novel" it was attempting to be was eventually dropped in favour of an action-packed end. I'm not surprised it was made into a movie, because removing all the internal science thought, it is a "good" story, I guess. Apparently the movie isn't great though. I was surprised to see Daniel Craig as Joe Rose, the apparently unattractive (by his own standards) science nerd.

Next up is Atonement, then I've read most of them. The only novels I haven't read after that are:

The Comfort of Strangers, Saturday, Sweet Tooth, The Children Act, Nutshell (which I may read, as said friend didn't hate it, surprisingly), and Cockroach (which looks so awful I might read it).

Of all the McEwan novels still only two have impressed me properly: The Child in Time and Black Dogs. Ironically, I've seen these two novels stamped on by McEwan fans.