This book had me hooked from the start. The first chapter is so well written; McEwan paints a vivid picture and you are right there, looking at it from the eyes of one character.

McEwan doesn’t ease up on the tension as the story takes a disturbing twist. It explores issues around witness perception, preconceived ideas, subjectivity and objectivity in how we view others and the events in our life.

It probably isn’t to everyone’s taste as it is a disturbing and distressing situation that McEwan paints. Much of this is largely due to his ability to paint such a vivid picture. We see the things Joe sees and feel the things he feels.

This is another book that is not a feel good book, but I found it to be a very good book.

McEwan es un genio y esta, una de sus mejores obras. Cargada de esa ironía tan típica del autor y a la vez, de ese aire de pseudo-tragedia, lo he devorado en un solo día. Genialidad en estado puro.

Wow - this book goes from one extreme to the other! 5-stars for the beginning of the book, but 1-star for the remaining content.

The beginning of this story really captivated my attention with a very descriptive accounting of a runaway hot-air balloon and the tragedy that follows. Every little detail had me so engaged in the story. I loved the way this beginning was written so much that I would read it again. But just the beginning of this book.

Unfortunately, the story goes downhill after this initial event.

The events of that day change the character's life. He becomes consumed to the point where he seems to have an odd psychological disorder. It's difficult to determine what is really happening in the story from what is only happening in the main character's head. I think that may have been the intention of the author? I don't know, except it drove me nuts and I hated it. I did finish the book since it was picked for book club discussion, but I don't even remember how this ended. Moreover, the book was very slow and just seemed like some sort of case study.

During this stressful work week I was looking for a quick escape from one of my favorite authors, with much anticipation, but ended with a disappointment. Enduring Love was the weakest among the 9 McEwan’s books I’ve read so far.
Scientific writer Joe rose met Jed parry during a heroic group act to rescue a 10-year-old boy during an air balloon accident, and unfortunately the uncoordinated act led to the death of one of the rescuers. Jed became obsessed with his unrequited love for already guilt-stricken Joe, and started stalking and threatening him. This put a strain on Joe’s previously harmonious relationship with his partner Clarissa, and the stress continued to build when Joe took the matters all into his own hands. Did Joe choose to do so? The answer was both yes and no...
This psychological thriller kicked off with a bang, but was half-baked after, and fell flat at the ending. there were so many possibilities to deliver a more powerful and less predictable resolution,, given the rich material McEwan provided throughout the book.
The moral of the story was the fragility of love between couples having had long shared affection and loyalty.
Joe and Clarissa’s 7-year relationship had been a time bomb anyway. They were great match for intellectually-stimulating discussions. But Joe leaned on only rigorous scientific research for making “rational” decisions, while Clarissa counted on Joe’s “rational: nature to sail through any crisis. The easily paranoid Joe was far from being a rock for Clarissa. Clarissa’s stunning beauty and Joe’s self-unworthiness had seemingly given Clarissa a free ticket to be unconditionally pampered. Hence it was no surprise that both failed to hold down the balloon so to speak. With the lack of children always lurking in the shadow, the happy ending suggested by Appendix 1 would have been very unrealistic. That said, the book's focus on Joe may have left me with superficial and unfair understanding of Clarissa.
John and Jean Logan’s tale didn’t add much depth to the moral of the story, but they did help spice up the thrill and prolong reader’s anticipation.
Some details appeared unnecessary, like Joe paging through his address book and the purchase of the gun. Maybe I was missing something.
Personally I loved McEwan’s novels because of: 1) his quiet and fluent prose; 2) his exquisite verbalization of music. In this book, I felt the verboseness masked his typical prose, yet some brilliant sentences were hard to miss. Music was only mentioned once in passing.
I’m still a McEwan fan. This book recalibrated my expectation… not a bad development because I believe I have already read most of his best novels.

I've gone off Ian McEwan lately, for reasons I'm not particularly proud of. In short, I've started hanging with a 'better' (or, for political correctness, 'different') literary crowd, and now McEwan seems to me to be the province of the armchair literati, the people who like to read the Booker Prize winners, the people who are content to read pretty, sophisticated prose that looks nice but means nothing. Yes, I did that too, for a while, but the difference was that I was sixteen at the time, and now I'm reading Cervantes and McEwan can't exactly compete. Nonetheless, it's dreadfully unfair of me to say this, really. Who am I to judge? Exactly no one.

So I read this book carefully, trying to see if my latest beliefs about McEwan were correct or not. And I was a bit sceptical: I noticed a lot of things from Saturday reappearing, the things I've come to think of as McEwan tropes: science, literature; expensive, educated, privileged people brushing briefly against the sordid working classes and feeling themselves soiled as a result.

What McEwan likes to do, I think, is choose an interesting situation, put his characters in it and then see what happens, preferably using as many of the features I listed above. But this time is impressively convoluted, even for him: a tragic balloon accident opens the book, and you think that's all, but then, from this tragic accident emerges between two of the characters (or, really, from one character to another) a kind of obsessive love. This love proceeds to destroy the marriage of its victim, but really what the book is about is the conflict between a way of thinking based on logical scientific reasoning and one based on emotions. Literature, versus science: "Do the scientific illiterates who run the National Library really believe that literature is mankind's greatest achievement?" (or something to that effect), the protagonist is heard to say on one occasion. A provocative statement, Mr. McEwan.

But here I come to my evidence. You see, I like to think I'm more than just an average nobody typing nonsense for a book-themed social networking site; I, I tell myself, am a scientist, and more importantly, I am an intelligent human being. Whatever. This means that if I make a claim, I try to back it up it with evidence, with some sort of example that supports what I'm saying. You see, McEwan sets up this conflict between science and literature (quite nicely, in my opinion), but then essentially abandons it, leaving it to curl up in a little whimpering heap and die. In a quintessentially McEwan way, he suggests interesting things but offers no opinion on them, no discussion, no give-and-take of ideas. This, I believe, gives his books the outward appearance of being clever and interesting, erudite even, but, I claim, they are not. They are Jodi Picoult, but a notch or two higher - or is that too harsh?

And really, that's ok. Cervantes it is not, but I enjoyed this book. McEwan does write about interesting things, and that is much better than nothing. I always enjoy his sophisticated prose (though I think Saturday is better in that respect), and this book in particular was a real page-turner, in a restrained and fairly non-trashy way, with elements of real horror.

The story and opening are haunting and gripping! Sadly there were a few instances, where the author started to ramble on about themes, that I absolutely did not care about, or had no effect on the story or character itself...It took me out of the story. Otherwise a very good novel.

On an idyllic spring afternoon, Joe Rose and his wife were enjoying a picnic, when their lovely day was forever changed. A hot air baloon, which had made a dramatic appearance into their scene, went out of control. Many people rushed to assist, but one man perished in their uncalculated attempts at rescue. Jed Parry, another of the would-be rescuers approached Joe, an atheist, and invited him to pray with him. This confrontation is merely the beginning of the turmoil that Parry created in the well-ordered and loving existence of Joe and Clarissa.

There were periods during the reading of this book when my interest would begin to flag. Joe, a science writer, would discuss articles or research he had done. While many of these tales were interesting, it seemed often to be out of context to the story. However, it soon became clear that this was a clever device of McEwan's to develop the broad dimensions of Joe's character.

Throughout this novel, one has the increasing sense of impending disaster. It often caused feelings of confusion. Was Joe imagining things? Was Parry really stalking Joe? Also, why did he receive so little support and comisseration from his previously devoted Clarissa? Tension built as the story further developed and McEwan adeptly wove this plot toward its conclusion.

Ian McEwan is a rarity as an author. He does not simply tell his story and add exciting facts to entertain the reader. His books tend to grow and develop in complexity and texture with even the seemingly thinnest of plots!

With this novel, Ian McEwan again writes in a beautiful language and style about people in today’s society. The novel starts excellent, but looses his pace fast. However, one does not read McEwan to have a lot of action and suspense. The characters wander, can’t manage to have real understanding of eachother, and have very different memories and opinions.A central theme is the opposition between science and the world of wonder, magic, storytelling,... After reading the appendix the question is which of both was/is right.

McEwan is a master at describing and exploring the dark side of the human psyche. This novel was fascinating.

In ____ (place/time), _______________ (name of character) does __________ (action) so that __________ (goal), but _________ (conflict!). This book is _______ (adjective), ______ (adjective), and made this reader _____ (verb).

come to my blog!

I've just given this a second reading and it holds up just as well as the first time I read it. The story started off with a bang and was throbbing with tension throughout.

The dramatic beginning consists of a bizarre hot air balloon accident which brings Joe Rose and Jed Parry together and almost on the spot Jed conceives an obsessive interest in Joe, an interest that is partly religious, partly sexual and completely crazed. Through the story the clearly unhinged Jed starts stalking Joe and writing him love letters. Being the target of this dangerous love Joe’s mind starts to falter. He discovers that he just can’t get away from this religious nutcase.

I think one of the things Ian McEwan is saying is that religious belief and mental instability are not all far apart.

From the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list – Enduring Love by Ian McEwan https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
10 out of 10


This reader has been blessed to read mesmerizing novels by Ian McEwan, from the probably best-known and acclaimed Atonement to The Children Act, from Black Dogs to On Chesil Beach, from The Comfort of Strangers to The Child in Time, from the winner of The Booker Prize, Amsterdam, to Enduring Love

From the six novels read so far, there is probably just one that failed to produce euphoria, the rest have enthused the under signed, albeit there is also a feeling of envy, the sadness of finding Ian McEwan so far up in the sky, floating in his balloon over the rest of us, as to make it clear that the efforts one (including yours truly) would make to try and tell his own stories, no matter how interesting they may be (for instance, I have been involved in a revolution (granted, downgraded by some to the status of rebellion, uprising) that has overthrown Ceausescu, I had a love affair with Miss Transylvania) would prove in the end futile, for very few have been able to match the talent of the author of Amsterdam, to name only one of the novels.
Joe Rose is the protagonist of Enduring Love and he narrates most of the opus – though his partner, Clarissa Mellon, will take up that role at times – and given the fact that he is forty seven, an erudite with a brilliant mind, it is easy to identify with him for this reader (on that aspect of the age, the rest might prompt alienation) albeit we get quite fast into an unlikely scenario, for there are very few balloons floating around most of the audience I guess…however, I just mentioned taking part in a revolution, and you do not have so many going around, unless of course you think January 6 and Very Stable Geniuses…

After the first few pages, a tragedy is unfolding when a balloon is out of control, pushed by the wind, the pilot unable to keep it to the ground, until some strangers hold on to the ropes, alas, only to the point where a strong wind lifts them all from the ground, they all jump to the ground, except for doctor John Logan, father of two and thus maybe more involved, who stays with the boy trapped inside, until he can no longer keep his grip, falls to the ground and dies, his body losing integrity, there is a comparison with Picasso here…
‘This is our mammalian conflict - what to give to others and what to keep for yourself…Treading that line is what we call morality’ - Morality 's ancient, irresolvable dilemma : us, or me’…Enduring Love is often stupendous, magnificent in the problems it raises, of morality among others, the admirable phrasing, thought provoking incursions into science (beyond a level that most would understand, at least judging from the answers that pedestrians give, when asked the simplest questions in all fields, from geography, to elemental science)
Joe Rose is writing about science, only he seems to wish for a return to academia, the very well paid position he has, writing articles for various publications, that pay handsomely for his insight and travel around the globe, does not fulfill his needs at some stage, though we could argue that maybe he does not know exactly what The Best Possible Future looks like for him (imagining the Best Possible Future is a positive psychology exercise)

Jed Parry is one of the men that have tried, for some minutes, to help save the child, he is twenty eight, unemployed, but in possession of a small fortune, living in Hampstead (where only the rich can afford a house, among them Ricky Gervais, who has a show in which he laughs and boasts about it) and in adoration of God, even if in a very peculiar manner, showing a selfishness, a take on religion that does not involve a community, looking like the Creator is very much concentrated on Parry and has very little to do with the rest of the world.
After the tragedy in which doctor Logan had died, Jed Parry calls Joe late at night (it was about two I think) to tell him that he ‘loves him’ and from here on, there is an outré development in which the former pulls the latter away from the oasis of happiness and bliss, in which he had lived in harmony with Clarissa…here we could consider an alternative (incidentally, this and the other glorious works of Ian McEwan excel in making readers think of so many issues, including the notion that the penchant for religion could be in the DNA of some groups, seeing as it confers some advantages for priests, the possibility of finding solace in communities of faith) and say that contrary to common belief, when someone has an affair, this is the symptom of a relationship gone wrong and not the cause.

Joe Rose does not respond to the ‘love’ manifested (indeed, claimed to be, for that is not love, it is just a fixation, ultimately identified as the de Clerambault syndrome, explained at large in the annex of the book), on the contrary, he rejects the advances, obsession, although the reader may feel sympathy for Clarissa and start to believe her point of view – at least for some chapters, it could look like Joe is exaggerating and ultimately, he is inventing Parry, and/or exaggerating his profile to serve a purpose
Ian McEwan invites thought on another trait that has to do with evolution, the idea of Convincing yourself of a lie, for that is the best way of selling it to the community and as social animals we depend on the groups we live in (by the way, that could explain in part the lunacy of the Republican theories in America, from the lizard people to Italian satellites stealing elections, to the Big Steal and finally, an attack on their Congress on January 6)…Joe Rose is struggling with the harassment and feels Clarissa does not support him.

He makes a complain to the police, but humor intervenes (mixed perhaps with the idea that it could turn into morbid joviality) when he is told that if someone loves him, it does not mean it is illegal (surely, things have changed in the meantime and though they have to concentrate limited resources on imminent dangers, but abuse is treated differently today, outside Afghanistan and other such wretched lands) and they are not going to arrest Parry, if he had not threated, used weapons and it needs to be a violent incident to bring the situation to a climax of tension and danger…the blissful connection between Joe and Clarissa is tested to (maybe beyond) its limit and the woman is tempted to attribute to this imagined character (she inists she has not seen him outside, then Joe lied about the first phone call) the dissatisfaction that her partner had expressed for a long time with his activity and the desire to do research again…

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