Ian McEwan’dan çok sayıda kitap okudum, hepsinin ortak yönünün, teması insana dair olan erdem, mutluluk, ahlak vb kavramlarda kendi zihninde beraklaştıramadığı konuları okuyucularına kurgulayarak sunmak olarak tanımlayabilirim. Konusunu anlatmıyacağım, arka kapak tanıtım yazısında güzel özetlenmiş.

Mantıklı düşünce ile manevi kavrayışın ayrı alanlar olduklarını, her şeye inanmanın ve hiç seçim yapmamanın hiçbir şeye inanmamakla hemen hemen aynı olduğunu vurguluyan yazar çağımızda uygarlığımızın çok aşırı inançla mı yoksa çok kıt inançla mı lanetlendiğini okura soruyor.

Birinci tekil şahıs ağzından anlatan anlatıcı (yazar?), eşinin anne ve babasının gençken 2. Dünya Savaşı öncesinde birlikte komünist olarak hayata baş­ladıklarını, sonra kendi yollarına gittiklerini, birinin yaşamı boyunca tanrıyanımazlığıyla biliminin kesinliğine bağlı kalmış olduğunu diğerinin ise simgesel anlamı olan iki siyah köpekle karşılaşması sonucunda Tanrı'ya dönmüş olduğunu hikayenin omurgası olarak almış.

McEwan romanına Berlin Duvarının yıkılması, Polonya’daki Yahudi soykırımı, 2. Dünya Savaşını ve Fransız direnişçilerini aralara yedirerek esas olarak Avrupa’nın geleceğini sorguluyor. Kurgusu güzel, yazarın dili diğer kitaplarında olduğu gibi çok akıcı, tanımlamalar etkileyici, hikaye sürükleyici. Ben bu yazarı keyifle okuyorum.

In response to social utopia - communism - this superb novel develops through the journey and inner transformation of June - facing absolute evil, black dogs - quoting Gandhi:
"Be the change you want to see in the world."

Domani mi sarò già dimenticato di cosa parla.

When I read the blurb, I worried I’d read this before and forgotten it: all it mentions is a young couple setting off on honeymoon and having an encounter with evil. Isn’t that the plot of The Comfort of Strangers? I thought. In fact, this only happens to have the vacation detail in common, and has a very different setup and theme overall.

Jeremy lost his parents in a car accident (my least favourite fictional trope – far too convenient a way of setting a character off on their own!) when he was eight years old, and is self-aware enough to realize that he has been seeking for parental figures ever after. He becomes deeply immersed in the story of his wife’s parents, Bernard and June, even embarking on writing a memoir based on what June, from her nursing home bed, tells him of their early life (Part One).

After June’s death, Jeremy takes Bernard to Berlin (Part Two) to soak up the atmosphere just after the Wall comes down, but the elderly man is kicked by a skinhead. The other key thing that happens on this trip is that he refutes June’s account of their honeymoon. At June’s old house in France (Part Three), Jeremy feels her presence and seems to hear the couple’s voices. Only in Part Four do we learn what happened on their 1946 honeymoon trip to France: an encounter with literal black dogs that also has a metaphorical dimension, bringing back the horrors of World War II.

I think the novel is also meant to contrast Communist ideals – Bernard and June were members of the Party in their youth – with how Communism has played out in history. It was shortlisted for the Booker, which made me feel that I must be missing something. A fairly interesting read, most similar in his oeuvre (at least of the 15 I’ve read so far) to The Child in Time.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

Black Dogs was not as bad as I had expected, based on the reviews, but it does have a lot of problems. The novel tackles diverse themes, which intersect in interesting ways, though they arise in ad hoc rather than deliberate ways, and their treatment is not sufficiently meaningful. The encounter at the heart of Black Dogs is compelling, and raises some interesting ideas about human nature, and the tension between idealism and the reality of the darker sides of humanity. But the explanation is left somewhat vague, and the encounter is awarded implications in the characters’ lives that are too significant and far-reaching. McEwan attempts to create a mystery around the event, which, while helping to drive the narrative, falls flat in the reveal.

McEwan has a tendency to both make too much of too little, and to bite off more than he can chew. Black Dogs could have worked better as either a short story about the central incident itself, or a longer exploration of the many ideas it attempts to tackle (though I’m not sure McEwan could have written the latter novel). Instead, he attacks some untenable middle ground. He seems to take a single kernel of a good idea, and fill in a story around it, adding characters and descriptions of histories and motivations, but all of it feels like mere scaffolding for the central event. The story itself and the characters lack a certain complexity and reality. The events of the novel do not arise naturally from the characters, but are driven by contrivance towards the inevitable “event”, which is something imposed externally. McEwan intends for his characters to work through the implications of what has occurred, and for this discourse to make up the bulk of the novel. However the characters he has constructed are themselves not compelling. Despite having been given an abundance of personal history, they still feel flat and generalised. Their dialogue is shallow, and never properly explores the heart of the matter. Much of what is unearthed in Black Dogs remains not only unresolved, but in fact unexplored.

Anything Ian McEwan writes is worth reading. This book, BLACK DOGS, is arresting not only for the masterful storytelling but for the fascinating dialogue between a spiritualist and a skeptical rationalist. The debaters are married, but long estranged. Their mutual embrace of communism had cemented their union. When she begins to see signs of evil (the black dogs), of the metaphysical, their relationship begins to unravel. The creatures she sees (real? imagined? what about the bite marks on her rucksack?) shake her out of her political convictions. The horrors of World War II make them both rethink their loyalties. Curiously, the couple's love remains steadfast throughout their years of separation. Their story is told by their son-in-law, Jeremy, whose fascination with their lives has roots in his childhood.

Like other novels by McEwan, this one takes place, in part, in Berlin, a city the author seems to know well. An important part of the book takes place when the Berlin Wall falls, which should interest anyone who happened to be in Berlin at that time. (This begins around around page 60.)

The dialectic between the rational and metaphysical is arresting. It's also beautifully written. The characters are all engaging. The book is engrossing.

I only kept reading to find out what happens with the black dogs. The characters are boring. Everything felt pretentious. I didn’t even bother reading the last 15 or so pages, because everything had been fairly boring off and on throughout and the build up leads to nothing. I really like McEwan, honest!! I don’t think I’ve ever given one star to any book, and I would have never guess he would be the first, but here we are.

A short but excellent read - although there is a debate about politics and evil at the centre of this short novel it never becomes bogged down as the story drives towards its conclusion.

This book consists of five parts. The first is a preface that explains protagonist and narrator Jeremy’s interest in other peoples’ parents due to being orphaned at an early age. The second introduces June Tremain, Jeremy’s mother-in-law, who is nearing the end of her life. Jeremy is interviewing her in the hopes of writing a memoir of her life. The third covers Jeremy’s trip to Germany with his father-in-law, Bernard Tremain, where they witnessed the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fourth recounts Jeremy’s first meeting with his future wife, July Tremain, daughter of June and Bernard. The fifth is Jeremy’s attempt at a memoir, describing June’s encounter with the titular black dogs.

Except for the preface, the storyline moves backward in time. Black dogs are mentioned in both a figurative and literal sense. June and Bernard are initially involved in the Communist party, taken in by the idealism of the movement. Bernard’s idealism is shattered by the actions of Stalin and, later, the USSR’s invasion of Hungary, but it takes Bernard ten years to leave the party, whereas June had only been a member for a few months. Bernard is more science-oriented, while June is influenced by spiritualism and, eventually, religious views. June and Bernard’s marriage became increasingly estranged after her encounter with the black dogs. It is short but contains some fairly deep themes, such as history, war, memory, science, rationality, spiritualism, and religion.

I think the fact that it was published in 1992, another time of great optimism, is noteworthy. My take on it is that it is a commentary on the difficulty of capturing history accurately, the transience of memory, a warning that Europe is not going to easily rid itself of wars, and the importance of balancing compassion with logic. I enjoyed analyzing it afterward more than the reading experience itself.

I guess McEwan's books became for me something I totally like or I don't.
McEwan is truly is one of the most intelligent fiction writers of our times and one of my favorites, too. I am saying with a huge regret that this one really disappointed me. I was not moved by the story, attached to the characters. Don't know what went wrong here. Maybe if he'd separated the story into short stories, the book would interest me more. Drifting out from the storyline more than once and being interested in some parts of the story is not a good sign. I don't even think it was overwritten or much too unnatural, but something was wrong, as if he tried to gather the pieces of the story in an artificial way.

Black Dogs is McEwan's first book I didn't like. Not taking into account Nutshell, because I didn't finish it. Though, I am really happy that this book didn't turn me off as The Ocean at the End of the Lane did for Neil Gaiman, and I want to read his other books.

Sai che i libri ti lasciano un segno solo quando giri l'ultima pagina e ti rendi conto che già senti la mancanza dei personaggi che hai incontrato.

My favorite Ian McEwan novel. It reads like memoir, has that kind of immediacy. Merits multiple re-readings.