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83rd book of 2020.
My McEwan ratings vary so much that he appears to be a yo-yo on my profile. Some I rate horribly low. If you couldn't care less about what I rated his other novels, skip to the following paragraph. Most recently, I gave his 2010 novel Solar a brutal 1 star (Mean review here). I also rated The Cement Garden, Amsterdam and The Innocent 2 stars. On Chesil Beach marked a high point for me, when it hit 3 stars, and I believed it would be the highest McEwan could score from me. I was wrong. The Child in Time bagged a wonderful 5 - which I'll link here because it's a nice positive review: This is me being nice to McEwan.
So, Black Dogs. I knew before starting this book that Winston Churchill famously called his depression his 'black dog'. I can't remember why but I went through a phase of being rather interested in him as a teenager, where I discovered this fact, and many others, like how he always had to stand away from the edge of train platforms, for he didn't trust himself enough and was worried he would jump in front of one. This book is about depression. It's also about memory, about love, about politics, about God, about spirits, about fate, about the Second World War, about evil and violence, about marriage, and children, and orphans. This book is only 174 pages long.
As readers, McEwan makes us trip through this novel. I've thought about using this verb a lot, but I'm settling with it. Trip is clumsy, yes, but it is also sudden, and above all, random. Of course tripping isn't random as such, one trips because one is clumsy, or fails to notice an uneven cobblestone, or else is drunk... But the tripping that happens in this novel takes us through different countries and time - England, Berlin, France. We trip from 1989 and 1946 as Jeremy writes the memoir of his father and mother-in-law, who are not divorced but never see one another, who live in separate countries. There are long drawn out scenes- seeing the Berlin Wall on a television set, actually being at the Wall in 1989, a brilliant hotel scene concerning a random family, and of course, at the novel's peak - the scene with the black dogs, who are...what? Real? Depression, as they were for Churchill? Or evil itself?
This book whispers. I find it funny that the McEwan books I hate are rated so well, and this that I loved is rated so poorly. Despite the bias I have against McEwan, despite the premonition that I will hate any of his books before I start them, I liked this one from the very first line.
Ever since I lost mine in a road accident when I was eight, I have had my eye on other people's parents.
Not only is it a beautifully weighted sentence, it is also a disarming one, slightly confusing, one first read. But from this sentence, the delicate but powerful novel unfurls. I found lovely wisdom in this book which I have not found in his other works, particularly his later work. Lovely lines like, He hates silence, so he knows nothing. I would write the whole observation out, but I won't for the sake of the length, but Bernard has a brilliant, moving thought on the war, which McEwan writes so skilfully. Here is just a part of it, For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories.
Writer Gary Giddens said about this novel, "McEwan's narratives are small and focused, but resonate far into the night." I desperately wish to share the final paragraph of this novel, but I will not, because I believe that it must be read at the end of this bizarre, short-lived novel to strike its note, which is like a solitary train horn - indeed as Giddens suggests - which resonates far into the night. To quote the book again, for this feeling applies to reaching the end of the novel, You know how it is when you've been with someone so intensely for hours on end, and then you're on your own again. It's as if you've been in a dream. You come to yourself. It is similar, for this novel is like fragmented dreams, and because those black dogs are black stains in the grey of the dawn.
My McEwan ratings vary so much that he appears to be a yo-yo on my profile. Some I rate horribly low. If you couldn't care less about what I rated his other novels, skip to the following paragraph. Most recently, I gave his 2010 novel Solar a brutal 1 star (Mean review here). I also rated The Cement Garden, Amsterdam and The Innocent 2 stars. On Chesil Beach marked a high point for me, when it hit 3 stars, and I believed it would be the highest McEwan could score from me. I was wrong. The Child in Time bagged a wonderful 5 - which I'll link here because it's a nice positive review: This is me being nice to McEwan.
So, Black Dogs. I knew before starting this book that Winston Churchill famously called his depression his 'black dog'. I can't remember why but I went through a phase of being rather interested in him as a teenager, where I discovered this fact, and many others, like how he always had to stand away from the edge of train platforms, for he didn't trust himself enough and was worried he would jump in front of one. This book is about depression. It's also about memory, about love, about politics, about God, about spirits, about fate, about the Second World War, about evil and violence, about marriage, and children, and orphans. This book is only 174 pages long.
As readers, McEwan makes us trip through this novel. I've thought about using this verb a lot, but I'm settling with it. Trip is clumsy, yes, but it is also sudden, and above all, random. Of course tripping isn't random as such, one trips because one is clumsy, or fails to notice an uneven cobblestone, or else is drunk... But the tripping that happens in this novel takes us through different countries and time - England, Berlin, France. We trip from 1989 and 1946 as Jeremy writes the memoir of his father and mother-in-law, who are not divorced but never see one another, who live in separate countries. There are long drawn out scenes- seeing the Berlin Wall on a television set, actually being at the Wall in 1989, a brilliant hotel scene concerning a random family, and of course, at the novel's peak - the scene with the black dogs, who are...what? Real? Depression, as they were for Churchill? Or evil itself?
This book whispers. I find it funny that the McEwan books I hate are rated so well, and this that I loved is rated so poorly. Despite the bias I have against McEwan, despite the premonition that I will hate any of his books before I start them, I liked this one from the very first line.
Ever since I lost mine in a road accident when I was eight, I have had my eye on other people's parents.
Not only is it a beautifully weighted sentence, it is also a disarming one, slightly confusing, one first read. But from this sentence, the delicate but powerful novel unfurls. I found lovely wisdom in this book which I have not found in his other works, particularly his later work. Lovely lines like, He hates silence, so he knows nothing. I would write the whole observation out, but I won't for the sake of the length, but Bernard has a brilliant, moving thought on the war, which McEwan writes so skilfully. Here is just a part of it, For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories.
Writer Gary Giddens said about this novel, "McEwan's narratives are small and focused, but resonate far into the night." I desperately wish to share the final paragraph of this novel, but I will not, because I believe that it must be read at the end of this bizarre, short-lived novel to strike its note, which is like a solitary train horn - indeed as Giddens suggests - which resonates far into the night. To quote the book again, for this feeling applies to reaching the end of the novel, You know how it is when you've been with someone so intensely for hours on end, and then you're on your own again. It's as if you've been in a dream. You come to yourself. It is similar, for this novel is like fragmented dreams, and because those black dogs are black stains in the grey of the dawn.
