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Atonement by Ian McEwan |
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Amsterdam: A Novelby Ian McEwan |
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On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is editor of the newspaper The Judge. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister.
In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life. A sharp contemporary morality tale, cleverly disguised as a comic novel, Amsterdam is "as sheerly enjoyable a book as one is likely to pick up this year" (The Washington Post Book World).
From Amazon.com Review:
When good-time, fortysomething Molly Lane dies of an unspecified degenerative illness, her many friends and numerous lovers are led to think about their own mortality. Vernon Halliday, editor of the upmarket newspaper the Judge, persuades his old friend Clive Linley, a self-indulgent composer of some reputation, to enter into a euthanasia pact with him. Should either of them be stricken with such an illness, the other will bring about his death. From this point onward we are in little doubt as to Amsterdam's outcome--it's only a matter of who will kill whom. In the meantime, compromising photographs of Molly's most distinguished lover, foreign secretary Julian Garmony, have found their way into the hands of the press, and as rumors circulate he teeters on the edge of disgrace. However, this is McEwan, so it is no surprise to find that the rather unsavory Garmony comes out on top. Ian McEwan is master of the writer's craft, and while this is the sort of novel that wins prizes, his characters remain curiously soulless amidst the twists and turns of plot. --Lisa Jardine
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Almost, but not quite - |
Amsterdam: A Novel Review |
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Ian McEwan is an enigma. There is no question that he has highly developed literary skills, formidable powers of observation, eclectic life experience and the ability to undertake high-quality research. But some of his writing defies comprehension: ATONEMENT is a pretentious, precious and prolix mess despite subject matter of high interest to intelligent readers. It was the first book of his that I read, based on the clamorous approbation the book and film received. I did not enjoy it and gave it a low rating in my review for Amazon (I included in my review one nine-line sentence of his that rambled excruciatingly, as an example of his `skill').
So I read AMSTERDAM with an initial sense of caution, an unwillingness to be persuaded that he could write accessibly and interestingly, rather than displaying his knowledge and taste. AMSTERDAM is 90% excellent, written with clarity and economy at a high level of literary skill (I have never liked or approved of modifying adverbs used before the verb being modified, but this is a minor criticism and many, many writers do it). So now I know that he can write well. But . . . but . . . there is a crucial problem with AMSTERDAM that causes McEwan to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the last 10% of the book: a conclusion that fails Coleridge's key test, the `willing suspension of disbelief.' I simply could not accept the ending, at any reasonable level, and it ruined what had, up till then, been a highly enjoyable, witty and insightful work. Like many other reviewers, I was astounded to learn that McEwan won the Booker for this oeuvre. Having read two of McEwan's books I would consider reading another but I regret that I cannot, realistically, join the throngs who consider him the Second Literary Coming. |
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enjoyable, but not McEwan's best - |
Amsterdam: A Novel Review |
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This book read like a short story, and perhaps should have been such. I enjoyed it as a fun, quick, dark comedy, but it's probably not something I'll return to. I'm actually a little surprised that it won the Booker Prize. |
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Cutting Your Nose Off to Spite your Face! -  |
Amsterdam: A Novel Review |
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This is a little sneaker of a story. I've never read Ian McEwan's work and it took a couple of chapters to get into the rhythm of the story, but it was worth it. I had no idea what to expect when I started, but it certainly wasn't what I received! In a word, IT WAS GREAT! Read this book before plotting revenge on an ex-friend or lover and remember well the old stand-by, "What goes around, comes around!" |
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classic tragedy: the structure mirrors the tale - |
Amsterdam: A Novel Review |
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This is not a comic novel, though certainly witty; nor by any means is it well characterized as a "clever romp." There is no mystery, no real surprise, and the end is entirely in the beginning. Perhaps in no other fine recent English-language fiction is this so much the case. We're given a remarkably successful modern-dress tragedy of hubris and its reward. No strongly empathetic characters capture our sympathy or distract us from the theme; indeed the one character (Molly) who might turn the novel away from its inexorable descent is presented only posthumously, and then only in the impressions of fatally flawed protagonists Vernon and Clive. I'm certainly reminded of Lawrence, especially "Women in Love", which is a thorny read in much the same way. For all its brevity and clarity, this is a very difficult novel, and truly unique. The aficionados of certain conventional patterns in fiction (genre crime story, sentimental novel, and such) will probably dislike it. I suspect strongly that the novel's structure is intended to mirror the protagonist Clive's "Millenium Symphony", even including the too-predictable conclusion that seems to be missing that last bang-up variation sure to make it a "success". That's brave novelistic technique indeed, even for a "novel of ideas." "Amsterdam" is brilliant but distancing: a work to respect, not really to love. I'd recommend it to careful readers who seek something quite unlike the usual good read.
There are some truly ridiculous reviews here. The one which takes McEwan to task for misrepresenting Dutch law and medicine seems to have gained overwhelming approval. Would that reviewer expect an accurate and sympathetic portrayal of Athenian society from Euripides? Would he expect to learn English political history from the "histories" of Shakespeare? |
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A weak effort -  |
Amsterdam: A Novel Review |
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I mostly read novels written more than forty years ago, but occasionally I look into contemporary authors with reputations as good writers. Amsterdam was a foray into Ian McEwan's work, and this is a good book to read if you want to convince yourself that you're not missing out.
McEwan writes well, and has interesting thoughts which find their way into the book. Unfortunately, by the end you realize that these thoughts are merely peripheral. They seem to be inserted to make this, as another reviewer puts is, "the sort of novel that wins awards". But how this book won the Booker prize is beyond me. What's impressive is how McEwan manages to ruin the book in the last 50 pages. Imagine Virginia Woolf had decided that, at the end of "To The Lighthouse", the Ramsey family would go to the lighthouse during a storm, only have the lighthouse topple over and crush them. That's the ending to "Amsterdam", an ending which makes you wonder what to make of the rest of the book. Other reviewers have mentioned some other flaws in "Amsterdam", but I think they could be overlooked were the novel not so poorly conceived. I'm sure some of McEwan's other works are better, and I'd advise newcomers like myself to try those instead. |
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