Customer Reviews

In Between the Sheets (Picador Books)

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In these sketches, McEwan examines sexual and relationship dysfunctions. Each story has a bizarre twist-- which the characters never seem to recognize as strange-- that is used to emphasize the futility of human emotion. The effect is similar to "magical realism," where an author uses supernatural elements but treats them as commonplace. Here are a few examples:

"Tales of a Kept Ape" is told in first-person, through the eyes of a frustrated lover who cannot understand why the woman he adores has alienated herself from his affections. Bizarre twist: The jilted lover is a pet ape the woman has been sleeping with.

In the title story, a middle aged divorced father worries that his fourteen year old daughter has fallen into a lesbian relationship with an older woman. Bizarre twist: The older woman is a three-foot dwarf.

In "Dead as They Come", we watch an obsessive, arrogant millionaire fall madly in love with a woman, only to destroy the relationship out of uncontrollable jealousy. Bizarre twist: The woman is a department store mannequin.

My complaint of these stories is that the bizarre "twists" are never explicitly dealt with by the characters. It's as if McEwan wants us to believe that loving an ape, or a dwarf, or a mannequin is no less strange (or less hopeless) than loving another human being. So, each tale becomes a plodding, why-can't-we-get-along diatribe that is neither interesting nor enlightening.

I'm a big, big fan of Ian McEwan's. I've read and loved virtually everything he's written, especially "Black Dogs" and "Atonement", so it's doubly disappointing for me to say that "In Between The Sheets", his second collection of short stories, is without doubt the worst and only substandard piece of work he has put out so far. Granted, what we have here is very early McEwan but that doesn't excuse the amateurish and shoddy quality of these mostly pointless vignettes. "First Love, Last Rites", his earliest work, wasn't McEwan at his prime but it was more than halfway decent and contained more than a trace of promise of his developing craft as a short story writer and novelist. "In Between The Sheets" just seems like scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I can't name anything in here that is remotely memorable. Indeed, it was so bad I hardly finished the book. "Pornography" is mundane and pedestrian. It's been done to death (and better) by others. "Reflections Of A Kept Ape" almost succeeds - could the ape be the retarded child of the woman ? are the ape's sexual fantasies just its hallucination ? I haven't a clue what "Two Fragments" is all about. "Dead As They Come" is ludicrous. By the time I got to "In Between The Sheets", I lost interest and couldn't wait for this slim volume to end.

The publishers should quietly delete this title from McEwan's catalogue as it diminishes his tall standing among the great contemporary writers of today.

Ian McEwan has always been the doyen of the macabre. In this, his second collection of stories, his language can be both resonant ('I do not care for posturing women but she "struck" me') and profane ('I love the scent asparagus lends the urine'). Whether describing the 'love' of a tailor's dummy or bondage games in a metropolitan setting, McEwan's prose is masterly and his insights unsettling. Excellent but not as great as his earlier volume, 'First Love, Last Rites.'

Not as good as or as provocative as the other short story volume (First Love, Last Rites), but still worth reading...

If I had only read "Two Fragments: March 199-" and "To and Fro" from this early collection of short stories when they were published in 1978 by one of my favorite writers, I would have read no more and would have missed out on his later wonderful novels. These two stories should be forgotten. Mr. McEwan turns up the heat in three of his stories, which I would label the bizarre. "Pornography" is the tale of O'Bryne who is having a sexual affair with two women simultaneously. When each woman finds out about the other, O'Bryne meets his Waterloo as the two women descend on him, tie him up and sterilize surgical instruments. "Reflections of a Kept Ape" is told from the viewpoint of an ape, a former lover of his mistress. The narrator in "Dead as They Come" is in love with a store mannequin, whom he purchases and takes home with him. The remaining two stories are beautiful and good indicators of what is to come in McEwan's later fiction. "In Between the Sheets" is a sexually charged account a father whose fourteen-year-old daughter and her midget girl friend visit him. The two girls are involved in something resembling a lesbian relationship or maybe it's just a "phase" teenage girls go through. There are also undertones of incest in this emotionally tense story. The title has multiple layers of meaning, something we have come to expect in McEwan's novels. He apparently has coined a phrase in "Psychopolis." The narrator is a Brit living briefly in California. While there he meets Mary, who works in a feminist bookstore in Venice and whom he chains to the foot of his bed for a weekend-- at her request. There is also George Malone who owns a shop under the narrator's apartment in Santa Monica,a shop specializing in items "for party givers" and equipment for sickrooms. Finally, there is Terence Latterly, someone the narrator had met "years ago in England when he was researching a still uncompleted thesis on George Orwell. . ." This story culminates when George throws a farewell party for the narrator who brings Mary and Terence with him to dinner. The evening gets out of hand when the conversation turns to religion, sexism, corporal punishment, sexual inadequacy and violence. (It's always fascinating to read foreign writers and get their views on the United States.)

This last story is about as good as anything Mr. McEwan has written.

If you're a McEwan fan then you must read this collection. If you're not, please read the novels first. These short stories do not offer comfortable closures, but they do examine some intriguing relationships in McEwan's usual keen observationalist style. These are fragments of people's lives. The plots hint at much but define little, therefore it has to be up to the reader to mull over the stories, just as one might mull over paintings. They invite us to consider human attributes that individuals might deny and suppress due to social mores, but that all of us may bear to greater or lesser degrees, simply because we are all human. I was absorbed by all of them except To And Fro which kept losing my attention.

A hit and miss early book from one of our greatest living writers, In Between the Sheets, at the very least, is interesting enough to keep you reading. "Pornography," the first story, isn't great, but it's pretty good, and the ending was creepy enough to leave me sick to my stomach.
The next story, Reflections of a Kept Ape, is short but interesting, at least to an extent. It's bizarre enough to make it worth reading.
Two Fragments: March 199-, is a story depicting a near future which is essentially primitive and boring, and that's how reading it is as well. This story, especially the second half, is easily forgettable.
I actually quite like the next story, Dead as They Come, despite the plot line, which sounds like it wouldn't go anywhere. I won't give it away, I'll just say it's an interesting twist on a love story, which leads to jealousy and eventually "murder."
In Between the Sheets was another bizarre, but quite good, story. It involves a divorced man staying with his daughter and her friend, a dwarf. They seem to be involved in some sort of lesbian relationship, and it turns into a strange but good story.
To be blunt, I hated the next story, To and Fro. It's a good thing it's by far the shortest: McEwan makes it deliberately confusing and it doesn't go anywhere. I respect him for trying to be unique, but he does it with more success on "Dead as They Come" and "Reflections of a Kept Ape."
The last story, Psychopolis, may well be the best in the collection: it starts with a mans odd semi-sexual experience with a female friend, and seems to go into a meditation on Christianity and short term friendships. Along with the title story, it takes a completely realistic tone, and is wonderful to read.
All things considered, First Love, Last Rites is a more powerful read, but this book is interesting enough to make it worth the read.

I read a lot of books, but I generally avoid the more "literary" authors. There are exceptions, however, and Ian McEwan is one of those. I have enjoyed the other books of his I've read (including Atonement, Amsterdam and Enduring Love), but In Between the Sheets, his early collection of short stories, is merely passable. It is well-written but not a great read.

Whether it is a short story or a novel, my personal preference is more plot-driven stories, as opposed to the plotless, slice-of-life tales that may be more artistic, but tend to be less entertaining. Again, there are exceptions, but this collection is not one of them. The seven stories vary in quality: a couple are decent enough, including a tale of a philanderer who gets a comeuppance from his two lovers and the story of a wealthy man and his obsession over his new mistress. On the other hand, while most of the other stories are not bad, they aren't very compelling either. Only one story, "To and Fro," I found to be almost unreadable (a matter of taste, I am sure, as I'm not much for more experimental fare).

For the most part, this fits my definition of a three star work: while there is little bad about this book, there is also little good. I am willing to admit that the type of writing within is not my usual cup of tea, so your opinion may be different. To me, however, this is a book for only McEwan fans only, and even then, only to see what his early work was like. For others - especially those who prefer more plot with their stories - this is one to skip.

There is little to recommend this slim volume of stories that reads very much like a reheating of the subtle horrors that had such an impact in Mcewan's debut collection, 'First Love, Last Rites'. Once again, the various characters slip, almost imperceptibly into a range of grand guignol predicaments, but the tone is less subtle than in the first collection and the book does not represent much in the way of originality or development from this early phase of Mcewan's early career.

This is a book of short stories written by Ian McEwan. In a sentence, this book wasn't very good. McEwan's style is engaging, but these stories are not very well-executed in my opinion.

I think McEwan was trying to be original and shocking, and while there are many "original" ideas presented, the stories themselves are lacking and leave you with a feeling of cluelessness.

As far as shocking goes, this isn't shocking. In fact, some of the ideas seem a little contrived, but I guess everyone starts from somewhere.