Enduring Love [Import] [Hardcover]

Ian McEwan (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Jonathan Cape Children's Books (September 1997)
• ISBN-10: 022405080X
• ISBN-13: 978-0224050807
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (184 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels for adults, as well as The Daydreamer, a children's novel illustrated by Anthony Browne. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His other award-winning novels are The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, and Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An engrossing, beautifully written book, January 14, 2000

By 

Marion D. Lefrancois (Providence, RI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Enduring Love: A Novel (Paperback)

Many have praised the opening of this novel, and rightfully so, but that is only the first step in Ian McEwan's masterful creation. Told from the perspective of Joe Rose, a frustrated scientist turned journalist, the story captures our attention and never lets go. We share Joe's despair as the balloon rocks in the wind in the opening scene; we shiver as he finds himself being stalked by a delusional, obsessive intruder who thinks Joe is the love of his life. But Joe doesn't seem to trust himself entirely, and McEwan gives us plenty of reasons to distrust him even more, creating a tension in the narrative that makes us read on with a growing sense of impending calamity. In-between, McEwan explores the dichotomy of science and religion, logic and intuition, sanity and delusion. The writing is beautiful, as sharp and witty as we've come to expect of McEwan, but far more intricate and thoughtful. All that and a page-turner? It's a near-perfect read.

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hitchcock would love this book, April 23, 2000

By 

Ian Muldoon (Coffs Harbour, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Enduring Love: A Novel (Paperback)

A very well crafted tale of horror, suspense, and an understanding of the psychological minutia of relationships which I read in one sitting. If you, dear reader, are interested in psychiatry, the place of scientists and science in the modern world, scientific fashion, obsessive behaviour, religious faith, love, jealousy, murder, moral choices, guilt, and fear then this is the book for you. It's also funny eg, '" I'll tell you in four words and nothing more. Someone wants to kill me." In the silence everyone, including me, totted up the words.'(p216) But if there is a common theme binding all these elements together, it's that no matter how well educated or intelligent you are there is no escaping the strait-jacket of your feelings, and its these feelings, of cowardice, of guilt, of fear, of the protaganist, Joe Rose, which propel the story forward in true Hitchcockian manner. The effects of love going sour, the hilarity of buying a gun from ex-hippies, the strangeness of an ordinary day turning weird are some of the many highlights of this book.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Enduring Impression, August 22, 2000

By 

Bryan Bickford - See all my reviews

This review is from: Enduring Love: A Novel (Paperback)

What strikes me about this book is the lasting impression it's left on me. I read it last summer and still find myself thinking about it and talking about it a year later. I recently finished another book and my wife asked me to compare it to any two others as a point of reference. Better than one book we'd both read, I said, but not as good as Enduring Love. For contemporary fiction, this one sticks with you.

McEwan does a fine job in painting the lead character Joe Rose, as well as the secondary players. His use of language is clear and simple, yet never elementary. The opening chapter is as powerfully imagined as any other I've read. The reader is literally hanging by a rope at the suspense of the scene. And it sets the tone for the psychological terror to come.

More than a summer read, Enduring Love explores corners of our psyches and personalities that we don't often come face to face with. Suspense, terror, humor, and the very real idea of love and romance are alive in this book, which I reccommend as enjoyable to readers of any of these genres.