Customer Reviews

Innocent (Picador Books)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

McEwan creates well the atmosphere of a post-war, pre-wall Berlin, amplifying our imaginings. The interaction between Brits and Americans is full of subtle humor, and as it later turns out, great regard and humane understanding. The narrative is smooth and concerns an everyman, virgin, British geek assigned to an American intelligence project consisting of building a tunnel crossing the border into the Russian zone to tap underground phone cables through which presumably important matters are discussed (remember, we are in 1948, almost a decade before Sputnik). Love interest and sexual education is provided by an experienced German girl to our Brit, the virgin geek. The writing is so smooth that one doesn't realize one is turning pages and reading on at a rate as if one were reading a chock-full-of-events thriller when in fact not much is really happening; the tunnel is just chugging along. But McEwan is a "smooth operator" and he is moving you along, hinting at tension, to the point you are expectant of actions or revelations in the intelligence component of the novel to pop-up any minute and throw everything topsy-turvy.

Rest assured McEwan is too smart to do that. Nothing happens as such that you are aware of for three quarters of the book until our everyman, the somewhat endearing British geek is plunged into a grand guignol not of his making and totally alien to the place where you would have expected the excitement you were owed to come from.(After all, you bought the book and it was sold to you as a thriller, and after all, it takes place in thriller-city and all major protagonists except two are freeks and geeks and goons and guards mostly in uniform and with varying levels of security clearance in the intelligence services of the powers which split this city. At times it looks as if each agent has his little black book which lists the interests they are called uypon to protect, investigate, eliminate, whatever, and thus move quickly about, talk with other similar blokes and keep moving about. The Tunnel provides a country-club of sorts for those connected with the project. There are body parts indeed, but they do not come from there.

So, much activity occurs in our atmospheric tunnel, yes. But nothing happens there really. The unwelcomed death occurs elsewhere, has nothing to do with Military Intelligence. The neatly wrapped body parts do not bring the Tunnel down, it's the disguise they wear. But the story does not end there.

Many years later a mature, no longer virginal Brit geek comes back to Berlin, post wall, to revisit sites, and carries with him a letter explaining what precipitated events at the tunnel and freed him of any trace of guilt, if any such he held.

The explication at the end of the book is clear, surprising, and truly closes the nattarive in an intelligent, satisfying way.

Endearing Love, after such an unforgettable opening and the obsessive development remains my favourite McEwan novel so far. Saturday is contrived, feels Thatcherite and stacked against the lower orders. Nonetheless I appreciated the medical tracts. (It's up for a Booker). In short, I liked "The Innocent" Better.

This is a really unusual book, esp coming from a writer of Ian McEwan's stature. It's part psychological horror, part espionage, part mystery, part coming-of-age, part character study - and it's splendid.
Set in 1954 in Berlin, before The Wall was built, it's the `true' story of the construction of a secret spy tunnel so the Brits and the Americans could spy on the Russians, whom they no longer trusted. Much to his surprise, Leonard Marnham, an extraordinarily innocent and naďve British postal technician, is recruited to participate in this top-secret operation. A virgin at age 25, Leonard falls in love with a pretty German divorcee, and his initiation into the pleasures of a sexual relationship follows. The couples becomes engaged, but their world collapses into macabre horror on the night of their engagement party. The 80-plus pages that follow this horrific event are gruesome and spell-binding at the same time in a way that only a superb writer could possibly handle.
The ending, leap ahead 30 years to 1986, feels a bit contrived and distanced, esp after the intense and personal material that's just been revealed.
At its best, it rivals Pulp Fiction and Fargo for explicit shock value. At its worst...well, it doesn't have a `worst.' It's really, really good.
But: Ian McEwan???? Who knew?

The term "breath-taking" is one that book reviewers toss about with more ease than readers believe. but McEwan's post-war/thriller/romance can leave you breathless as it slips cannily from the everyday to the astonishing. People who could not imagine being caught up in webs of intrigue and deception find their lives turned topsy-turvy in most imaginative and startling ways. The more I read of the McEwan list the more I am amazed by his artistry, and variety of plot and characters. Every bit as fine a read as "Amsterdam" and "Atonement."

The story first (because McEwan - unlike Amis and Rushdie and even Barnes - is first and foremost a storyteller; his great skill with words ably assists that task but it never gets in the way).

Berlin. A short time after the second world war. Leonard Marnham (an Englishman away from home - his mother, his father - for the first time in his short life) is our narrator. He is part of a project to dig a tunnel from what is termed American soil through to what is termed Russian soil, the intention being to place various taps on the Russian communications systems. He also has to contend with the rivalry that develops between English and US officers. Alongside all of which, he meets and falls in love with a German girl called Maria.

The project - Project Gold - was in fact a reality. It occurred, in much the same way recounted in the book. Leonard and Maria are fictions. The fact and the fictions weave a merry dance, but that is beside the point.

What is the point - and the point that should encourage you to read (and not just read this - read pretty much everything by Ian McEwan, bar "Amsterdam" which is weak) - is the skill which he brings to bear in creating images that remain with you long after you finish reading. Time after time (the balloon chase in "Enduring Love", the throat cutting in "The Comfort of Strangers", the soldiers brain seeping from beneath poorly fixed bandages in "Atonement", the dismemberment of a corpse here, in "The Innocent") you are left with a clutch of significant, striking, visceral images (images that often remain after other books rob you of a clear memory of the twists and turns of the plot).

What is also interesting (in the light of the success of "Atonement", specifically) are the number of methods McEwan employs more than once, in different books (the aforesaid grotesque dismemberment and its "Atonement" echo with the soldier's brains, the way Leonard returns to the scene of the crime, as Briony returns to the scene of the crime in "Atonement", that kind of thing).

All of which is by the by. What is important, at the end, is this: aside from writing great books, with great stories, containing great writing, McEwan somehow manages to both transport you and leave you where you were. You are transported, compelled, forced to read on (even when that does not seem the wisest course - dismemberment, again). At the same time, you sit back there, in your seat, wherever you are, thinking to yourself: this guy is good. You italicise the "good" in your head. This guy is "good". Drawn out over three or four syllables.

"The Innocent" is as good as the other novels (and better than the short stories, which always struck me as exercises), and that should be persuasion enough.

This is such an old school novel. I was thinking for the first half that it bore a striking resemblance to the better Graham Green. But as I kept working my way through the pages, the laconic prose kept putting me off. Don't get me wrong, the pages in this book flow like a molasses dream. But the story builds so slowly that it becomes frustrating. The main character is not very intelligent, and as a reader you will be jumping ahead of him, screaming at him like he was the blond bimbo in a horror flick to run out of the house. So as the story builds at its slooooow pace, and the `unsophisticated postal technician' Leonard Marnham frustratingly gets batted about like a moth in a box, we are left not as entranced readers, but as frustrated onlookers. That is my main beef with this story. I could not enjoy myself spending time with this character or the circumstances. McEwan did a remarkable job in writing this and pacing the story, he just never gave us a character that we as readers could relate to.

I have never read McEwan before, and I am looking forwards to trying my hand at another of his novels. It was courageous on his part to create such a novel as this, and I respect him greatly for doing so. But I just don't think that this book worked very well.

Ian McEwan's novels typically begin in an unsuspecting straightforward manner and gradually torpedo us to the very darkest nooks and crannies with which he is obsessed. "The Innocent" is no exception. It starts with a first-person narrative by a young British intelligence officer posted to the infamous American-Berlin sector headquarters of the Allied Forces just after World War II, where a joint USA-UK project, which really happened, was in the making just past Checkpoint Charlie. It concerned the famous underground tunnel dug so we friendlies could tap East German Stassi and Russian USSR communiques; little did we know then that almost from the beginning the project had been betrayed by England's famous MI6 mole George Blake, who, like his fellow traitors Kim Philby and Guy Burgess sold out the West for 30 pieces of silver. The book's greatest achievement is McEwan's fictional portrayal of William King Harvey's character which is not approached elsewhere, even approximately, except in Norman Mailer's erudite epic "Harlot's Ghost". Harvey, a former FBI agent, was the colorful chief of the CIA's Berlin Station. McEwan's description of what he might have been like -- we know he drank copiously and always carried two revolvers in opposing shoulder holsters -- is probably closer to the truth than we may ever know. Although alluded to in the classic "Wilderness of Mirrors" by David Martin, which McEwan acknowledges as his inspiration and source material, and also referenced in Tom Mangold's "Cold Warrior" about the CIA's witch-hunting DCI James Jesus Angleton, this perhaps is the finest guess at Harvey's true personality. What follows in the book's second half is McEwan's trademark twist-the-knife, unexpected and somewhat surreal noir darkness ... no spoilers here, comrade! Whether you are a McEwan fan -- and all of his books are superb -- or a CIA company/Farm buff, or both, don't miss this one. If only the summer 2007 TNT 3-part TV miniseries "The Company" had taken account of the books mentioned here, and others, we wouldn't have had that sad, ridiculous, disinformational take on the CIA's 1950-1970 "Golden Years". In that TV movie, Harvey for some reason is called "Harvey Territo" and although Angleton's real name is preserved, events are presented in such a convoluted, untrue manner, despite the richness of previously published material, that we have got to wonder what TNT was thinking. Perhaps George Tenet was ghost technical advisor? Forget "The Company". Read McEwan.

Ian McEwan writes with a ferocity that is understated at times, and the ease and accessibility of his writing can deceive the reader into thinking that what they are reading is insubstantial or light. This work was probably his most conventionally "commercial". That is not to demean the writing or the story in any way, as it was at least the equal of anything I have read by this fine author. There was all of the trademark McEwan subterfuge, relationship drama, self-discovery, exploration of male-female relating nuances, and deception at play here. And a knockout storyline which kept the pace of the novel humming. In fact, I found this one of the more compulsively readable of his works, with that page-turning addictability that most thriller writers strive for. But this seemed to mark a rare genre: literary thriller. Much to get excited about from both a plot and storytelling perspective, but also the kind of sentence construction and flow that only the best fiction writers can produce.

The story, as others have summarized here, is one of undercover spy-work in post WWII Berlin, and the touching relationship between an Englishman and a German woman, which is the heart of the story. The relationship is made complicated by the backgrounds and circumstances of both, and a past relationship of the German woman proves to have a lasting impact on what happens in the book. If I were to divulge much more than that, I would be doing a disservice to the unfolding of the plot, which is fascinating and shocking. McEwan relates expertly the awkwardness of a virginal English man in his mid twenties, and while he is the obvious "Innocent" from the title, the title also works on other levels.

I loved this book and found it filled with a soulfulness and emotional resonance of a different nature than some of his other works. This had all of the hard-hitting violence and seaminess, with a little more optimism and heart. An excellent work of fiction.

I'm now reading Ian McEwan's The Innocent - OMG! Newsweek said, "So exhaustively suspenseful that it should be devoured at one sitting." NYTimes, "Powerfull and disturbing...a tour de force." I expected a thriller but if this were a movie I would have to cover my eyes during parts of the story. It's very, very well written and suspenseful but POW!!! you will be surprised, even horrified, by the secrets hidden in the pages of this masterpiece.

Tedde McMillen

Author of Million Dollar Cup of TeaMillion Dollar Cup of Tea: What You Can Learn from a Mother-daughter Team Who Turned a Simple Idea into Oregon Chai: a $75 Million Business

Though perhaps the most conventionally plotted of McEwan's wonderful novels, "The Innocent" is no less enthralling, sexy or deliciously gruesome than the rest. Here he takes an actual historical incident - a British-American attempt to tunnel into East Germany for the purpose of tapping Russian phone cables in 1955-56 - and expands it into allegory. While this story could be enjoyed simply as a spy thriller, McEwan clearly has more in mind than that. He invites us to read the sexual and political adventures of English surveillance officer Leonard Marnham, his German girlfriend Maria, and his American supervisor Bob Glass, as a metaphor for a naive England's failure to secure an interest in post-war Germany. In particular, he explores the way England's "special relationship" with America undermined it. As Maria chides Leonard thirty years later: "It was wrong of you to retreat with your anger and silence. So English! ... If you felt betrayed, you should have fought for what was yours. You should have accused me, you should have accused Bob. There would have been a fight, and we would have gotten to the bottom of it. But I know really that it was your pride that made you slink away..." She's talking about their romance, but if it isn't also an indictment of British politico-military paralysis then I don't know what is. McEwan is very good on Germany, and "The Innocent" is a great book to read along with his next novel (and, to my mind, best), "Black Dogs", which addresses evil, God and German reunification among other things.

A friend recommended this book to me. He has been very successful in the past recommending good books, but this time, after reading a couple of hours, I questioned his recommendation. Having said that, the story really picked up after a while, and it became impossible to put it down!

The setting is post-War Berlin. The twenty-five-year-old male lead, Leonard Marnham, is being assigned to a British-American intelligence team. This international plot, "Operation Gold", is never fully disclosed to anyone, so everyone associated with this project works under the "need to know"-basis. Marnham uses his secret work to get away from his rather ordinary life, and of course, to loose his highly unwanted innocence.

"The innocent" has something that everyone can enjoy; elements of espionage, Cold-War paranoia, confusion, romance and drama. Everything mixed together into a story, like nothing I've ever read before.

"Operation Gold" did exist in real life. According to "Author's note" on one of the last pages in this book, "Operation Gold" was a joint CIA-MI6 venture, that operated for just under a year, until 1956. This of course, made the whole thing much more real and believable.

Ian McEwan is a masterful storyteller, and after reading four of his books, I am a great fan of his books!

This is a great read!

(If you like this one, I suggest you also read the Booker Prize winning "Amsterdam" and also "The Comfort of Strangers".