Nobody planned it, nobody wanted it, but most people had to live in it. No one would have wished it this way, but no one had been asked. It looked like a raucous dinner party the morning after.

But now it appeared that this was what it really was - square miles of meager modern houses whose principal purpose was the support of TV aerials and dishes factories producing worthless junk to be advertised on the televisions and, in dismal lots, lorries queuing to distribute it and everywhere else, roads and the tyranny of traffic. This all comes to a very literal conclusion at the end that frankly strains the boundaries of believability and ultimately prevented me from enjoying the book as a whole.įor most of the time, though, McEwan continually demonstrates his prowess with language, including the following passage that I absolutely love: “In his corner of West London, and in his self-pre-occupied daily round, it was easy for Clive to think of civilization as the sum of all the arts, along with design, cuisine, good wine, and the like. What McEwan aims for in this book is the exploration of the relationship that has festered over the years between Clive and Vernon and ultimately the lengths to which they’ll go to one-up each other. In parallel narrative, we also follow newspaper editor Vernon, who must decide whether or not his paper will run a puff piece leaking sexually compromising photographs of politician Julian taken by his lover Molly, who also happens to be an ex-lover of both Clive and Vernon.Īs is usually the case with McEwan, we get psychological introspection for Clive and Vernon. It tells the story of Clive, a preeminent modern composer finishing what is set to be his career-defining masterpiece, a symphony to commemorate the approaching millennium. Now we have Amsterdam, which won McEwan the Booker Prize, and it’s another of McEwan’s shorter works that, regardless of length, still packs a lot of material into its compact size.

I was so impressed with it that I read Saturday, a novel that already seemed to have similar themes and tropes from Beach, but was nonetheless engaging and well-written. In my case, it was On Chesil Beach, a svelte novel that absolutely floors you with its denouement. The first one of his books you read you’ll absolutely love. I have a theory about Ian McEwan’s works.

Review of amsterdam by ian mcewan