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Enduring Love
Joe Rose has planned a postcard-perfect afternoon in the English countryside to celebrate his lover's return after six weeks in the States. To complete the picture, there's even a "helium balloon drifting dreamily across the wooded valley." But as Joe and Clarissa watch the balloon touch down, their idyll comes to an abrupt end. The pilot catches his leg in the anchor rope, while the only passenger, a boy, is too scared to jump down. As the wind whips into action, Joe and four other men rush to secure the basket. Mother Nature, however, isn't feeling very maternal. "A mighty fist socked the balloon in two rapid blows, one-two, the second more vicious than the first," and at once the rescuers are airborne. Joe manages to drop to the ground, as do most of his companions, but one man is lifted sky-high, only to fall to his death.
In itself, the accident would change the survivors' lives, filling them with an uneasy combination of shame, happiness, and endless self-reproach. (In one of the novel's many ironies, the balloon eventually lands safely, the boy unscathed.) But fate has far more unpleasant things in store for Joe. Meeting the eye of fellow rescuer Jed Parry, for example, turns out to be a very bad move. For Jed is instantly obsessed, making the first of many calls to Joe and Clarissa's London flat that very night. Soon he's openly shadowing Joe and writing him endless letters. (One insane epistle begins, "I feel happiness running through me like an electrical current. I close my eyes and see you as you were last night in the rain, across the road from me, with the unspoken love between us as strong as steel cable.") Worst of all, Jed's version of love comes to seem a distortion of Joe's feelings for Clarissa.
Apart from the incessant stalking, it is the conditionals--the contingencies--that most frustrate Joe, a scientific journalist. If only he and Clarissa had gone straight home from the airport... If only the wind hadn't picked up... If only he had saved Jed's 29 messages in a single day... Ian McEwan has long been a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others' fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and--worst of all--becoming strangers to those who love them. Even his prose itself is a masterful and methodical exercise in defamiliarization. But Enduring Love and its underrated predecessor, Black Dogs, are also meditations on knowledge and perception as well as brilliant manipulations of our own expectations. By the novel's end, you will be surprisingly unafraid of hot-air balloons, but you won't be too keen on looking a stranger in the eye.
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
Ian McEwan
147 books18.9k followersIan McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970 and later received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.
McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year.
McEwan lives in London.
McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year.
McEwan lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,929 reviews
January 30, 2026
[Revised 11/2/22 and spoiler warning added]
Well we have to give McEwan an A+ for an original plot on this one. A ballooning accident leads to a man acquiring a male stalker who interferes so much in his life that it begins to endanger the first man’s marriage.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
The sudden and obsessive love is directed at our main character, a married male journalist who writes science articles for magazines. The onset of love is provoked by a tragedy – a ballooning accident in which a father is killed, dropping from clinging to the balloon, while his son is saved inside the balloon. A group of men in a park try to grab the balloon in a moment of “democratic chaos” of attempted rescue without a leader, with each doing different things and yelling different commands – “hold on, let go.” I’m not giving away any plot – we know all this from the blurbs and by the end of the first chapter.
Our journalist’s lover turns into a violent stalker. He’s also a religious nut whose goal is “to bring you to God, through love.”
The main story becomes how the journalist reacts to his stalker and how he shares his fear with his wife. It doesn’t go well and impacts what had been a good marriage. “What was so exhausting about him was the variety of his emotional states and the speed of their transitions. Reasonableness, tears, desperation, vague threat – and now honest supplication.”
Another theme is: how do you talk about a life-changing event like that and with whom? He constantly relives the event and experiences guilt or some “unnamed sensation” of “did I do the wrong thing?” The plot thickens when he visits the dead man’s wife who puts a whole new spin on the incident even though she wasn’t there.
This is McEwan, so we get tidbits about wine and vignettes about memory as surely as we get Johnny Walker and cats with Murakami. Because the main character is a science writer, we get snippets of scientific ideas – Darwin, DNA, the Hubble telescope, how brain scans show tricks of memory.
Some lines I liked:
“The pavements were empty, the streets were full. Cars were our citizens now.”
About an academic’s house in north Oxford: “No colors but brown and cream. No design or style, no comfort, and in winter, very little warmth. Even the light was brownish, at one with the smells of damp, coal dust, and soap.”
“I felt that empty, numbing neutrality that comes when one person in the room appears to monopolize all the available emotion.”
“At the time I had trouble deciding whether he was slightly clever or very stupid.”
This is a mid-career novel by McEwan, 1997. It’s about erotomania, the syndrome characterized by the delusional idea, usually in a young woman, that a man whom she considers to be of higher social and/or professional standing, who may be a complete stranger, is in love with her. He sends her signs and messages that only she can interpret, keeping the delusion alive. It can occur in males too, as it does in this story, especially in men who have social disabilities; are disconnected loners with no friends, and may already have schizophrenia or other disorders. McEwan doesn’t use the word erotomania though, he calls it by its original name, De Clerambault’s syndrome.
A good read and typical McEwan. It was made into a movie in Britain in 2004.
Here are links to my reviews of other books by Ian McEwan, The number after the title is the rating I gave that book:
The Children Act -3
On Chesil Beach -3
Nutshell -4
Amsterdam -3
Saturday -3
Well we have to give McEwan an A+ for an original plot on this one. A ballooning accident leads to a man acquiring a male stalker who interferes so much in his life that it begins to endanger the first man’s marriage.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
The sudden and obsessive love is directed at our main character, a married male journalist who writes science articles for magazines. The onset of love is provoked by a tragedy – a ballooning accident in which a father is killed, dropping from clinging to the balloon, while his son is saved inside the balloon. A group of men in a park try to grab the balloon in a moment of “democratic chaos” of attempted rescue without a leader, with each doing different things and yelling different commands – “hold on, let go.” I’m not giving away any plot – we know all this from the blurbs and by the end of the first chapter.
Our journalist’s lover turns into a violent stalker. He’s also a religious nut whose goal is “to bring you to God, through love.”
The main story becomes how the journalist reacts to his stalker and how he shares his fear with his wife. It doesn’t go well and impacts what had been a good marriage. “What was so exhausting about him was the variety of his emotional states and the speed of their transitions. Reasonableness, tears, desperation, vague threat – and now honest supplication.”
Another theme is: how do you talk about a life-changing event like that and with whom? He constantly relives the event and experiences guilt or some “unnamed sensation” of “did I do the wrong thing?” The plot thickens when he visits the dead man’s wife who puts a whole new spin on the incident even though she wasn’t there.
This is McEwan, so we get tidbits about wine and vignettes about memory as surely as we get Johnny Walker and cats with Murakami. Because the main character is a science writer, we get snippets of scientific ideas – Darwin, DNA, the Hubble telescope, how brain scans show tricks of memory.
Some lines I liked:
“The pavements were empty, the streets were full. Cars were our citizens now.”
About an academic’s house in north Oxford: “No colors but brown and cream. No design or style, no comfort, and in winter, very little warmth. Even the light was brownish, at one with the smells of damp, coal dust, and soap.”
“I felt that empty, numbing neutrality that comes when one person in the room appears to monopolize all the available emotion.”
“At the time I had trouble deciding whether he was slightly clever or very stupid.”
This is a mid-career novel by McEwan, 1997. It’s about erotomania, the syndrome characterized by the delusional idea, usually in a young woman, that a man whom she considers to be of higher social and/or professional standing, who may be a complete stranger, is in love with her. He sends her signs and messages that only she can interpret, keeping the delusion alive. It can occur in males too, as it does in this story, especially in men who have social disabilities; are disconnected loners with no friends, and may already have schizophrenia or other disorders. McEwan doesn’t use the word erotomania though, he calls it by its original name, De Clerambault’s syndrome.
A good read and typical McEwan. It was made into a movie in Britain in 2004.
Here are links to my reviews of other books by Ian McEwan, The number after the title is the rating I gave that book:
The Children Act -3
On Chesil Beach -3
Nutshell -4
Amsterdam -3
Saturday -3
March 2, 2019
In ____ (place/time), _______________ (name of character) does __________ (action) so that __________ (goal), but _________ (conflict!). This book is _______ (adjective), ______ (adjective), and made this reader _____ (verb).
come to my blog!
come to my blog!
June 23, 2023
Another great piece of work by the much lauded McEwan. A very well written suspense driven fictionalised account of a victim of a man with De Clérambault's syndrome (erotomania) where the sufferer absolutely and truly believe that their target is in love with them, and also essentially made the first advances and continues to do so. On top of this the initial meeting of both erotomaniac and his victim was an innovative and gripping introduction to the characters. 7 out of 12, Three Star for my first read of this one (2010). Second read 2021 (better) 4-star review
2010 and 2021 read
2010 and 2021 read
January 16, 2011
Even though I liked much of Choupette's review this morning, I disagreed with her conclusions... so, although I'm clearly in the minority here, let me present my take. Choupette starts off by observing
Through no fault of his own, Joe is placed in a bizarre situation where, for reasons he doesn't understand, he discovers he's being stalked by a deranged individual. The stalker is cunning, and Joe is the only person who has clear evidence that anything is happening. In particular, his girlfriend, Clarissa, has never seen the stalker and wonders if he actually exists. This places great strain on her relationship with the hero. Clarissa is presented as being intellectually Joes's opposite; her passion is literature, in particular the poetry of Keats.
I thought the development was logical and compelling. Joe does some clever detective work. He figures out who the stalker is and why he's doing it. He realises that the man is genuinely dangerous, and intervenes just in time to save Clarissa's life. But he completely misses the emotional realities of the situation. He's so focussed on solving the technical problem that he doesn't see he's destroying his relationship with the person he loves. Indeed, he blames her for not understanding him or his point of view, when it's blatantly obvious that he's misunderstanding her at least as badly.
Most of the story is presented in a one-sided way, though Joe's eyes, and it's easy to be tricked into believing that the narrator's and the author's viewpoints coincide. I think that's too simple an interpretation. As the story progressed, I found myself paying more and more attention to Clarissa, and wishing that Joe would do the same; I'm pretty sure the author was nudging me in that direction. It's a subtle and humane book. Well done, Mr. McEwan.
really what the book is about is the conflict between a way of thinking based on logical scientific reasoning and one based on emotions. Literature, versus science: "Do the scientific illiterates who run the National Library really believe that literature is mankind's greatest achievement?" (or something to that effect), the protagonist is heard to say on one occasion. A provocative statement, Mr. McEwan.It is indeed provocative, and I also think it's at the heart of what the book is about. To me, however, the passage is intended to be deeply ironic. The hero, Joe, is a science journalist, and embodies a world-view arranged around a rather facile interpretation of science. Note that he isn't a real scientist; at one point he tries to get back into the world of scientific research, and is politely but firmly told that he's missed the boat.
Through no fault of his own, Joe is placed in a bizarre situation where, for reasons he doesn't understand, he discovers he's being stalked by a deranged individual. The stalker is cunning, and Joe is the only person who has clear evidence that anything is happening. In particular, his girlfriend, Clarissa, has never seen the stalker and wonders if he actually exists. This places great strain on her relationship with the hero. Clarissa is presented as being intellectually Joes's opposite; her passion is literature, in particular the poetry of Keats.
I thought the development was logical and compelling. Joe does some clever detective work. He figures out who the stalker is and why he's doing it. He realises that the man is genuinely dangerous, and intervenes just in time to save Clarissa's life. But he completely misses the emotional realities of the situation. He's so focussed on solving the technical problem that he doesn't see he's destroying his relationship with the person he loves. Indeed, he blames her for not understanding him or his point of view, when it's blatantly obvious that he's misunderstanding her at least as badly.
Most of the story is presented in a one-sided way, though Joe's eyes, and it's easy to be tricked into believing that the narrator's and the author's viewpoints coincide. I think that's too simple an interpretation. As the story progressed, I found myself paying more and more attention to Clarissa, and wishing that Joe would do the same; I'm pretty sure the author was nudging me in that direction. It's a subtle and humane book. Well done, Mr. McEwan.
August 28, 2010
Enduring Love is either a brilliant camp comedy or one of the worst attempts at serious fiction ever.
Joe and his wife Clarissa are having a picnic when they spot a falling baloon. A man tries desperately to pin the balloon to the ground to save his son who's inside, traumatized.; Joe and a group of men who happened to be at the place run to help. The experiment goes bad; the man rolls to the ground while Joe and other men let go of the balloon. The balloon goes up into the air with one of the strangers still holding it; nevertheless, he lets go too (at considerable height) and falls to the ground, dying instantly.
One of the stranger, Jed, starts looking at Joe. Joe doesn't know what's going on but we do: Jed has developed an obsession with Joe. He fell in love with him and wants to be happy with him under the watchful eye of God.
He's desperate.
The characters are so unsympathetic that the reader finds himself rooting for Jed to kill them all. Clarissa is the one of the worst and most boring women ever written. She likes kids (but she can't have one of her own) she likes books and is big on Keats (she's an university professor) and leaves traces of her perfume in a room. Yet when her stressed out husband confesses that he hid a phonecall from obsessed stranger for two whole days (that's like,um,48 hours) she goes full mad and offended. I mean it's not like an obsessed, religious-mad gay called this straight dude who had just see a man die by crashing into the earth! What? Ashamed? Confused? What NO! No way!
She acts like she was 3 years old who just learned to spell "hate" and what it means. To think that she lived with Joe for seven years is unthinkable. She acts like they were both fourteen year old and she had just let him have his first sideboob. They are described to be a very close couple, loving and connected.
Within 24 hours Clarissa accuses her husband of being delusional and dishonest. She doesn't want to hear Joe's side of the story.
And you know what? After it turns out that Jed is a real threat, Clarissa spuns out a 180 turn and accuses Joe of not talking to her, not wanting her help? I mean didn't she just rejected his fears as irrational and even delirious? She found out that Joe (oh gawd) was looking through her desk because he suspected that she was seeing someone else, and tells him that it was the last straw and she's leaving. Then she and Joe make love (?!?!?). When Joe takes matters into his hands she leaves.
Die bitch! KILL IT WITH FIRE!
All this is ornamented with the figure of maniacal Jed, who sends Joe letters that are supposed to be the evidence of his love, but only serve as unintentional hilarity. I was expecting a giant half-squirrel, half-cock to jump into the story anytime.
At the end there's a 5 page appendix describing the de Clerambault's syndrome from which Jed suffers. There's also a letter he sends from an Asylum that shows that he's still sick. Joe and Clarissa reconcile and I do hope he drives a stake banded with barbed wire straight through her anus. It might make her ealize what a pain in the butt she was.Is.
There's no point to this story altogether. None. Zero. Nada. Pretentious, pseudo intelectual, filled with superfluous science that's supposed to look smart but is only tedious.
Damn you, Mcewan. With On Chesil Beach you slapped me across the face; with Enduring Love you delivered a round-house kick straight to the nuts. Your luck they don't hit guys in glasses. But I warn you, McEwan.
I warn you.
Joe and his wife Clarissa are having a picnic when they spot a falling baloon. A man tries desperately to pin the balloon to the ground to save his son who's inside, traumatized.; Joe and a group of men who happened to be at the place run to help. The experiment goes bad; the man rolls to the ground while Joe and other men let go of the balloon. The balloon goes up into the air with one of the strangers still holding it; nevertheless, he lets go too (at considerable height) and falls to the ground, dying instantly.
One of the stranger, Jed, starts looking at Joe. Joe doesn't know what's going on but we do: Jed has developed an obsession with Joe. He fell in love with him and wants to be happy with him under the watchful eye of God.
He's desperate.
The characters are so unsympathetic that the reader finds himself rooting for Jed to kill them all. Clarissa is the one of the worst and most boring women ever written. She likes kids (but she can't have one of her own) she likes books and is big on Keats (she's an university professor) and leaves traces of her perfume in a room. Yet when her stressed out husband confesses that he hid a phonecall from obsessed stranger for two whole days (that's like,um,48 hours) she goes full mad and offended. I mean it's not like an obsessed, religious-mad gay called this straight dude who had just see a man die by crashing into the earth! What? Ashamed? Confused? What NO! No way!
She acts like she was 3 years old who just learned to spell "hate" and what it means. To think that she lived with Joe for seven years is unthinkable. She acts like they were both fourteen year old and she had just let him have his first sideboob. They are described to be a very close couple, loving and connected.
Within 24 hours Clarissa accuses her husband of being delusional and dishonest. She doesn't want to hear Joe's side of the story.
And you know what? After it turns out that Jed is a real threat, Clarissa spuns out a 180 turn and accuses Joe of not talking to her, not wanting her help? I mean didn't she just rejected his fears as irrational and even delirious? She found out that Joe (oh gawd) was looking through her desk because he suspected that she was seeing someone else, and tells him that it was the last straw and she's leaving. Then she and Joe make love (?!?!?). When Joe takes matters into his hands she leaves.
Die bitch! KILL IT WITH FIRE!
All this is ornamented with the figure of maniacal Jed, who sends Joe letters that are supposed to be the evidence of his love, but only serve as unintentional hilarity. I was expecting a giant half-squirrel, half-cock to jump into the story anytime.
At the end there's a 5 page appendix describing the de Clerambault's syndrome from which Jed suffers. There's also a letter he sends from an Asylum that shows that he's still sick. Joe and Clarissa reconcile and I do hope he drives a stake banded with barbed wire straight through her anus. It might make her ealize what a pain in the butt she was.Is.
There's no point to this story altogether. None. Zero. Nada. Pretentious, pseudo intelectual, filled with superfluous science that's supposed to look smart but is only tedious.
Damn you, Mcewan. With On Chesil Beach you slapped me across the face; with Enduring Love you delivered a round-house kick straight to the nuts. Your luck they don't hit guys in glasses. But I warn you, McEwan.
I warn you.
August 13, 2019
What happens when people confuse their own feelings of possession with love for another person, and expect the other person to buy into their delusion - a catastrophe in slow motion!
The scary part of this novel, one of Ian McEwan's better works, is not the mentally ill stalker and his eruptions of violence. That bit is a psychological thriller of quite conventional dimensions. The scary part is how stress from an external source can reveal the incompatibility of two passionate lovers, believing they are a team until they are thrown into a game where they find themselves alone, while their former teammate creates a third independent team on the field. There is no "winning" such a game, as the protagonists realise in the end, having spent their love and their energies on dealing in very different, yet equally lonely ways with the intrusion of a sexual and emotional predator. If you substitute the rare case of a stalker in your life for any kind of catastrophe putting your life on hold, what the stress does to your close relationhips is scarily plausible.
"The narrative compression of storytelling, especially in the movies, beguiles us with happy endings into forgetting that sustained stress is corrosive of feeling. It's the great deadener."
Those are the words of Joe, who saw the "happy ending" morph into an "unhappy continuation" without any power to change the course of the narrative. His partner, Clarissa, made an equally disturbing discovery:
"A stranger walked into our lives, and the first thing that happened was that you became a stranger to me."
Joe mirrored in Parry was not the man Clarissa loved and trusted. Joe mirrored in Parry was almost as scary and as isolated and obsessed as his opponent. "Overcoming the monster" - that old plot, slaying the Jabberwocky, o frabjous joy - in reality, we keep our own inner monster, and who has seen it is left broken, unhappily ever after.
The scary part of this novel, one of Ian McEwan's better works, is not the mentally ill stalker and his eruptions of violence. That bit is a psychological thriller of quite conventional dimensions. The scary part is how stress from an external source can reveal the incompatibility of two passionate lovers, believing they are a team until they are thrown into a game where they find themselves alone, while their former teammate creates a third independent team on the field. There is no "winning" such a game, as the protagonists realise in the end, having spent their love and their energies on dealing in very different, yet equally lonely ways with the intrusion of a sexual and emotional predator. If you substitute the rare case of a stalker in your life for any kind of catastrophe putting your life on hold, what the stress does to your close relationhips is scarily plausible.
"The narrative compression of storytelling, especially in the movies, beguiles us with happy endings into forgetting that sustained stress is corrosive of feeling. It's the great deadener."
Those are the words of Joe, who saw the "happy ending" morph into an "unhappy continuation" without any power to change the course of the narrative. His partner, Clarissa, made an equally disturbing discovery:
"A stranger walked into our lives, and the first thing that happened was that you became a stranger to me."
Joe mirrored in Parry was not the man Clarissa loved and trusted. Joe mirrored in Parry was almost as scary and as isolated and obsessed as his opponent. "Overcoming the monster" - that old plot, slaying the Jabberwocky, o frabjous joy - in reality, we keep our own inner monster, and who has seen it is left broken, unhappily ever after.
July 27, 2024
Título original: «Enduring Love», tradução de Maria do Carmo Ferreira
«Íamos no sétimo ano de um casamento com muito amor e sem filhos. Clarissa Mellon estava também apaixonada por um outro homem, que não causava grandes problemas, pois estava a aproximar-se o seu 200º aniversário [John Keats]»
Joe e Clarissa viviam com pequenos problemas que em nada ameaçavam as suas existências livres e íntimas, até que um dia, durante um picnic, assistem a um acidente de balão que muda tudo com a morte do piloto, John Logan, um médico, e gera um sentimento de culpa e uma necessidade de encontrar uma explicação.
Assiste ao acidente, em outros, um homem que começa a perseguir Joe com um poder irradiante de amor e piedade:Jed Parry sofre da síndrome de De Clérambault, um caso de erotomania. É um fanático religioso e acredita estar predestinado a viver uma linda história de amor com Joe.
A síndrome de De Clérambault é um distúrbio heterógeno de origem etiológica e um dos primeiros e mais famosos casos descritos foi o de uma francesa de 53 anos que estava convencida de que o rei Jorge V estava apaixonado por ela. Moveu-lhe uma perseguição insistente a partir de 1918, tendo-se deslocado por diversas vezes a Inglaterra.
Um livro metaficcional, difícil de ler (e opinar), um narrador pouco confiável, o já referido Joe, um jornalista especializado em escrever sobre temas científicos em contraste com a religiosidade que Jed Parry lhe pretende incutir. Uma obsessão, uma fixação, uma crítica à negação, «Não há felicidade em toda esta negação.»
A harmonia do nosso casal fica então ameaçada e à beira da ruptura. O amor é uma emoção complexa e, às vezes, pode realmente parecer um fardo quando há, por exemplo, mentiras ou omissões que abalam a estabilidade presente e futura.
Depois de Clarisse escrever uma carta ao marido mostrando o desagrado pela situação, sentimos que o amor necessita de pedidos de perdão mútuos ou, pelo menos, tolerância e compreensão. Joe omite factos à sua mulher enquanto tenta desvencilhar-se de Parry; no limite, compra uma arma.
«Não sei onde isto vai levar-nos. Fomos tão felizes juntos. Vivemos um amor leal e apaixonado. Sempre pensei que o nosso amor estava destinado a durar muito tempo. E talvez dure. Não sei.
Clarisse.»
O livro começa numa praia e termina na margem de um rio «onde Lewis Carrol [esse mesmo!], deão da Igreja de Cristo, tinha outrora albergado os objectos queridos das suas obsessões.»
Aborda a confusão que a análise retrospectiva pode instalar na nossa memória, questiona a possibilidade ou não de uma base genética para a crença religiosa, o Darwinismo, Einstein e a cultura novecentista com o seu espírito amador que alimentou a figura anedótica do cientista. O hábito de contar histórias profundamente enraizado no século XIX mas que as novas teorias científicas alteraram os labirintos da narrativa com e depois de Einstein.
Não estudei ciências exactas pelo que não as entendo. Perdi muito tempo no Google a investigar, por exemplo, a Aritmética Euclidiana, o químico Suiço Friedrich Miescherg «que já em 1892 especulava sobre a possibilidade de o DNA ser o código da vida, tal como o alfabeto é o código da linguagem e dos conceitos.»
Impressionante o que o autor aborda para falar das consequências de um mal-entendido entre um casal. Os nossos irmãos brasileiros traduziram o título para «Amor Para Sempre» e nós, portugueses, «O Fardo do Amor». Pessoalmente, optaria pelo título «O Peso do Amor»
Celeste Corrêa
27.7.2024
«Íamos no sétimo ano de um casamento com muito amor e sem filhos. Clarissa Mellon estava também apaixonada por um outro homem, que não causava grandes problemas, pois estava a aproximar-se o seu 200º aniversário [John Keats]»
Joe e Clarissa viviam com pequenos problemas que em nada ameaçavam as suas existências livres e íntimas, até que um dia, durante um picnic, assistem a um acidente de balão que muda tudo com a morte do piloto, John Logan, um médico, e gera um sentimento de culpa e uma necessidade de encontrar uma explicação.
Assiste ao acidente, em outros, um homem que começa a perseguir Joe com um poder irradiante de amor e piedade:Jed Parry sofre da síndrome de De Clérambault, um caso de erotomania. É um fanático religioso e acredita estar predestinado a viver uma linda história de amor com Joe.
A síndrome de De Clérambault é um distúrbio heterógeno de origem etiológica e um dos primeiros e mais famosos casos descritos foi o de uma francesa de 53 anos que estava convencida de que o rei Jorge V estava apaixonado por ela. Moveu-lhe uma perseguição insistente a partir de 1918, tendo-se deslocado por diversas vezes a Inglaterra.
Um livro metaficcional, difícil de ler (e opinar), um narrador pouco confiável, o já referido Joe, um jornalista especializado em escrever sobre temas científicos em contraste com a religiosidade que Jed Parry lhe pretende incutir. Uma obsessão, uma fixação, uma crítica à negação, «Não há felicidade em toda esta negação.»
A harmonia do nosso casal fica então ameaçada e à beira da ruptura. O amor é uma emoção complexa e, às vezes, pode realmente parecer um fardo quando há, por exemplo, mentiras ou omissões que abalam a estabilidade presente e futura.
Depois de Clarisse escrever uma carta ao marido mostrando o desagrado pela situação, sentimos que o amor necessita de pedidos de perdão mútuos ou, pelo menos, tolerância e compreensão. Joe omite factos à sua mulher enquanto tenta desvencilhar-se de Parry; no limite, compra uma arma.
«Não sei onde isto vai levar-nos. Fomos tão felizes juntos. Vivemos um amor leal e apaixonado. Sempre pensei que o nosso amor estava destinado a durar muito tempo. E talvez dure. Não sei.
Clarisse.»
O livro começa numa praia e termina na margem de um rio «onde Lewis Carrol [esse mesmo!], deão da Igreja de Cristo, tinha outrora albergado os objectos queridos das suas obsessões.»
Aborda a confusão que a análise retrospectiva pode instalar na nossa memória, questiona a possibilidade ou não de uma base genética para a crença religiosa, o Darwinismo, Einstein e a cultura novecentista com o seu espírito amador que alimentou a figura anedótica do cientista. O hábito de contar histórias profundamente enraizado no século XIX mas que as novas teorias científicas alteraram os labirintos da narrativa com e depois de Einstein.
Não estudei ciências exactas pelo que não as entendo. Perdi muito tempo no Google a investigar, por exemplo, a Aritmética Euclidiana, o químico Suiço Friedrich Miescherg «que já em 1892 especulava sobre a possibilidade de o DNA ser o código da vida, tal como o alfabeto é o código da linguagem e dos conceitos.»
Impressionante o que o autor aborda para falar das consequências de um mal-entendido entre um casal. Os nossos irmãos brasileiros traduziram o título para «Amor Para Sempre» e nós, portugueses, «O Fardo do Amor». Pessoalmente, optaria pelo título «O Peso do Amor»
Celeste Corrêa
27.7.2024
March 5, 2008
Ian McEwan's novels tend to revolve around a single event, a single moment, or day. This day will change the character's life and everyone around them. It shows the past and the future spiraling around this one narrative point in the story. He's at his best in this format, and that definitely shows in Enduring Love.
It is essentially a case study of a man suffering from extreme, disturbing delusions and a fierce obsession, and the man who struggles to deal with being the object of that obsession. But it never felt clinical to me. It did start a bit slow, a bit ponderously, I will admit that. But his language got me anyway, with a great deal of beautiful imagery and explorations on various themes. After that, McEwan rapidly builds the tension and suspense, despite the fact that the whole thing remains wrapped up in psychological analysis, rational reasoning and scientific analogy, the study of it is so rapid and consuming that it feels like constant action.
The "villain".. if we can really call him that manages to be horrifying and eerie and completely disturbing and yet, there is still a kind of terrible beauty to him that forces you to think about your own obsessions and your own loves. He represents the kind of all consuming romantic love that many people believe they want, that movies and literature celebrate, except gone off the rails. It raises such interesting, disturbing questions about the nature of love and reality, how we make our own worlds in life and just how far we can go with that before it is too far, what we are really motivated by in love, what being "in love" really means, does someone else need to feel what you feel to make it okay?... on and on. I think McEwan is certainly trying to make us all see ourselves, at least a little bit, in the case study of the "villain," and I think he's quite successful at it.
It is essentially a case study of a man suffering from extreme, disturbing delusions and a fierce obsession, and the man who struggles to deal with being the object of that obsession. But it never felt clinical to me. It did start a bit slow, a bit ponderously, I will admit that. But his language got me anyway, with a great deal of beautiful imagery and explorations on various themes. After that, McEwan rapidly builds the tension and suspense, despite the fact that the whole thing remains wrapped up in psychological analysis, rational reasoning and scientific analogy, the study of it is so rapid and consuming that it feels like constant action.
The "villain".. if we can really call him that manages to be horrifying and eerie and completely disturbing and yet, there is still a kind of terrible beauty to him that forces you to think about your own obsessions and your own loves. He represents the kind of all consuming romantic love that many people believe they want, that movies and literature celebrate, except gone off the rails. It raises such interesting, disturbing questions about the nature of love and reality, how we make our own worlds in life and just how far we can go with that before it is too far, what we are really motivated by in love, what being "in love" really means, does someone else need to feel what you feel to make it okay?... on and on. I think McEwan is certainly trying to make us all see ourselves, at least a little bit, in the case study of the "villain," and I think he's quite successful at it.
March 14, 2020
Trying to describe the deeply intimate & personal with psychopathology … this is precisely what made ‘Saturday’ the worst book ever contrived. (Emphasis on CONTRIVED.) Now, this dish is not devoid of that ingredient--it is again about a member of the upper class (DON’T EVER FORGET IT dear reader!) crashing head-on with a creep-o misfit, a defective misanthrope who has this eerie pathological condition stalking the incredibly intelligent and quick-witted protagonist for pages… a neo noir, a-la Saramago (but not turtle-paced like his are usually, thank God).
The premise is incredible, too many coincidences create a rift in an otherwise stagnant life: two events, including the aforementioned illness (of the ‘antagonist') and the event which propels the reader to continue reading the novel in 1 sitting (!), the hot air balloon accident, are one too many things to occur to a science journalist who functions intellectually in a plane above you & me (… he's British after all). That all these occurrences happen at once is almost a literary impossibility.
But. Damn it if this isn’t O-so-readable! You must know what happens next, and at all costs, and ignoring your outside life will become a necessity. It is bizarre, ugly in the clinical definition of the word. Sterile, bleak, sad. I love the fact that the central problem in the book is the surplus of love. Are all emotions really just teensy chemical reactions within a susceptible organism? That this has been McEwan’s recurring thesis for books previous to this and also after does not shock: he is adulated for that exact type of coldness. Saturday, On Chesil Beach… I'm not a huge fan of this brand of bleakness. Atonement barely has that conceited, I-know-everything-even-the-biological-processes-which-govern-the-universe-entire narrative voice… which is why it's his Sole Masterpiece.
And if you didn’t think the writer sufficiently pretentious, look at the dual appendixes at the end of the book, look at the over usage of words like love and innocence to describe the psychological landscape. At least he refrained from using footnotes! (Alas, American Paul Auster already has.)
The premise is incredible, too many coincidences create a rift in an otherwise stagnant life: two events, including the aforementioned illness (of the ‘antagonist') and the event which propels the reader to continue reading the novel in 1 sitting (!), the hot air balloon accident, are one too many things to occur to a science journalist who functions intellectually in a plane above you & me (… he's British after all). That all these occurrences happen at once is almost a literary impossibility.
But. Damn it if this isn’t O-so-readable! You must know what happens next, and at all costs, and ignoring your outside life will become a necessity. It is bizarre, ugly in the clinical definition of the word. Sterile, bleak, sad. I love the fact that the central problem in the book is the surplus of love. Are all emotions really just teensy chemical reactions within a susceptible organism? That this has been McEwan’s recurring thesis for books previous to this and also after does not shock: he is adulated for that exact type of coldness. Saturday, On Chesil Beach… I'm not a huge fan of this brand of bleakness. Atonement barely has that conceited, I-know-everything-even-the-biological-processes-which-govern-the-universe-entire narrative voice… which is why it's his Sole Masterpiece.
And if you didn’t think the writer sufficiently pretentious, look at the dual appendixes at the end of the book, look at the over usage of words like love and innocence to describe the psychological landscape. At least he refrained from using footnotes! (Alas, American Paul Auster already has.)
July 14, 2016
Read it years ago!!!
A tragic accident.....
love, guilt, moral dilemma..............
Thought-provoking prose........
A terrific writer. One of my favorites!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A tragic accident.....
love, guilt, moral dilemma..............
Thought-provoking prose........
A terrific writer. One of my favorites!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 7, 2023
Rating 2.5 stars. Perhaps I am influenced by the reviews I read on this site, but this book does indeed resemble a kind of fictionalized psychological experiment, with characters who are put in a certain framing and play their part blindly. McEwan joined together several experiments: that of a guy with a clinical described obsession going nuts (Jed), that of the typical couple (Joe and Clarissa) in which the man and the woman have a very diverse intuitional constitution and who see their harmony shattered by a dramatic event, that of a perfectly rational man (Joe) who is confronted with a nonsensical threat and eventually reacts very extreme, and so on. Because of this framing this work gives a very artificial impression.
Nevertheless this book absolutely deserves the price of one of the most heart-pounding first-chapters that I ever read. In terms of composition that chapter - describing a dramatic ballooning incident with which everything started - really is a masterpiece. And in the rest of the book , at regular intervals, you can read very interesting reflections on the psychology of the characters. But, again, the whole does not convince, and that is really regrettable. Rating 2.5 stars
Nevertheless this book absolutely deserves the price of one of the most heart-pounding first-chapters that I ever read. In terms of composition that chapter - describing a dramatic ballooning incident with which everything started - really is a masterpiece. And in the rest of the book , at regular intervals, you can read very interesting reflections on the psychology of the characters. But, again, the whole does not convince, and that is really regrettable. Rating 2.5 stars
April 4, 2018
During this stressful work week I was looking for a quick escape from one of my favorite authors, with much anticipation, but ended with a disappointment. Enduring Love was the weakest among the 9 McEwan’s books I’ve read so far.
Scientific writer Joe rose met Jed parry during a heroic group act to rescue a 10-year-old boy during an air balloon accident, and unfortunately the uncoordinated act led to the death of one of the rescuers. Jed became obsessed with his unrequited love for already guilt-stricken Joe, and started stalking and threatening him. This put a strain on Joe’s previously harmonious relationship with his partner Clarissa, and the stress continued to build when Joe took the matters all into his own hands. Did Joe choose to do so? The answer was both yes and no...
This psychological thriller kicked off with a bang, but was half-baked after, and fell flat at the ending. there were so many possibilities to deliver a more powerful and less predictable resolution,, given the rich material McEwan provided throughout the book.
The moral of the story was the fragility of love between couples having had long shared affection and loyalty.
Joe and Clarissa’s 7-year relationship had been a time bomb anyway. They were great match for intellectually-stimulating discussions. But Joe leaned on only rigorous scientific research for making “rational” decisions, while Clarissa counted on Joe’s “rational: nature to sail through any crisis. The easily paranoid Joe was far from being a rock for Clarissa. Clarissa’s stunning beauty and Joe’s self-unworthiness had seemingly given Clarissa a free ticket to be unconditionally pampered. Hence it was no surprise that both failed to hold down the balloon so to speak. With the lack of children always lurking in the shadow, the happy ending suggested by Appendix 1 would have been very unrealistic. That said, the book's focus on Joe may have left me with superficial and unfair understanding of Clarissa.
John and Jean Logan’s tale didn’t add much depth to the moral of the story, but they did help spice up the thrill and prolong reader’s anticipation.
Some details appeared unnecessary, like Joe paging through his address book and the purchase of the gun. Maybe I was missing something.
Personally I loved McEwan’s novels because of: 1) his quiet and fluent prose; 2) his exquisite verbalization of music. In this book, I felt the verboseness masked his typical prose, yet some brilliant sentences were hard to miss. Music was only mentioned once in passing.
I’m still a McEwan fan. This book recalibrated my expectation… not a bad development because I believe I have already read most of his best novels.
Scientific writer Joe rose met Jed parry during a heroic group act to rescue a 10-year-old boy during an air balloon accident, and unfortunately the uncoordinated act led to the death of one of the rescuers. Jed became obsessed with his unrequited love for already guilt-stricken Joe, and started stalking and threatening him. This put a strain on Joe’s previously harmonious relationship with his partner Clarissa, and the stress continued to build when Joe took the matters all into his own hands. Did Joe choose to do so? The answer was both yes and no...
This psychological thriller kicked off with a bang, but was half-baked after, and fell flat at the ending. there were so many possibilities to deliver a more powerful and less predictable resolution,, given the rich material McEwan provided throughout the book.
The moral of the story was the fragility of love between couples having had long shared affection and loyalty.
Joe and Clarissa’s 7-year relationship had been a time bomb anyway. They were great match for intellectually-stimulating discussions. But Joe leaned on only rigorous scientific research for making “rational” decisions, while Clarissa counted on Joe’s “rational: nature to sail through any crisis. The easily paranoid Joe was far from being a rock for Clarissa. Clarissa’s stunning beauty and Joe’s self-unworthiness had seemingly given Clarissa a free ticket to be unconditionally pampered. Hence it was no surprise that both failed to hold down the balloon so to speak. With the lack of children always lurking in the shadow, the happy ending suggested by Appendix 1 would have been very unrealistic. That said, the book's focus on Joe may have left me with superficial and unfair understanding of Clarissa.
John and Jean Logan’s tale didn’t add much depth to the moral of the story, but they did help spice up the thrill and prolong reader’s anticipation.
Some details appeared unnecessary, like Joe paging through his address book and the purchase of the gun. Maybe I was missing something.
Personally I loved McEwan’s novels because of: 1) his quiet and fluent prose; 2) his exquisite verbalization of music. In this book, I felt the verboseness masked his typical prose, yet some brilliant sentences were hard to miss. Music was only mentioned once in passing.
I’m still a McEwan fan. This book recalibrated my expectation… not a bad development because I believe I have already read most of his best novels.
February 18, 2023
If you like reading an unlikeable character’s endless inner thoughts; if you like every single action and every single reaction and every single comment analyzed to death, you will like this book.
February 23, 2018
Can this author really be the same man who wrote Atonement? I have now read enough of his books to know there is a range from horrid to sublime and a bit of everything in between, and this one is the in between.
I hated the first half and almost tossed it in. I didn’t for the obvious reason, I wanted to know which of the two scenarios was right, who was the crazy man here? In the end, I realized, it didn’t really matter if Joe was right or wrong, he was still unbalanced, and he was still a very unreliable narrator. What was most frustrating was that for all the elevated subject matter and intellectual writing, there was nothing greater than “story” here for me.
There is something at the heart of this book that repelled me. Perhaps it was the treatment of God and faith. I believe; and I find it sad that anyone’s belief would be ridiculed or mocked, and, notwithstanding the obvious element of insanity attributed to Jed Parry, I found McEwan’s treatment of the topic hostile and mocking in nature.
I have two other McEwan books sitting on my library bookshelves. I think they will go with me on my next trip to the used book store and I can lighten my TBR by two books. I don’t see me ever cracking a McEwan bookcover again. I am so glad I started with Atonement, because had I read these others first, I would never have gotten there.
I hated the first half and almost tossed it in. I didn’t for the obvious reason, I wanted to know which of the two scenarios was right, who was the crazy man here? In the end, I realized, it didn’t really matter if Joe was right or wrong, he was still unbalanced, and he was still a very unreliable narrator. What was most frustrating was that for all the elevated subject matter and intellectual writing, there was nothing greater than “story” here for me.
There is something at the heart of this book that repelled me. Perhaps it was the treatment of God and faith. I believe; and I find it sad that anyone’s belief would be ridiculed or mocked, and, notwithstanding the obvious element of insanity attributed to Jed Parry, I found McEwan’s treatment of the topic hostile and mocking in nature.
I have two other McEwan books sitting on my library bookshelves. I think they will go with me on my next trip to the used book store and I can lighten my TBR by two books. I don’t see me ever cracking a McEwan bookcover again. I am so glad I started with Atonement, because had I read these others first, I would never have gotten there.
November 14, 2020
Sanırım McEwan en sevdiğim yazarlardan biri, Sonsuz Aşk ilk cümlesinden itibaren beni aldı. İyi bir kurgu, bilimsel açıklamalar, "ekler" kısmı hepsi güzel bir çalışmanın ürünü, çok belli.
Bir balon kazasında anlık gördüğü birinin ona karşı takıntılı olmasıyla hayatı yön değiştiren birini okuyoruz. Sadece bu ana karakterin değil, birçok insanın bir olayla hayatı değişiyor. Bir yandan hayal mi gerçek mi, ilişki nasıl yön değiştirecek diye merakla bekliyorsunuz.
Yine McEwan hep gerilimi elinde tutuyor, hayatlar nasıl yön değiştirebilir gözümüze sokuyor. Ve tabi her zamanki gibi araya da kendi dertlerini sıkıştırıyor.
Muazzam.
"Kendimizi bilimsel yönden ne kadar donanımlı görsek de, ölüler karşısında duyduğumuz korku ve saygı bizi şaşırtır. Belki de gerçekte bizi şaşırtan şey yaşamdır."
Bir balon kazasında anlık gördüğü birinin ona karşı takıntılı olmasıyla hayatı yön değiştiren birini okuyoruz. Sadece bu ana karakterin değil, birçok insanın bir olayla hayatı değişiyor. Bir yandan hayal mi gerçek mi, ilişki nasıl yön değiştirecek diye merakla bekliyorsunuz.
Yine McEwan hep gerilimi elinde tutuyor, hayatlar nasıl yön değiştirebilir gözümüze sokuyor. Ve tabi her zamanki gibi araya da kendi dertlerini sıkıştırıyor.
Muazzam.
"Kendimizi bilimsel yönden ne kadar donanımlı görsek de, ölüler karşısında duyduğumuz korku ve saygı bizi şaşırtır. Belki de gerçekte bizi şaşırtan şey yaşamdır."
October 23, 2018
O inglês Ian McEwan (n. 1948) é um dos meus escritores de referência e “O Fardo do Amor” (1997) foi a minha décima terceira leitura do conjunto da sua obra literária - que revelam uma enorme criatividade e alguma controvérsia, quase sempre valorizada pelo público e pela crítica, e que invariavelmente se reflecte nos inúmeros prémios literários recebidos.
Num campo agrícola e no meio de um relvado fresco e primaveril, há um enorme balão de ar quente. Nesse balão e no interior do cesto está uma criança de dez anos de idade. Junto ao cesto, agarrado a uma corda, está um homem a precisar de ajuda; o piloto ficara com uma perna enredada na corda que estava atada a uma âncora, no momento em que o balão tocou no chão. Uma súbita rabanada de vento arrasta o balão para uma escarpa rochosa. Vários homens surgem a correr para tentar ajudar a segurar o balão. Um desses homens era o nosso narrador Joe Rose, um jornalista de temas científicos. A sua mulher Clarissa, uma académica que investiga a morte do poeta inglês John Keats (1795 – 1821) em Roma, Itália, assiste a todos os acontecimentos.
Entre inúmeras dúvidas, intenções falhadas, ausência de comando, incompetência, egoísmo, falta de carácter, tudo falhou… mas ”E mais uma vez, num espaço de tempo inferior a um batimento do coração inflamado pela adrenalina, uma outra variável foi acrescentada à equação: alguém se soltou, e o balão subiu mais alguns metros no ar, arrastando consigo todos os que ainda estavam pendurados.
Não sei, nem nunca descobri, quem foi o primeiro a soltar-se. Não estou preparado para aceitar que tenha sido eu. Mas todos se arrogam de não terem sido os primeiros.” (Pág. 23).
Ian McEwan explora admiravelmente a temática dos extremos: a verdade e a mentira, o bem e o mal, o amor e o ódio, a certeza e a dúvida, apenas para mencionar alguns exemplos, mas igualmente a culpa e o arrependimento. A essência dos dilemas em ”O Fardo do Amor” são cuidadosamente e primorosamente descritos por Ian McEwan. Os conflitos interiores determinam os nossos comportamentos e são factores de racionalidade, não como um instinto, mas mais como uma conquista, como uma obsessão. Os relacionamentos sob pressão podem invariavelmente levar ao colapso ou até mesmo à separação. Como leitor acabamos também por nos envolver na questão da maternidade/paternidade, ou como essa incapacidade nos envolve emocionalmente.
Em ”O Fardo do Amor” há um suspense intenso e perturbador. Há uma frase que me surge - “os dilemas morais são uma merda”.
”A infelicidade que sentimos depois da catástrofe foi a prova de que sabíamos que tínhamos falhado perante nós próprios.” (Pág. 23)
"Como alguém que sonha consigo próprio, eu era ao mesmo tempo a primeira e a terceira pessoa. Agia e via-me a agir. Tinha os meus pensamentos e via-os fluir através de um ecrã. Tal como num sonho, as minhas reacções emocionais eram inexistentes ou desadequadas." (Pág. 28)
Nota 1: Não li os Anexos I e II.
Nota 2: Um filme foi realizado com base no livro. O realizador foi Roger Michell com Daniel Craig, Samantha Morton e Rhys Ifans.
"Ian McEwan escreve magistralmente sobre o perigo e a vulnerabilidade humana - mas nunca o tinha feito de uma forma tão acutilante e absorvente como nesta obra. Terrivelmente verosímil e de leitura compulsiva, este é um romance de amor, fé e suspense, que mostra como a vida de um homem comum se pode transformar radicalmente de um dia para o outro, conduzindo-o ao limiar do crime e da loucura." - da sinopse.
December 9, 2011
Before I read (and amused myself by being overly critical about) Saturday by Ian McEwan, I'd also read The Cement Garden, Atonement, The Comfort of Strangers, The Child in Time and On Chesil Beach.
Here are some Ian McEwan statistics based on my own reading habits:
He's written 19 books so far and I've read seven of them which is representative of 36.84% of his total output (I've not included plays or short stories, just novels).
Of these seven books, I have enjoyed four -The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers, On Chesil Beach and this one (oh yes and boo to me for not liking Atonement in either book or film mode) which means that I've got a McEwan enjoyment rating of 57.14% Now given that I am difficult to please, belligerent and bellicose, that is not a bad rating Mr McEwan.
Enduring Love gets a thumbs up (shield your eyes now *spoilers* on the horizon) because the book introduces the two principal characters, Jed and Joe through what has to be the most random event ever used as a literary tool (please chime in on the comments section below if you can think of more random ones). Man falls to death from runaway hot air balloon.... yes, really. How do you come up with that one? Surely as statistically unlikely as man gored to death by very pointy carrot or man squashed by falling chunk of space junk? I did the statistics for the books but I'm not capable of working out the statistical probability of any of the above statements so I won't.
So Joe and Jed meet. Is it love at first sight? Yes but only for one party and the other party is at first blissfully unaware. As admiration and love spiral, ever decreasing circles style, into a tight little ball of obsession we get to follow the two characters who both perceive events in very different ways. None of the characters are particularly loveable or sympathetic to each other, or each others point of view. Mostly you'll find yourself cheering for the underdog.
For the discerning film buff, this was also turned into a movie featuring Daniel Craig and Rhys Ifans. I can't really recommend the film aside from the bit where Daniel Craig gets out of a swimming pool in small pants.
Here are some Ian McEwan statistics based on my own reading habits:
He's written 19 books so far and I've read seven of them which is representative of 36.84% of his total output (I've not included plays or short stories, just novels).
Of these seven books, I have enjoyed four -The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers, On Chesil Beach and this one (oh yes and boo to me for not liking Atonement in either book or film mode) which means that I've got a McEwan enjoyment rating of 57.14% Now given that I am difficult to please, belligerent and bellicose, that is not a bad rating Mr McEwan.
Enduring Love gets a thumbs up (shield your eyes now *spoilers* on the horizon) because the book introduces the two principal characters, Jed and Joe through what has to be the most random event ever used as a literary tool (please chime in on the comments section below if you can think of more random ones). Man falls to death from runaway hot air balloon.... yes, really. How do you come up with that one? Surely as statistically unlikely as man gored to death by very pointy carrot or man squashed by falling chunk of space junk? I did the statistics for the books but I'm not capable of working out the statistical probability of any of the above statements so I won't.
So Joe and Jed meet. Is it love at first sight? Yes but only for one party and the other party is at first blissfully unaware. As admiration and love spiral, ever decreasing circles style, into a tight little ball of obsession we get to follow the two characters who both perceive events in very different ways. None of the characters are particularly loveable or sympathetic to each other, or each others point of view. Mostly you'll find yourself cheering for the underdog.
For the discerning film buff, this was also turned into a movie featuring Daniel Craig and Rhys Ifans. I can't really recommend the film aside from the bit where Daniel Craig gets out of a swimming pool in small pants.
March 17, 2024
Credere una cosa coincide col vederla
L’incipit è un pezzo di bravura tale che leggendolo per caso in rete ho comprato il romanzo.
Narrazione in prima persona, scrittura superba, suspense misurata e funzionale. L’autore si prende i tempi giusti per raccontare, mette nella ciotola dei gatti lettori un po’ di croccantini a fine capitolo ma poi il capitolo successivo si apre e il cibo nella ciotola è sparito.. è un trucco, ricomparirà di lì a poco.
Joe Rose è un divulgatore scientifico e il suo mestiere lo fa piacevolmente anche in alcuni intermezzi del romanzo. La divulgazione è un ripiego, ha abbandonato la sperimentazione e benché guadagni lautamente sente di aver tradito i propri sogni. Ha avuto in sorte una donna letterata che ritiene troppo bella rapportata a sé. Un incidente spezzerà la lastra di ghiaccio dove ha camminato negli ultimi dieci anni della propria vita e lo farà in un modo impensabile.
Si definisce forma pura (o primaria) di sindrome di de Clérambault quella di un individuo i cui convincimenti religiosi risultano essere in stretta relazione con le manifestazioni deliranti. Si rilevano altresì tendenze auto ed eteroaggressive.
«la convinzione delirante di essere in comunicazione amorosa con un’altra persona; che tale persona sia di livello sociale più elevato; che per prima si sia innamorata e abbia scelto di dichiararsi; che l’esordio sia improvviso; che l’oggetto del delirio erotico resti invariato; che il paziente fornisca una spiegazione di ogni comportamento paradossale dell’oggetto; che il decorso della malattia sia cronico; che non vi siano allucinazioni né deterioramenti cognitivi».
Molto probabilmente McEwan è partito da questa interessante categorizzazione per imbastire il proprio romanzo. Essa è presente nella prima appendice a margine del testo insieme al riassunto della vicenda narrata, quasi si trattasse di un fatto realmente accaduto.
McEwan con la sua prima persona, facendosi protagonista, ha fornito una delle sue prove migliori. “Cani Neri” e “Giardino di cemento” mi son sembrati assai inferiori a questo romanzo.
L’inizio è facile da individuare…[…]
L’istante fu quello, quella la bandierina sulla mappa del tempo: tesi la mano e, nel momento in cui il collo freddo e la stagnola nera mi sfioravano la pelle, udimmo le grida di un uomo. Ci voltammo a guardare dall’altra parte del prato, e intuimmo il pericolo. L’attimo dopo, correvo in quella direzione […]
Che idiozia, lanciarmi dentro questa storia e i suoi labirinti […]
Scegliete se rischiare anche voi di compiere un’idiozia..
L’incipit è un pezzo di bravura tale che leggendolo per caso in rete ho comprato il romanzo.
Narrazione in prima persona, scrittura superba, suspense misurata e funzionale. L’autore si prende i tempi giusti per raccontare, mette nella ciotola dei gatti lettori un po’ di croccantini a fine capitolo ma poi il capitolo successivo si apre e il cibo nella ciotola è sparito.. è un trucco, ricomparirà di lì a poco.
Joe Rose è un divulgatore scientifico e il suo mestiere lo fa piacevolmente anche in alcuni intermezzi del romanzo. La divulgazione è un ripiego, ha abbandonato la sperimentazione e benché guadagni lautamente sente di aver tradito i propri sogni. Ha avuto in sorte una donna letterata che ritiene troppo bella rapportata a sé. Un incidente spezzerà la lastra di ghiaccio dove ha camminato negli ultimi dieci anni della propria vita e lo farà in un modo impensabile.
Si definisce forma pura (o primaria) di sindrome di de Clérambault quella di un individuo i cui convincimenti religiosi risultano essere in stretta relazione con le manifestazioni deliranti. Si rilevano altresì tendenze auto ed eteroaggressive.
«la convinzione delirante di essere in comunicazione amorosa con un’altra persona; che tale persona sia di livello sociale più elevato; che per prima si sia innamorata e abbia scelto di dichiararsi; che l’esordio sia improvviso; che l’oggetto del delirio erotico resti invariato; che il paziente fornisca una spiegazione di ogni comportamento paradossale dell’oggetto; che il decorso della malattia sia cronico; che non vi siano allucinazioni né deterioramenti cognitivi».
Molto probabilmente McEwan è partito da questa interessante categorizzazione per imbastire il proprio romanzo. Essa è presente nella prima appendice a margine del testo insieme al riassunto della vicenda narrata, quasi si trattasse di un fatto realmente accaduto.
McEwan con la sua prima persona, facendosi protagonista, ha fornito una delle sue prove migliori. “Cani Neri” e “Giardino di cemento” mi son sembrati assai inferiori a questo romanzo.
L’inizio è facile da individuare…[…]
L’istante fu quello, quella la bandierina sulla mappa del tempo: tesi la mano e, nel momento in cui il collo freddo e la stagnola nera mi sfioravano la pelle, udimmo le grida di un uomo. Ci voltammo a guardare dall’altra parte del prato, e intuimmo il pericolo. L’attimo dopo, correvo in quella direzione […]
Che idiozia, lanciarmi dentro questa storia e i suoi labirinti […]
Scegliete se rischiare anche voi di compiere un’idiozia..
February 10, 2018
Un altro McEwan doc.
Un incidente su un prato durante un pic-nic, con la conseguente morte di un uomo, offre lo spunto per una serie di riflessioni sulla vita, sul nostro attaccamento ad essa, e sprofonda Joe in un incubo senza fine in cui si troverà da solo contro tutti, creduto a tratti pazzo, costretto a rivedere le sue priorità, i suoi desideri per districarsi nella giungla in cui all’improvviso viene scaraventato.
Lo scrittore seziona l’animo umano con infinita meticolosità. Pensieri, studi, piccole follie si ritrovano a coesistere fra le righe con ironia e insieme con serietà. Il tempo si espande, ogni istante è immobile e allo stesso tempo incatenato al successivo. E si percepisce la tensione per tutto il romanzo che sale con discrezione, in un respiro sempre un po’ più affannato.
Un incidente su un prato durante un pic-nic, con la conseguente morte di un uomo, offre lo spunto per una serie di riflessioni sulla vita, sul nostro attaccamento ad essa, e sprofonda Joe in un incubo senza fine in cui si troverà da solo contro tutti, creduto a tratti pazzo, costretto a rivedere le sue priorità, i suoi desideri per districarsi nella giungla in cui all’improvviso viene scaraventato.
Lo scrittore seziona l’animo umano con infinita meticolosità. Pensieri, studi, piccole follie si ritrovano a coesistere fra le righe con ironia e insieme con serietà. Il tempo si espande, ogni istante è immobile e allo stesso tempo incatenato al successivo. E si percepisce la tensione per tutto il romanzo che sale con discrezione, in un respiro sempre un po’ più affannato.
March 12, 2021
[25th book of 2021. No artist for this review, nothing occurred to me or made an impression.]
Near my house is a road that snakes off from the long and smooth tarmac of Queen Street. The change from Q. Street to this road is quite remarkable, being so sudden. The houses are all the same dirty white; there are bits of wood, tiles, tarpaulins and chunks of rubble in gardens and by the side of the road; the cars are all in the same state of disrepair, with taped bodies, sagging bumpers and flat tyres. One of the houses has a large garden that holds a tired and broken swing-set, an old trampoline and a slide that I've never seen upright. Amidst this pocket is a house with a gazebo outside, postered walls and leaflet boxes. I try and avoid the house as it usually puts me in a bad mood. The posters say things like "The Con-You Virus" or "Masks Won't Save You, But Jesus Will"; I have nothing against Christianity of course, only their perception of it. Their blind ignorance and, seemingly, lack of true Christian values reminded me of Jed Parry in this novel.
This is my 9th McEwan novel, which is quite a lot for an author I don't particularly like. I've told the story many times: my ex-housemate and I split his novels in half to read half each, because neither of us liked him. Why? Good question. Either way, halfway was 8 novels each; I've read my 8 and yet here I am still. I think part of us wanted to, 1. see if McEwan had any good novels and 2. have the right to argue our distaste for him by having read, at least between us, all his books. And yet, finishing my 8, I realised I hadn't read his two famous ones: Atonement and this. We are in the midst of McEwan March, which we did last year, where we try and read at least 2 of his books in this month. I'll get to Atonement before the month is out.
Enduring Love begins with a rather unique accident—a hot air balloon disaster. It's well written and gets the novel off to a compelling start. Narrator Joe Rose and his girlfriend Clarissa Mellon are present, as is Jed Parry, and others. This deadly accident they witness—have a part in?—brings Jed Parry and Joe Rose's lives together. The former is a stalker. He rings him. He waits outside his house. He follows him. This element of the plot was fairly interesting and Parry is well-written, his voice, his letters, they are disturbing and oddly believable.
Sadly, the rest of the novel is orbiting this. McEwan, as I've found, likes science. He also likes cramming science in wherever he can. A simple scene is derailed by scientific thought, scientific jargon, scientific history. His characters' think about science. I thought that in this novel it would make more sense: Joe Rose attempts to "identify", using science, why Jed Parry is obsessed with him. It has a part in the novel but it's so poorly executed. Then again, this is perhaps down to personal taste. I have zero interest in science and hate to read it because it bores me. Maybe McEwan writes brilliant novels to someone who loves reading and science in equal part.
On top of the science spiels, the plot also unwinds further from reality as it progresses, which is another McEwan trait I've found. The hot air balloon accident is unusual but not completely fantastical, but slowly things begin happening, the "drama" increases and I began losing interest. The "psychological novel" it was attempting to be was eventually dropped in favour of an action-packed end. I'm not surprised it was made into a movie, because removing all the internal science thought, it is a "good" story, I guess. Apparently the movie isn't great though. I was surprised to see Daniel Craig as Joe Rose, the apparently unattractive (by his own standards) science nerd.
Next up is Atonement, then I've read most of them. The only novels I haven't read after that are:
The Comfort of Strangers, Saturday, Sweet Tooth, The Children Act, Nutshell (which I may read, as said friend didn't hate it, surprisingly), and Cockroach (which looks so awful I might read it).
Of all the McEwan novels still only two have impressed me properly: The Child in Time and Black Dogs. Ironically, I've seen these two novels stamped on by McEwan fans.
Near my house is a road that snakes off from the long and smooth tarmac of Queen Street. The change from Q. Street to this road is quite remarkable, being so sudden. The houses are all the same dirty white; there are bits of wood, tiles, tarpaulins and chunks of rubble in gardens and by the side of the road; the cars are all in the same state of disrepair, with taped bodies, sagging bumpers and flat tyres. One of the houses has a large garden that holds a tired and broken swing-set, an old trampoline and a slide that I've never seen upright. Amidst this pocket is a house with a gazebo outside, postered walls and leaflet boxes. I try and avoid the house as it usually puts me in a bad mood. The posters say things like "The Con-You Virus" or "Masks Won't Save You, But Jesus Will"; I have nothing against Christianity of course, only their perception of it. Their blind ignorance and, seemingly, lack of true Christian values reminded me of Jed Parry in this novel.
This is my 9th McEwan novel, which is quite a lot for an author I don't particularly like. I've told the story many times: my ex-housemate and I split his novels in half to read half each, because neither of us liked him. Why? Good question. Either way, halfway was 8 novels each; I've read my 8 and yet here I am still. I think part of us wanted to, 1. see if McEwan had any good novels and 2. have the right to argue our distaste for him by having read, at least between us, all his books. And yet, finishing my 8, I realised I hadn't read his two famous ones: Atonement and this. We are in the midst of McEwan March, which we did last year, where we try and read at least 2 of his books in this month. I'll get to Atonement before the month is out.
Enduring Love begins with a rather unique accident—a hot air balloon disaster. It's well written and gets the novel off to a compelling start. Narrator Joe Rose and his girlfriend Clarissa Mellon are present, as is Jed Parry, and others. This deadly accident they witness—have a part in?—brings Jed Parry and Joe Rose's lives together. The former is a stalker. He rings him. He waits outside his house. He follows him. This element of the plot was fairly interesting and Parry is well-written, his voice, his letters, they are disturbing and oddly believable.
Sadly, the rest of the novel is orbiting this. McEwan, as I've found, likes science. He also likes cramming science in wherever he can. A simple scene is derailed by scientific thought, scientific jargon, scientific history. His characters' think about science. I thought that in this novel it would make more sense: Joe Rose attempts to "identify", using science, why Jed Parry is obsessed with him. It has a part in the novel but it's so poorly executed. Then again, this is perhaps down to personal taste. I have zero interest in science and hate to read it because it bores me. Maybe McEwan writes brilliant novels to someone who loves reading and science in equal part.
On top of the science spiels, the plot also unwinds further from reality as it progresses, which is another McEwan trait I've found. The hot air balloon accident is unusual but not completely fantastical, but slowly things begin happening, the "drama" increases and I began losing interest. The "psychological novel" it was attempting to be was eventually dropped in favour of an action-packed end. I'm not surprised it was made into a movie, because removing all the internal science thought, it is a "good" story, I guess. Apparently the movie isn't great though. I was surprised to see Daniel Craig as Joe Rose, the apparently unattractive (by his own standards) science nerd.
Next up is Atonement, then I've read most of them. The only novels I haven't read after that are:
The Comfort of Strangers, Saturday, Sweet Tooth, The Children Act, Nutshell (which I may read, as said friend didn't hate it, surprisingly), and Cockroach (which looks so awful I might read it).
Of all the McEwan novels still only two have impressed me properly: The Child in Time and Black Dogs. Ironically, I've seen these two novels stamped on by McEwan fans.
November 27, 2018
I read a lot of books by this author. I like his writing. Some of them are very good and some IMO are not so good. This one I really enjoyed. Not exactly for the subject of the story but for the way it was told. I could not stop reading this book. I finished it very quickly. The story was told by the main character and I could not stop reading it. I really felt that "Atonement" was this author most outstanding book but I will continue to read him because when I find another book this good it's always a pleasant surprise.
August 4, 2010
Ugh, I hate giving such a low rating to a book by McEwan because he writes such beautiful prose, but the plot was such a letdown I also cannot justify giving it a higher one.
McEwan's writing is beautiful, there is no doubt about that. I’d read Atonement, and it was as good as the movie made the story out to be. This book also explores some interesting ideas about love, trust, faith and reason. However, as interesting as the plot's premise is...dear God, what a disappointment at the end.
I cannot believe the novel took that long for the plot to come to its conclusion - the element of suspense is at first intriguing, but later simply becomes frustrating. One is also built up with the idea that the plot has an unexpected conclusion, of “There must be something else going on here, right?” A story with writing of this much caliber must have a good ending, right? Unfortunately, totally wrong. Again, what an utter disappointment. The characters also lack a certain depth, and their motivations are not entirely believable.
I can see how some people may enjoy the elements of contrasting the main character’s belief in science with the antagonist’s religious leanings, and there are certainly some insightful passages about that topic, but I find his blatantness in writing about religion this way very annoying. There is no subtlety, and subtlety is key to manipulating the emotions of the reader. McEwan would have do better to write a non-fiction science book than to put his thoughts this way into a novel. As a fiction reader who was led on to think this was a thriller, I could not have been more wrong, and more angry.
McEwan's writing is beautiful, there is no doubt about that. I’d read Atonement, and it was as good as the movie made the story out to be. This book also explores some interesting ideas about love, trust, faith and reason. However, as interesting as the plot's premise is...dear God, what a disappointment at the end.
I cannot believe the novel took that long for the plot to come to its conclusion - the element of suspense is at first intriguing, but later simply becomes frustrating. One is also built up with the idea that the plot has an unexpected conclusion, of “There must be something else going on here, right?” A story with writing of this much caliber must have a good ending, right? Unfortunately, totally wrong. Again, what an utter disappointment. The characters also lack a certain depth, and their motivations are not entirely believable.
I can see how some people may enjoy the elements of contrasting the main character’s belief in science with the antagonist’s religious leanings, and there are certainly some insightful passages about that topic, but I find his blatantness in writing about religion this way very annoying. There is no subtlety, and subtlety is key to manipulating the emotions of the reader. McEwan would have do better to write a non-fiction science book than to put his thoughts this way into a novel. As a fiction reader who was led on to think this was a thriller, I could not have been more wrong, and more angry.
July 2, 2018
“I just wanted you to know, I understand what you’re feeling. I feel it too. I love you.”
If those words sound sweet or romantic to you, read this book and they will take on a whole new meaning. This is the uniquely articulated story of what unfolds after a tragic hot-air balloon accident, during which a man is killed. It starts with one moment, one look. No turning back.
I found this to be an interesting, layered, and compelling read. Bordering on thrilling, but for the more intricate language and thought processes involved throughout… not easy or fast enough to be a thriller. The overall tone is actually kind of ethereal, colored with themes of isolation, loneliness, and paranoia, it’s just the kind of thing to make you wonder who you can trust, what you really know.
Ian McEwan doesn’t write for a simple, quick read. During the telling of the story, there are brief but regular forays into scientific and philosophical subjects which are of interest to the main character. Some of these explorations are in sync with the storyline and some take you elsewhere, but it seemed to work for me and it helped me get to know Joe’s character a little better. I am finding a solid appreciation for the indirect way in which this author conveys his story.
The subject of Enduring Love is something that I’d never heard of before but nonetheless was a fascinating basis for the events that occurred after the accident. I don’t want to specifically name it, because I want other readers to wonder and obsess just like I did… about why? And what the actual f**k??
If those words sound sweet or romantic to you, read this book and they will take on a whole new meaning. This is the uniquely articulated story of what unfolds after a tragic hot-air balloon accident, during which a man is killed. It starts with one moment, one look. No turning back.
I found this to be an interesting, layered, and compelling read. Bordering on thrilling, but for the more intricate language and thought processes involved throughout… not easy or fast enough to be a thriller. The overall tone is actually kind of ethereal, colored with themes of isolation, loneliness, and paranoia, it’s just the kind of thing to make you wonder who you can trust, what you really know.
Ian McEwan doesn’t write for a simple, quick read. During the telling of the story, there are brief but regular forays into scientific and philosophical subjects which are of interest to the main character. Some of these explorations are in sync with the storyline and some take you elsewhere, but it seemed to work for me and it helped me get to know Joe’s character a little better. I am finding a solid appreciation for the indirect way in which this author conveys his story.
The subject of Enduring Love is something that I’d never heard of before but nonetheless was a fascinating basis for the events that occurred after the accident. I don’t want to specifically name it, because I want other readers to wonder and obsess just like I did… about why? And what the actual f**k??
February 15, 2017
Interesting to consider this as a precursor to Saturday: both have a scientist as the protagonist and get progressively darker through a slightly contrived stalker plot. Enduring Love opens, famously, with a ballooning accident that leaves its witnesses questioning whether they couldn’t have done more to prevent it. Freelance science journalist Joe Rose – on a picnic with his partner, Keats scholar Clarissa, at the time – was one of those who rushed to help, as was Jed Parry, a young Christian zealot who fixates on Joe. He seems to think that by loving Joe, a committed atheist, he can bring him to God. In turn, Joe’s obsession with Jed’s harassment campaign drives Clarissa away. It’s a deliciously creepy read that contrasts rationality with religion and inquires into what types of love are built to last.
Reviewed with five other “love” titles for a Valentine’s-themed post on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Reviewed with five other “love” titles for a Valentine’s-themed post on my blog, Bookish Beck.
March 19, 2013
This book has the best opening scene of any book I ever read!
August 26, 2015
Amore autistico. Un ossimòro, una contraddizione. L’innamoramento amplifica la percezione dei desideri, addirittura dei pensieri dell’amato; l’innamorato è come una porta spalancata al suo amore, desideroso soltanto di accoglierlo e fondersi in esso.
Questo libro narra invece un “amore autistico”, una patologia, non saprei in quale altro modo chiamare l’ossessione morbosa e sterile di una persona verso l’altra. Sterile perché non genera vita, ma morte, sia in colui che vive la passione malata, sia nella vittima. La vita della vittima subisce non solo stress e traumi, ma vere e proprie menomazioni psicologiche. Nel leggere la lettera finale che il carnefice scrive, con lucida follia, alla sua ossessione, mi sono interrogata insieme con McEwan su quanto sia tenue il confine tra amore sano e amore malato, tra innamoramento e ossessione e come sia “facile” travalicarlo, o forse questo confine non esiste affatto.
E McEwan è una ruspa: scava, scava nei gesti, nelle azioni, nei pensieri del protagonista, con una scrittura deliziosa, che già conoscevo dopo aver letto “espiazione”.
Gli do quattro stelle, perché :1) Mc Ewan è riuscito a trasformare un forse banale caso patologico, inquadrabile giuridicamente nella fattispecie di reato prevista e punita dall’art. 612 bis del codice penale italiano, in un romanzo accattivante e coinvolgente; 2) perché è uno scrittore così grande che è stato capace di portarmi fino a poche pagine dalla fine con addirittura due possibili finali in mente, che ho scartato l’uno dopo l’altro leggendo le ultime righe del libro.
Questo libro narra invece un “amore autistico”, una patologia, non saprei in quale altro modo chiamare l’ossessione morbosa e sterile di una persona verso l’altra. Sterile perché non genera vita, ma morte, sia in colui che vive la passione malata, sia nella vittima. La vita della vittima subisce non solo stress e traumi, ma vere e proprie menomazioni psicologiche. Nel leggere la lettera finale che il carnefice scrive, con lucida follia, alla sua ossessione, mi sono interrogata insieme con McEwan su quanto sia tenue il confine tra amore sano e amore malato, tra innamoramento e ossessione e come sia “facile” travalicarlo, o forse questo confine non esiste affatto.
E McEwan è una ruspa: scava, scava nei gesti, nelle azioni, nei pensieri del protagonista, con una scrittura deliziosa, che già conoscevo dopo aver letto “espiazione”.
Gli do quattro stelle, perché :1) Mc Ewan è riuscito a trasformare un forse banale caso patologico, inquadrabile giuridicamente nella fattispecie di reato prevista e punita dall’art. 612 bis del codice penale italiano, in un romanzo accattivante e coinvolgente; 2) perché è uno scrittore così grande che è stato capace di portarmi fino a poche pagine dalla fine con addirittura due possibili finali in mente, che ho scartato l’uno dopo l’altro leggendo le ultime righe del libro.
Read
April 19, 2019Πρώτο βιβλίο που διαβάζω του Ian McEwan και δηλώνω εντυπωσιασμένη! Το λάτρεψα! Μια σειρά τυχαίων γεγονότων, μπορεί να σου αλλάξει από τη μια στιγμή στην άλλη ολόκληρη τη ζωή. Πολύ έξυπνη σύλληψη και εξαιρετική απόδοση. Γρήγορο, έξυπνο και καλοστημένο σκηνικό και χαρακτήρες. Μπράβο!
Συστήνεται ανεπιφύλακτα!
Συστήνεται ανεπιφύλακτα!
February 7, 2018
Joe Rose, a science writer, has a traumatic experience, and then is stalked. I could never tell where this book was going, and I was surprised and thrilled by McEwan’s allegiance to truth that is nuanced, complex, and founded in the way we really feel and act, rather than manipulated via neat literary tricks that are so popular in commercial fiction and, to me, feel packaged.
Enduring Love is my ninth Ian McEwan book and I now have a sense that I can group his work by certain characteristics. This book belongs in the “stories of intrigue” group that includes Amsterdam and Sweet Tooth. In some ways, I suppose these books are more commercial than the ones that ride on even more nuanced undercurrents of denied, sublimated, and repressed human feeling (although, to be honest, all of his books contain these), but I actually prefer the subtler books (Saturday, The Children Act, On Chesil Beach). Atonement straddles both categories, and Nutshell (hilarious) and The Cement Garden (first novel) occupy their own categories. But honestly, why quibble and categorize? I will read anything this man writes. Why?
I think of the famous obvious answer, “It’s the economy, stupid.” With McEwan, “It’s the writing.”
I can pick any page and find wonderful writing. I always draft my reviews as I’m reading, and I happen to be on page 95 for this thought. Here’s a sentence:
And later, page 213, there’s this:
Enduring Love is my ninth Ian McEwan book and I now have a sense that I can group his work by certain characteristics. This book belongs in the “stories of intrigue” group that includes Amsterdam and Sweet Tooth. In some ways, I suppose these books are more commercial than the ones that ride on even more nuanced undercurrents of denied, sublimated, and repressed human feeling (although, to be honest, all of his books contain these), but I actually prefer the subtler books (Saturday, The Children Act, On Chesil Beach). Atonement straddles both categories, and Nutshell (hilarious) and The Cement Garden (first novel) occupy their own categories. But honestly, why quibble and categorize? I will read anything this man writes. Why?
I think of the famous obvious answer, “It’s the economy, stupid.” With McEwan, “It’s the writing.”
I can pick any page and find wonderful writing. I always draft my reviews as I’m reading, and I happen to be on page 95 for this thought. Here’s a sentence:
There was another thing too, like a skin, a soft shell around the meat of my anger, limiting it and so making it appear all the more theatrical.
And later, page 213, there’s this:
What I had thought was an expression was actually his face at rest. I had been misled by the curl of his upper lip, which some genetic hiatus had boiled into a snarl.This is writing I feel in my teeth—as if they are sinking into the meat he references—and my mouth waters.
July 12, 2024
«L’innamoramento è sempre un’esperienza estrema: quando ci si innamora, l’altro diventa un’ossessione».
Ossessione amorosa o psicosi?
Quale il labile confine che fa virare qualcosa di travolgente e innocuo in comportamento patologico ossessivo e pericoloso?
Anche se la prima risposta che mi verrebbe è il non vivere un amore unilaterale, non è mica detto che tutti gli amori non corrisposti finiscano in tragedia e gli innamorati respinti si trasformino in stalker pericolosi.
Anche se, la cronaca recentissima riporta fatti che farebbero pensare il contrario (cfr. Morgan, Calcutta, Angelica Schiatti)
Diciamo che la vicenda che ci racconta McEwan, in modo magistrale, è però più vicina a quanto rappresentato nella sempre superba serie TV Baby Reindeer (Piccola renna).
Trattasi di un meccanismo patologico documentato cui è pure stato dato un nome (Sindrome di De CLÉRAMBAULT). In poche parole e da non addetta ai lavori: una persona si innamora di una altra persona, senza neanche bene conoscerla, e si convince che ogni gesto di rifiuto sia in realtà una conferma della reciprocità dell’amore.
La cosa bizzarra è che l’oggetto dell’amore è un essere che esiste solo come proiezione mentale dell’affetto da patologia: ha scarsa rilevanza quello che la persona fisica reale oggetto dell’ossessione sente o vuole, per l’innamorato vale solo ciò che esiste nella sua mente.
La cosa veramente agghiacciante è che quando un caso simile si verifica la vittima d’amore non riesce a far capire alle persone che gli sono vicine la gravità della situazione e quanto questi comportamenti ossessivi siano pericolosi.
In particolare le forze dell’ordine, come ben rappresenta McEwan,non si attivano su questo tipo di comportamento: non possono bloccare una persona perché ti dichiara il suo amore ripetutamente e si apposta davanti a casa tua senza fare nulla.
Follia, trama, colpi di scena ben calibrati, riflessioni ed ironia. Prosa raffinata senza artificiosità. Era tempo che non mi capitava di non vedere l’ora di aver tempo per ritornare a leggere.
Ossessione amorosa o psicosi?
Quale il labile confine che fa virare qualcosa di travolgente e innocuo in comportamento patologico ossessivo e pericoloso?
Anche se la prima risposta che mi verrebbe è il non vivere un amore unilaterale, non è mica detto che tutti gli amori non corrisposti finiscano in tragedia e gli innamorati respinti si trasformino in stalker pericolosi.
Anche se, la cronaca recentissima riporta fatti che farebbero pensare il contrario (cfr. Morgan, Calcutta, Angelica Schiatti)
Diciamo che la vicenda che ci racconta McEwan, in modo magistrale, è però più vicina a quanto rappresentato nella sempre superba serie TV Baby Reindeer (Piccola renna).
Trattasi di un meccanismo patologico documentato cui è pure stato dato un nome (Sindrome di De CLÉRAMBAULT). In poche parole e da non addetta ai lavori: una persona si innamora di una altra persona, senza neanche bene conoscerla, e si convince che ogni gesto di rifiuto sia in realtà una conferma della reciprocità dell’amore.
La cosa bizzarra è che l’oggetto dell’amore è un essere che esiste solo come proiezione mentale dell’affetto da patologia: ha scarsa rilevanza quello che la persona fisica reale oggetto dell’ossessione sente o vuole, per l’innamorato vale solo ciò che esiste nella sua mente.
La cosa veramente agghiacciante è che quando un caso simile si verifica la vittima d’amore non riesce a far capire alle persone che gli sono vicine la gravità della situazione e quanto questi comportamenti ossessivi siano pericolosi.
In particolare le forze dell’ordine, come ben rappresenta McEwan,non si attivano su questo tipo di comportamento: non possono bloccare una persona perché ti dichiara il suo amore ripetutamente e si apposta davanti a casa tua senza fare nulla.
Follia, trama, colpi di scena ben calibrati, riflessioni ed ironia. Prosa raffinata senza artificiosità. Era tempo che non mi capitava di non vedere l’ora di aver tempo per ritornare a leggere.
February 24, 2011
This book was interesting but I don't think I liked it as much as some people. The story is beautifully written in poetic prose and first person narration. The story focuses on Joe Rose and his long time girlfriend Clarissa who are out enjoying the day on a picnic. They witness an older gentleman and a young boy in trouble in a hot air balloon. Joe and some other passersby run off to help but it ends in tragedy as one of the helpers dies. Here Joe also meets Jed, another helper who turns out to be a religious fanatic and develops a fascination with Joe and believes himself "in love" with him. Joe and Clarissa's love is tested and will it endure??? That is the question throughout as Joe goes through his torment.
I actually liked the second half of the book much better then the first. Although it was beautifully written I did find it dry and too descriptive for my tastes. The story was interesting though and had a bit of a twist at the end although I found it a bit unresolved.
I actually liked the second half of the book much better then the first. Although it was beautifully written I did find it dry and too descriptive for my tastes. The story was interesting though and had a bit of a twist at the end although I found it a bit unresolved.
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