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Ian McEwan Bestsellers: The Child in Time, The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers
Award winning author Ian McEwan is known for his stories dealing with dysfunctional families and deviant sexuality. Collected here are three of his bestselling stories.
The Child in Time: Life can change in an instant. Stephen Lewis is a successful author of children’s books. It is a routine Saturday morning and while on a trip to the supermarket, Stephen gets distracted. Within moments, his daughter is kidnapped and his life is forever changed. From that moment, Lewis spirals into bereavement that has effects on his relationship with his wife, his psyche, and with time itself.
The Cement Garden: When they are suddenly orphaned, four siblings encase their mother’s body in concrete in the basement to prevent the outside world from discovering her death and placing them in foster care. This book tells a dark and disturbing story that deals with themes of familial love, boundary-crossing intimacy, and isolation.
The Comfort of Strangers: Colin and Mary are lovers on holiday in Italy, their relationship becoming increasingly problematic as they become increasingly alienated from one and other. While Mary and Colin indeed rediscover each other in ways during this time--an erotic attraction to each other that was below the surface--they also find that their relationship/friendship with another couple takes turns that are likewise erotic and violent in nature.
409 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 4, 2018
195 people are currently reading
183 people want to read
About the author
Ian McEwan
145 books19.1k 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 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 10, 2025
The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
10 out of 10
Ian McEwan is one of the best writers of our time…well, of any time and the undersigned has only read a few of his unbelievably fascinating novels:
Atonement, Black Dogs, On Chesil Beach, The Comfort of Strangers and the winner of the Booker Prize, Amsterdam.
The Comfort of Strangers is a stupendous novel and has also been short-listed for the Prestigious Man Booker Prize.
The main characters in the narrative are Mary and Colin, although there are four personages in all, in a story that takes place in an unnamed city by the city – which is identified with Venice, when the description is taken into account.
Mary and Colin are British, on holiday and in love with each other, they are not married, both have children, they have had an intense relationship for the past years and they now enjoy their intimacy in a foreign land, where on night they try to find an open restaurant, rather late in the evening.
This is when they meet Robert, a local man who sees that they are lost and offers to guide the strangers to a good place where they can eat, which turns out to be a bar where the man is well known – indeed, they would later find that he actually own the café.
The British couple ends up in the flat owned by Robert, where they wake up only to find their clothes are nowhere to be found, they are naked and there is only a bathrobe or nightdress that Mary uses to walk out of their room, to find the host, but Robert is gone and the only one present is his Canadian wife, Caroline.
The wife walks with difficulty, she appears to be in pain, explains that she went to see them in their room – without much of a reaction from the guest, which seemed just as odd as the voyeur Canadian – took their clothes, washed and ironed them.
While they sat in the bar, Robert has told them the story of his marrying Caroline, together with some elements regarding his childhood, imposing father, who had worked in the Embassy, where the ambassador and everyone else defers to this towering personality, who had abused his son- once, when the sisters made him eat chocolate cake, too much lemonade, lock him in his absent father’s office, where he spoils with diarrhea all the rugs, desk, walls and is punished severely, brutally by an irate parent.
The sisters were taking revenge because before this event, young Robert had told his father that when the children had been alone, they took their mother’s make-up, lipstick and used them – the girls were repeatedly told that their brother would rule over them in the future and the sadistic parent would ask if Robert allows them to go out, have a visitor and Robert would deny their requests.
What happens with the adult seems to confirm the theory that purports that abused children grow into human beings that are much more likely to inflict pain, torture others, as Robert would do and Mary would learn from Caroline, when the latter explains her disabilities, the violent, physical, tormenting intimacy she has had with her spouse.
While they prepare for their dinner, there is another bizarre, violent, forewarning, alarm signal that should have warned the British couple and made them avoid the outré Robert and his wife, if the other circumstances of their visit had not been enough, when the host punches Colin in the stomach, taking his air out and making him bend over in pain.
After they return to their hotel, leaving the otherworldly hosts, Mary and Colin have sex like they have not experienced it for about seven years, in that it is like in the early days of their love affair, they hardly go out of their hotel room, wash each other, sleep in the same bed, embraced.
Nevertheless, they too talk about the edge of love, somehow like the other duo in the narrative, they also take relationship to and beyond an extreme, when they state the depth, intensity of their feelings, how they would want to stay together beyond infinity – they did not use these words, but it seemed to convey this message.
She talks about wanting to get a surgeon to severe his limbs, cut off his hands and legs and then she would care for him, he would be hers – perhaps in the manner described in the film Starfish – and in return, Colin mentions the idea of a machine that could have sex – if that is the expression – with her to and beyond her death, up to the point where Colin or his solicitor would stop it…
Considering this bizarre perspective, what happens next, the extremes reached and surpassed by Robert and his slavish wife may seem, if not appropriate in any sense, at least more believable in the sense that one mad couple meets with another that is, if not just as crazy, at least unorthodox and not worried, reluctant enough to escape the clutches of the beast.
Mary and Colin enjoy days and nights of pleasure, sex, long talks, rewarding intimacy, and only go for a trip on the fourth day, when they stay at the beach, take a ferry and end up near the flat of the expecting local couple, Robert taking the English man to his bar, where he has some business.
On the way to the business he is actually selling, the local man takes the visitor along unfamiliar routes, where he talks in his native language with people who know him, while holding Robert’s hand and later explaining that he told all these men that the guest is hi lover and the wife is jealous.
In the meantime, Caroline tells the story of her sex life, how her husband has become ever more brutal, inflicting pain and talking ever more hatefully about his desire to kill her, while the woman…enjoyed and expected more torture, up to the point where her back is so injured that she spends weeks in the hospital, she would never be able to walk up stairs – when she leaves the house one day, Robert forces her to spend the night out, since he would not help her climb up again…
Moreover, the end is so savage, unusual, fascinating, intriguing…what an outstanding masterpiece.
Here are the links to reviews of other Ian McEwan books:
http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/05/a...
http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/05/a...
http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/08/o...
http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/06/b...
10 out of 10
Ian McEwan is one of the best writers of our time…well, of any time and the undersigned has only read a few of his unbelievably fascinating novels:
Atonement, Black Dogs, On Chesil Beach, The Comfort of Strangers and the winner of the Booker Prize, Amsterdam.
The Comfort of Strangers is a stupendous novel and has also been short-listed for the Prestigious Man Booker Prize.
The main characters in the narrative are Mary and Colin, although there are four personages in all, in a story that takes place in an unnamed city by the city – which is identified with Venice, when the description is taken into account.
Mary and Colin are British, on holiday and in love with each other, they are not married, both have children, they have had an intense relationship for the past years and they now enjoy their intimacy in a foreign land, where on night they try to find an open restaurant, rather late in the evening.
This is when they meet Robert, a local man who sees that they are lost and offers to guide the strangers to a good place where they can eat, which turns out to be a bar where the man is well known – indeed, they would later find that he actually own the café.
The British couple ends up in the flat owned by Robert, where they wake up only to find their clothes are nowhere to be found, they are naked and there is only a bathrobe or nightdress that Mary uses to walk out of their room, to find the host, but Robert is gone and the only one present is his Canadian wife, Caroline.
The wife walks with difficulty, she appears to be in pain, explains that she went to see them in their room – without much of a reaction from the guest, which seemed just as odd as the voyeur Canadian – took their clothes, washed and ironed them.
While they sat in the bar, Robert has told them the story of his marrying Caroline, together with some elements regarding his childhood, imposing father, who had worked in the Embassy, where the ambassador and everyone else defers to this towering personality, who had abused his son- once, when the sisters made him eat chocolate cake, too much lemonade, lock him in his absent father’s office, where he spoils with diarrhea all the rugs, desk, walls and is punished severely, brutally by an irate parent.
The sisters were taking revenge because before this event, young Robert had told his father that when the children had been alone, they took their mother’s make-up, lipstick and used them – the girls were repeatedly told that their brother would rule over them in the future and the sadistic parent would ask if Robert allows them to go out, have a visitor and Robert would deny their requests.
What happens with the adult seems to confirm the theory that purports that abused children grow into human beings that are much more likely to inflict pain, torture others, as Robert would do and Mary would learn from Caroline, when the latter explains her disabilities, the violent, physical, tormenting intimacy she has had with her spouse.
While they prepare for their dinner, there is another bizarre, violent, forewarning, alarm signal that should have warned the British couple and made them avoid the outré Robert and his wife, if the other circumstances of their visit had not been enough, when the host punches Colin in the stomach, taking his air out and making him bend over in pain.
After they return to their hotel, leaving the otherworldly hosts, Mary and Colin have sex like they have not experienced it for about seven years, in that it is like in the early days of their love affair, they hardly go out of their hotel room, wash each other, sleep in the same bed, embraced.
Nevertheless, they too talk about the edge of love, somehow like the other duo in the narrative, they also take relationship to and beyond an extreme, when they state the depth, intensity of their feelings, how they would want to stay together beyond infinity – they did not use these words, but it seemed to convey this message.
She talks about wanting to get a surgeon to severe his limbs, cut off his hands and legs and then she would care for him, he would be hers – perhaps in the manner described in the film Starfish – and in return, Colin mentions the idea of a machine that could have sex – if that is the expression – with her to and beyond her death, up to the point where Colin or his solicitor would stop it…
Considering this bizarre perspective, what happens next, the extremes reached and surpassed by Robert and his slavish wife may seem, if not appropriate in any sense, at least more believable in the sense that one mad couple meets with another that is, if not just as crazy, at least unorthodox and not worried, reluctant enough to escape the clutches of the beast.
Mary and Colin enjoy days and nights of pleasure, sex, long talks, rewarding intimacy, and only go for a trip on the fourth day, when they stay at the beach, take a ferry and end up near the flat of the expecting local couple, Robert taking the English man to his bar, where he has some business.
On the way to the business he is actually selling, the local man takes the visitor along unfamiliar routes, where he talks in his native language with people who know him, while holding Robert’s hand and later explaining that he told all these men that the guest is hi lover and the wife is jealous.
In the meantime, Caroline tells the story of her sex life, how her husband has become ever more brutal, inflicting pain and talking ever more hatefully about his desire to kill her, while the woman…enjoyed and expected more torture, up to the point where her back is so injured that she spends weeks in the hospital, she would never be able to walk up stairs – when she leaves the house one day, Robert forces her to spend the night out, since he would not help her climb up again…
Moreover, the end is so savage, unusual, fascinating, intriguing…what an outstanding masterpiece.
Here are the links to reviews of other Ian McEwan books:
http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/05/a...
http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/05/a...
http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/08/o...
http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/06/b...
March 1, 2018
(Review will be in parts)
"The Child in Time" - 1 star, did not finish. I really could not get through this one. The chapters where he is on the committee were the opposite of engaging. The memories were mostly also just distracting. Basically, there were no threads holding a story together for me. I did skim the last chapter. There was resolution, but it wasn't satisfying enough to make me wish I'd read any of the middle bits.
"The Cement Garden" Whoa. Ok, that took some turns I was not expecting. An ok read.
"The Comfort of Strangers" I started skimming so quickly that I realized I just didn't care anymore. It also had some dark weirdness going on.
My first McEwan was The Children Act. Maybe I should have stopped with that. I just don't think we're a match.
"The Child in Time" - 1 star, did not finish. I really could not get through this one. The chapters where he is on the committee were the opposite of engaging. The memories were mostly also just distracting. Basically, there were no threads holding a story together for me. I did skim the last chapter. There was resolution, but it wasn't satisfying enough to make me wish I'd read any of the middle bits.
"The Cement Garden" Whoa. Ok, that took some turns I was not expecting. An ok read.
"The Comfort of Strangers" I started skimming so quickly that I realized I just didn't care anymore. It also had some dark weirdness going on.
My first McEwan was The Children Act. Maybe I should have stopped with that. I just don't think we're a match.
Read
September 20, 2022Uneven. Two of the selections are excellent
July 12, 2025
This book was so good!!! I would give it a 5++++++!
August 5, 2025
Really kept my interest!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews