Reading 1001 discussion

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
4 stars

This was a very interesting book. It started out so unexpectedly, with a balloon accident during which a man dies. This horrific accident impacts so many lives in such unexpected ways. Joe and his wife are soon caught up in an unexpected "stalker " situation that each looks at differently and so start growing apart from one another. Joe continues to do the right thing (i.e. try to get the police involved) until a startling confrontation pushes him past his limits. This was very different from Atonement but it certainly held my attention.

Beverly wrote: "
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
4 stars

This was a very interesting book. It started out so unexpectedly, with a balloon accident during which a man dies. This horrific..."

I really enjoyed this one

I really enjoyed this. It is one of my favorites of McEwan, so far. A relationship is created between two people at the scene of a tragic action. For one of the men, it is obsessive, for the other unwanted. Interesting look into De Clérambault's syndrome. The author did a great job with pacing and suspense-building.

4 stars

Enduring Love was published in 1197 and made into a movie in 2004. But to be honest I knew nothing of it. It is a book about De Clerambault’s syndrome (now known as erotomania); a young woman is convinced that a man of higher social standing is in love with her when in fact she is a stranger to him. She believes that he sends her personal messages and signs of his love. She believes that only she can interpret the signs. And all of this keeps her love alive. It is an odd and unique condition that made the book equally odd and unique. It also captured my attention right away.

Our main character is a journalist. He is a married man who writes articles about science for magazines. The story begins when there is a tragic accident when a hot air balloon is escaping its moorings with a child aboard and a man who is trying to save the boy is left clinging to the rope as it quickly ascends. He dies from the inevitable fall. Several other men who tried to help are left to deal with the emotional aftermath. And part of the aftermath involves the woman who becomes a stalker of the journalist.

He shares his fears with his wife, which leads to a very clear and harsh impact on his marriage. He is far too emotional and his quickly changing moods affect his wife and his marriage. He is quite clearly dealing with PTSD, and is struggling to know how to talk about the events on the day of the accident. Unfortunately he doesn't even know if there is anyone in his life with whom he could talk. Our journalist is reliving the accident, feeling guilt about it, being stalked, and seeing his marriage change.

My biggest complaint is that at times the two storylines felt a bit too separate and distinct as though they could have been two separate books. Overall, however, I enjoyed the book.

My review: I always feel sorry for people who fall victim to erotomaniacs. I know at least one person personally who tends towards serial erotomania, and their bizarre obsessive fixations on their current prey can be exhausting for me as a friend and 'sympathetic ear', so I hate to imagine what their prey think of their efforts. I'm just glad most people don't wind up with this psychosis. In this novel we get to experience erotomania through the perspective of a victim, as he is stalked and harassed by a total stranger he encountered during a particularly stressful accident. The story is well told, and captures how seemingly minor details can turn into the triggers that start an erotomaniac in his/her new obsession. This is a creepy book because these things really do happen and in reality there is also not much one can do to make the mania subside or to convince the stalker to give up.
I am not sure the List needs to include quite so many McEwan books, but I really liked this one. I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads.