"I don't think it's enough to just tell an interesting story and hope that the themes will come off it like steam off a bog and that critics will be there handily telling you what they are."
"I think of novels somewhat in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate itself must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building. I'm careful not to overload with information, but not to deny too much either."
"Reading Philip Roth's 'Portnoy's Complaint' seemed to offer amazing life--brilliant use of embarrassment, in terms of paralyzing the reader. For an American writer such as Roth to address something so commonplace as masturbation, and wrapped around it is an extraordinary meditation of what Jewishness is about. It was bold and profoundly apt. I took something from that."
Ian Russell McEwan was born on 21 June 1948 in Aldershot, a military town in southern England. He had two much older half-siblings and considered himself an only child. An "army brat," he spent his childhood in Singapore and North Africa where his father was stationed, but returned to England to go to boarding school and the University of Sussex. He got an M.A. at the University of East Anglia, where in his creative writing courses Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson encouraged him to be a writer. more...
Ian Russell McEwan was born on 21 June 1948 in Aldershot, a military town in southern England. He had two much older half-siblings and considered himself an only child. An "army brat," he spent his childhood in Singapore and North Africa where his father was stationed, but returned to England to go to boarding school and the University of Sussex. He got an M.A. at the University of East Anglia, where in his creative writing courses Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson encouraged him to be a writer. His first marriage ended in 1995 (and his wife, Penny Allen, made McEwan notorious when, after she kidnapped one of their two sons and fled to France, their custody dispute--which McEwan won--became public). He married journalist Annalena McAfee in 1997. One of McEwan's favorite writers was Kafka; he also counts Evelyn Waugh as an influence, and the biologist E. O. Wilson. McEwan is celebrated for his macabre, grotesque, and occasionally kinky fiction. His novel AMSTERDAM won the Booker Prize in 1998, and several of his works have been made into films.less...
A hugely conflict-driven story that begins at a funeral and ends... well, I don't want to give the ending away, but brace yourself for a completely unexpected ending.
More like a novella than a novel at a mere 192 pages, this piece of work is one that packs a lot in very little space. The characters are very well fleshed out, contrasted against each other, and easy to conjure in one's imagination, right down to their voices; the conflict builds up at just the right pace never letting the characters or the reader get too comfortable with the current state of things, which makes it a sort of small-scale thriller, though the ending is a little off, but I suppose there is some foreshadowing that lends such an ending some credit.
Ultimately, this is a thinking kind of book, one which is perfect for reading circles and dinner conversations, where you really get to pick a side and argue it until you just shake hands and agree to disagree, knowing a little bit more about your opponent than you did before you entered the world Ian McEwan created. Definitely worth a read.
A hugely conflict-driven story that begins at a funeral and ends... well, I don't want to give the ending away, but brace yourself for a completely unexpected ending.
More like a novella than a novel at a mere 192 pages, this piece of work is one that packs a lot in very little space. The characters are very well fleshed out, contrasted against each other, and easy to conjure in one's imagination, right down to their voices; the conflict builds up at just the right pace never letting the characters or the reader get too comfortable with the current state of things, which makes it a sort of small-scale thriller, though the ending is a little off, but I suppose there is some foreshadowing that lends such an ending some credit.
Ultimately, this is a thinking kind of book, one which is perfect for reading circles and dinner conversations, where you really get to pick a side and argue it until you just shake hands and agree to disagree, knowing a little bit more about your opponent than you did before you entered the world Ian McEwan created. Definitely worth a read.