"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 was intrigued to discover that some stalkers are convinced that the object of their obsession is in love with them. De Clérambault sufferers also believe their loved ones are sending them signals--via the television set or by, for example, the arrangement of the clouds. It's a peculiar mental prison. What intrigued me was the manner in which this syndrome holds up a distorting mirror to our most valued experience--that of falling in love."
"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."
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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...
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06/21/1947 England, Great Britain, United Kingdom, British Isles, Western Europe,
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While the writing is smart, and full of insights about life after 9/11 the story leaves a lot to be desired. Everything takes place in one day, and appears to be building toward an intense showdown between good and evil. However, the story falls short of a memorable climax in favor of realism...but perhaps that's part of the author's point. In real life, the line between good and evil is rather blurry. Either way, I'll definitely give the author another shot when his next book comes out...