Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"We were running toward a catastrophe, which itself was a kind of furnace in whose heat identities and fates would buckle into new shapes."

Another outstanding novel from Ian McEwan. I have recently reviewed here The Child in Time and the near-masterpiece On Chesil Beach. I like Enduring Love (1997) more than the former but less than the latter. Anyway, I had a great time with the novel - it is a truly compulsive read. In addition to all the wisdom it packs it is also a great suspense story, one of the best suspense novels I have ever read.

Joe Rose, a Ph.D. in quantum physics working as a successful science writer and journalist, is having a picnic in the Chilterns with his common-law wife, Clarissa. Also a Ph.D., she is a literary scholar specializing in the poetry of Keats. Joe and Clarissa have been "seven years into a childless marriage of love," a very strong, enduring relationship. During the picnic they witness a dramatic ballooning accident and Joe rushes to help. The accident changes his and many other people's lives forever.

The totally riveting chapter One is a true masterpiece of prose. I read these 16 virtuoso pages three times to savor all the delicious literary details and the sharp observations of psychology. The first moments of the accident are portrayed in a sort of slow motion, from differing perspectives, and in a post-modern fashion: the narrator writes

"I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible; [...]"

The narration slows down even more in Two when the first rescuers reach the scene of the accident. It is here that the main thread of the plot is set up: the thread that focuses on the other enduring love. It is also here that the author begins to masterfully tease the readers and play with their emotions. If one needs a literary work of art to convey a message Mr. McEwan offers a clear one: no one ever knows what exactly has happened and what exactly is going on.

We have clever allusions to juxtaposition of rationalist approach to life with life's utter randomness. We have an implicit discussion about the relationship between science (evolution theory) and literature (Keats). We even have an Appendix where the author quotes a fictitious research paper from The British Review of Psychiatry about the de Clerambault's syndrome that manifests itself in "erotic delusions." And we have another extraordinary passage of prose describing Joe's behavior when he - self-deludingly - retrieves the stapler from Clarissa's office. All this is totally wonderful and a five-star rating for the novel was clearly on the horizon.

Alas, we also have the restaurant scene, which - although it indeed it provides a sort of dramaturgical climax to the plot - cheapens the story, in my jaded view, and is just 'too much of a good thing.' Neither am I particularly impressed by the somewhat crude attempt by the author to tease the reader with the words 'curtain' and 'signal' later in the novel. The gun buying scene is absolutely hilarious, particularly the bit about Steve's giggle-inducing moustache, but it really feels spurious in the novel. But, to me, the author's greatest sin is the fourth-from-the-end sentence in the Appendix; I am not a fan of obsequiously reader-friendly gestures.

Despite all my - quite likely exaggerated - criticisms Enduring Love is a fantastic read, a well-written jewel, and I enthusiastically recommend this suspenseful yet deep and mature novel. And as the icing on the tasty cake here is another wonderful quote (incomplete for obvious reasons, insert a smiley here):

"[...] for seconds on end I had wholesomely and simultaneously indulged two of life's central, antithetical pleasures, reading and [...]"

Four-and-a-quarter stars.



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