Rating: 
Summary: Grossly over-rated
Review: This is a minor--and apparently, casual--novella by an author of some very good novels. It is hard to know why it was awarded the Booker Prize. Perhaps it was to prevent the prize from going to another nominee or possibly it was made in order to reward McEwan for past performances.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantasstic!
Review: The professional reviews included on this page miss many points of this novel, including a simple but factual description. The history of Molly, Clive and Vernon is one of old, old friendships. Whatever else once existed, what remained was a closeness that allowed each to take the other as they were - without judgement. Molly was the key to the friendship and without Molly the friendship dissolved. This is an interesting story about slightly off center but real people who sometimes think one way but act another, and sometimes rationalize behavior to make it more acceptable - even to themselves.
Rating:
Summary: A Terrific Read!!!
Review: I am a huge Ian McEwan fan, and bought this book the week it came out where I live. I read it in one sitting that very day, and I was stunned at its somewhat light-hearted approach at some potentially depressing topics. It's short, but I felt that it was just the right length. I wouldn't say that it is my favourite McEwan novel (that would have to be The Comfort of Strangers), but I was overall very impressed. Highly recommended!!
Rating:
Summary: City of sin
Review: Many words have been spoken about legalisation of eutanasia and death tourism in Netherlands,, many words have been spoken about sensationalist journalism, and may of them will be yet spoken, but pointing the obvious is not the kind of thing that something that pretends to be artistic should strive to do. Consider the weak presentation of characters, consider the plotline that has been seen in many B movies out there, though I must confess, in first few chapters of the book, philosophy outshines the mere plot, consider the ending adequate to some "dark form" of Barbara Cartland and you'll have in your hands something that received the Booker Prize for who knows what reason. We do have deep moral philosophy here, we do have macabre solution of ethical conflict, we do have even the satire, but what we don't have is writing talent and the ability to keep the reader occupied with it. You'll not miss the thing if you skip this one.
Rating:
Summary: Amsterdam not prizeworthy
Review: Motivational speaker Charles Tremendous Jones once said that you are the same today as you'll be in five years, except for two things: The people you meet and the books you read. Contrary to what the judges of England's 1998 top fiction award, the Booker Prize, might think, Ian McEwan's Amsterdam is not a book by which great men and women are made.Full of exquisite detail and insight into the creative process of world-renowned pianist Clive Linley, Ian McEwan spends more time on description than he does making his carefully orchestrated plot seem real. Much attention is given to how Linley writes the musical theme for the upcoming millennium, but not to why he bothers to stay friends with someone he does not like. Amsterdam is about two friends, Linley and Vernon Halliday, a newspaper editor. Both are former lovers of Molly Lane, a recently deceased socialite. The two men meet another of the woman's former lovers, a politician named Julian Garmony, who the men equally despise. Halliday has a chance to expose Garmony in his newspaper, which Linley finds deplorable. Linley finds himself in his own moral dilemma with Halliday telling him what to do. Obvious road signs along the way point to the novel's "surprise" ending. McEwan finishes his book as if rushed on deadline, hurting what could be an excellent story. What seems to be missing is more exploration into the character of Molly Lane. The woman who brings all the (male) characters of the novel together is only described in relation to her lurid romantic affairs. We know how she was in bed and what her sleeping arrangements were with her husband, but little attention is given to her supposedly illustrious career with Vogue or why the woman has so many lovers. The only other female character in the book is Garmony's wife, Rose. An entire chapter is dedicated to her, but should not be. McEwan seems to be trying to show that Rose is a good little woman at home. However, McEwan makes Rose a doctor, seemingly rising above gender stereotypes. It's a weak attempt at pleasing the male readers who might care. Though Amsterdam strives to be a dark comedy, it falls flat with its lack of humor and weak plot-line. The only things that identifies the book as a comedy are the reviews that list it as such. Amsterdam's strong point seems to be that it reads quickly and is short, so at least it doesn't take too long to finish.
Rating:
Summary: Darkly humorous indictment of contemporary morality..
Review: In response to the prior reviewer, a book about "silly, conceited people" is not necessarily a silly and conceited book; consider The Great Gatsby. Amsterdam is a clever book that reveals the conflicts of people who have either found or placed themselves in moral dilemmas. The central characters share the common denominator of having been lovers of Molly Lane who has recently died. They are brought together at her funeral, and as the story unfolds she seems to have been the only true and trustworthy moral compass among them. The book causes the reader to contemplate our contemporary values. What have our morals and ethics become at the end of the 20th century? Consider the "integrity" of our political "leaders"; the media's right to know vs. an individual's right to privacy; the value of human life vs. modern medical science. The characters in Amsterdam come across as opportunistic, self-centered, and morally indecisive. Do we feel more sympathy for Vernon,the editor who must publish something scandalous to keep his paper afloat or for Julian, the politician whose private indiscretion is made public? Do we feel any sympathy at all? Even Clive the successful composer is corrupted and looks away because he believes his musical genius is more important than another human being. (echoes of Wilhelm Furtwangler?) Is it more important to save the Mona Lisa, a timeless work of art, or a transient human life? Today's politicians take polls first to determine which decision or action will most likely keep them in power. Amsterdam considers all of these issues in less than 200 pages and concludes in a deliciously wicked ending.
Rating: 
Summary: an entertaining read
Review: Something about the Booker Prize... I just don't seem to get what makes them select their prizes. Don't get me wrong -- I thoroughly enjoyed this witty, very well written novella about two "old" friends who have a major falling out, but besides the strong writing, I'm not sure what propelled it to the prize. That being said, McEwan does a terrific job of outlining his story starting from Molly's funeral and spiraling outwards from there following all of Molly's former lovers. Perhaps the best scene in the book occurs at the funeral when a staid looking state official pulls one of the main characters by the lapels and says some deliciously wicked things to him. I enjoyed the middle of the novel best, but by the end, I was getting a bit tired and found the ending a bit hyperbolic. Still, the scenes with the famous composer trying to write his masterpiece while hiking in the lake district, so absorbed that he fails to intervene and stop a rapist from attacking, made it an enjoyable read. I recommend it, although i don't think it's a classic that people will know about 50 years from now.
Rating:
Summary: Booker Prize?
Review: Be weary of this plot-driven novel. McEwan offers little by way of metaphysics and fails to emerge as a writer with a vision. In this era of neo-Hemingways, McEwan has established himself as nothing more than this: a plain, credible author--an author with plot and plot only. That this text won the Booker Prize is shocking.
Rating:
Summary: Good book; weak ending
Review:
'Amsterdam - Ian McEwan (1998, Booker Prize Winner)
A clever well-written book about two-faced duplicity and treachery in human relationships; about one-upmanship and mutual shafting; about the discrepancy between our outward faces and our inward ones; about how easily and casually human beings are prepared to damage and ruin one other, stitching one another up; about how the 'friends' we meet often aren't friends at all; about how easily a friendship built up over a lifetime can be cast aside in a moment; about 'single event' downfall; about how general opinion is steered and manipulated; about how a small event often changes a life...
This book is economically written, covering a lot of ground with a minimum of material. There are some great lines here, and a lot of food for thought.
The ending (in the last three chapters) seemed weak and improbable, at least on a literal interpretation.
Marks: 4 out of 5
Rating:
Summary: Not credible
Review: The pivotal plot in "Amsterdam", not much critically examined by other reviewers here, is a story about two not really successful people at the midlife crisis where settling for less becomes life's main burden, both self indulgent (a musician/composer and a newspaper editor) conspire to murder each other. They come to this unlikely idea at the end of a life long friendship because - it seems - of perceived slights although this too is not adequately charted in the novel, and both come to the same idea at the same time and select the same method. They elect to go to Amsterdam where they find corrupt medical practitioners who agree to commit euthanasia for large sums of money paid in cash. They pull off this trick by falsely identifying themselves as the other, then switching places at the last moment, and so simultaneously kill each other. The mechanics of this unlikely swap are not adequately explained, but in more essential ways the plot line is deeply flawed.
The description of the place could not be more wrong; not that McEwan got things like street names in Amsterdam wrong. His researchers made sure of such trivial accuracy. It is his complete failure to understand the Dutch society and her institutions that ruins the book.
The Netherlands, and especially its capital, Amsterdam, is - in the minds of many native English speakers - a den in iniquity, showing how little they know about this, arch conservative and, in many ways, intolerant country. This simply could not happen. Euthanasia is strictly controlled in the Netherlands. There is compulsory notification to the Department of Justice, independent medical examination of the dying patient by at least two physicians who must lodge their reports with the authorities, and an independent counselor must give guidance to the patient, a lawyer is appointed to wrap up the affairs of the patient taking care of final taxes and distribution of assets to the heirs, following which there is a required period for re-consideration, and an independent psychiatrist must judge that the patient is not making the decision in a desperate moment of despair or treatable depression but is fully competent and capable of making an informed decision, and a final family reconciliation in which survivors of the patient are also able to apply for and receive counseling, and then the actual day of death in which there must be certain people present as witnesses. A sort of ritual takes place, a kind of funeral at which the dying person may be able to listen to his or her eulogies. Actually the Dutch society is drowning in rules and regulations. A more credible book would describe the adventures of people who die of old age while waiting in Kafkaesque lines, but that would not win any prizes; the suspension of action has already been done in "Waiting For Godot".
The story told by McEwan, at least this main subplot, could not possibly happen. It is actually the fantasy of an ignorant English author, serving his readers the jingoistic moral saber rattling that foolish people need in order to reaffirm their perceived cultural and individual superiority over the persons of a foreign country they do not understand and have no inclination to learn anything about.
The English way of committing euthanasia, in which nothing official is arranged, and decisions are made in an ad hoc manner behind closed doors, make it more likely that Dutch people would go to the UK to find corrupt doctors for such a deal; assuming that the unlikely plot could be taken with a sufficient serving of suspended disbelief by readers anywhere.
Why this won the Booker Prize, I cannot fathom. It should have been Atonement, which is a likely, gripping tale.
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