Rating: 
Summary: Life is like a box of chocolates......
Review: "...you never know what you're gonna find inside". This line from the movie "Forrest Gump" aptly describes how Ian McEwan masterfully peels away the secrets and mysteries of this tale ever so slowly page after page. In very lucid and undemanding prose, McEwan manages to build the suspense intelligently until the very last chapter. The first half of the book sets the stage with characters that are never beyond reproach or suspicion, yet as the tale unfolds in a most engaging fashion, it gives no hint of the grisly human drama that follows. It is essentially a story of love and the loss of innocence for which Leonard Marnham, the book's central character, paid dearly. Elements of espionage, suspense, drama and romance are mixed in a brew that is remarkably refreshing and clever, like nothing I've ever read before. The scenes in which Leonard tries to dispose of the incriminating evidence are crafty and very funny. A surprisingly brilliant novel and, in my opinion, better than his Booker-prize winner.
Rating:
Summary: Life is like a box of chocolates......
Review: "...you never know what you're gonna find inside". This line from the movie "Forrest Gump" aptly describes how Ian McEwan masterfully peels away the secrets and mysteries of this tale ever so slowly page after page. In very lucid and undemanding prose, McEwan manages to build the suspense intelligently until the very last chapter. The first half of the book sets the stage with characters that are never beyond reproach or suspicion, yet as the tale unfolds in a most engaging fashion, it gives no hint of the grisly human drama that follows. It is essentially a story of love and the loss of innocence for which Leonard Marnham, the book's central character, paid dearly. Elements of espionage, suspense, drama and romance are mixed in a brew that is remarkably refreshing and clever, like nothing I've ever read before. The scenes in which Leonard tries to dispose of the incriminating evidence are crafty and very funny. A surprisingly brilliant novel and, in my opinion, better than his Booker-prize winner.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: A friend recommended this book to me, and for the first seventy or so pages I was moderately dubious of this recommendation, but the story really picks up and becomes impossible to put down. An excellent examination of the concept of innocence that I would recommend to anyone. The ending was a little trite but that doesn't spoil the whole work.
Rating:
Summary: Well written and a great read!
Review: A friend recommended this book to me. He has been very successful in the past recommending good books, but this time, after reading a couple of hours, I questioned his recommendation. Having said that, the story really picked up after a while, and it became impossible to put it down!The setting is post-War Berlin. The twenty-five-year-old male lead, Leonard Marnham, is being assigned to a British-American intelligence team. This international plot, "Operation Gold", is never fully disclosed to anyone, so everyone associated with this project works under the "need to know"-basis. Marnham uses his secret work to get away from his rather ordinary life, and of course, to loose his highly unwanted innocence. "The innocent" has something that everyone can enjoy; elements of espionage, Cold-War paranoia, confusion, romance and drama. Everything mixed together into a story, like nothing I've ever read before. "Operation Gold" did exist in real life. According to "Author's note" on one of the last pages in this book, "Operation Gold" was a joint CIA-MI6 venture, that operated for just under a year, until 1956. This of course, made the whole thing much more real and believable. Ian McEwan is a masterful storyteller, and after reading four of his books, I am a great fan of his books! This is a great read! (If you like this one, I suggest you also read the Booker Prize winning "Amsterdam" and also "The Comfort of Strangers".
Rating:
Summary: The New Graham Greene!
Review: As one of the blurbs on the back of this novel reads, "The Innocent" stands up there with the best of Graham Greene's novels. This isn't to say though that McEwan doesn't have his own voice and that his book isn't original. He perhaps takes one step further than Greene ever took with the war/romance theme--and it's a bit more twisted. The suspense is almost constant here and at times even slightly comical as the book's naive protagonist, Leonard Marnham, Tries to handle things bigger than he is. McEwan takes the story to places one doesn't expect the novel to go. He shows little compasion for the characters he creates and places them in situations anyone would dread to be in. He beautifully fuses the spy, romance, and thriller novel genres together perfectly and each of these complex facets is written with the style, clarity and realism of a master novelest. Certainly the best book I've read all year, "The Innocent" is a must read for anyone who loves a good story of any kind.
Rating:
Summary: A sad love story; a gruesome thriller
Review: Award-winning author Ian McEwan packs a lot into this novel of post-WWII Berlin. An inhibited, proper, sheltered young Englishman, Leonard Markham, expert in low tech electronics, is assigned to a secret project involving tapping Russian phone lines. After hours he meets a German woman five years his senior and in one of the most compelling seduction scenes I've read in a long time, he's initiated into the world of passion. But things go terribly wrong, and Leonard loses his youth and passion as well as his innocence. The title is interesting; unlike many reviewers I don't think Leonard loses his innocence when he arrives in Berlin and starts his work and finds his love, but much later. McEwan's works all explore the hidden depths of evil in men and women, and we see this emerge in Leonard as he begins to let his sexual fantasies overtake the lovely relationship he's found. But more importantly, he allows fear and cowardice to dictate his actions in covering up a murder. In the process he retreats from his lover and destroys the project he's labored on with his countrymen. This is the story of a person who finds love and purpose and throws it away, and that's the real loss of innocence McEwan portrays.
Rating:
Summary: A spy novel with substance
Review: Great book! I picked it up while on a business trip and couldn't put it down. Unlike most "serious" literature, The Innocent has great pace. Unlike most "popular" literature, there is character development and instances that make you examine yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but
Review: I enjoyed reading The Innocent. The setting is well drawn, the story was interesting, with just enough plot turns to keep things interesting. This novel is a tad heavy on narrative, which works fine in this case, but isn't for those who like an extremely fast read. Both the story and characters are rather subtle at times, a refreshing change of pace from much current fiction. The only problem that I had with this novel is that it fails to convince me of motivation. I just can't believe that the main character, Leonard (the innocent from the title) is as fully stupid as the author portrays him. Most ten year olds would have been brighter than he seems. Though I did enjoy his self discovery along the way. I was equally unconvinced that Maria (who helps Leonard lose his innocence) is as afraid of the German police as the author kept wanting us to believe. I was so unconvinced, that I was sure that she was setting Leonard up somehow. Still, this book is interesting to read. It is a fairly unique story and worth the time for that alone.
Rating:
Summary: magnificent! McEwan is the finest contemporary novelist.
Review: I'm a fervent admirer of McEwan's books and can't help but be affected profoundly by this one as well. The private and the public mix ambiguoulsy and the intricate machinations of the political sphere reveal themselves as the aftermath and residues of the private catastrophes and psychoses. The book reads like a piece of music.
Rating:
Summary: Another instant classic from Ian McEwan
Review: Ian McEwan writes with a ferocity that is understated at times, and the ease and accessibility of his writing can deceive the reader into thinking that what they are reading is insubstantial or light. This work was probably his most conventionally "commercial". That is not to demean the writing or the story in any way, as it was at least the equal of anything I have read by this fine author. There was all of the trademark McEwan subterfuge, relationship drama, self-discovery, exploration of male-female relating nuances, and deception at play here. And a knockout storyline which kept the pace of the novel humming. In fact, I found this one of the more compulsively readable of his works, with that page-turning addictability that most thriller writers strive for. But this seemed to mark a rare genre: literary thriller. Much to get excited about from both a plot and storytelling perspective, but also the kind of sentence construction and flow that only the best fiction writers can produce.
The story, as others have summarized here, is one of undercover spy-work in post WWII Berlin, and the touching relationship between an Englishman and a German woman, which is the heart of the story. The relationship is made complicated by the backgrounds and circumstances of both, and a past relationship of the German woman proves to have a lasting impact on what happens in the book. If I were to divulge much more than that, I would be doing a disservice to the unfolding of the plot, which is fascinating and shocking. McEwan relates expertly the awkwardness of a virginal English man in his mid twenties, and while he is the obvious "Innocent" from the title, the title also works on other levels.
I loved this book and found it filled with a soulfulness and emotional resonance of a different nature than some of his other works. This had all of the hard-hitting violence and seaminess, with a little more optimism and heart. An excellent work of fiction.
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