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Summary: Another McEwan winner - spy story better than love story
Review: Ian McEwan's distinctively noir-ish post-war spy thriller "The Innocent" is nearly though not as accomplished and satisfying as "Enduring Love", "Black Dogs" and "Atonement". At the heart of "The Innocent" is a love story between a young Englishman - assigned on a secret mission at the Anglo-American and Russian border of divided Germany - and an older and more experienced frau with a dangerous past (spelled femme fatale). Without a doubt, the liaison would lead to personal tragedy and other betrayals far beyond the ken of imagination. Built around the love story is an artifice that speaks of espionage and deceit - even between allied partners - that for me proved far more compelling than the story's central concern. Happily, McEwan doesn't miss a beat, seizing the opportunity to pour scorn on the provincial-mindedness of the English while not condoning the crude display of American superiority. But when the plot starts to move away from Leonard's external life to focus on his passionate love affair with Maria, that's when the story loses its thread and begins to seem rather familiar and predictable. Even the ex-husband's reappearance and the outcome of his encounter with the couple on their engagement night plays like film noir melodrama. But wait, just as McEwan never ever disappoints, his writing is never ever less than riveting. From there on, the reader is kept in constant nail-chewing mode pondering poor Leonard's fate as he watches him try desperately to bury the evidence that would incriminate him. For the first time, McEwan delivers a denouement that may be written a little too large. Sure, it made my jaw drop but you can't help thinking afterwards......is this believable ? Quite apart from it being not his style, McEwan would have outraged our sense of morality had he allowed a "happily-ever-after" ending for Leonard and Maria. No such luck. Before the final curtains falls, we would be treated to a letter in a fast forward that would explain all and move the most hardened heart to tears. It would also win over any dissenter for the novel's occasional lapse into melodrama. "The Innocent" isn't my favourite McEwan novel but it's got all the ingredients of a great novel which combined with his familiar trademarks and flourishes makes it a winner for me. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Another McEwan winner - spy story better than love story
Review: In classic McEwan style. Some of the historical information while interresting is a bit dry. However, McEwan's morbid view into the heart of darkness certainly moistens the story considerably. Passion, Love, sex and really nasty murder. Rather darkly enjoyable.
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Summary: David Schachter, Tucson, AZ
Review: In classic McEwan style. Some of the historical information while interresting is a bit dry. However, McEwan's morbid view into the heart of darkness certainly moistens the story considerably. Passion, Love, sex and really nasty murder. Rather darkly enjoyable.
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Summary: A Different Kind of Cold War/Berlin Thriller that even..
Review: LeCarre and Deighton would probably appreciate. Other reviews here are excellent in telling the basics. I'll only add that if you are interested in electronic communcations (who isn't these days), underground surveillance, East/West Spy vs. Spy paranoia,German life in the mid 1950's, and unusual love affairs,this novel is for you. A unique twist on an old game!!
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Summary: Strange Emotional Mixture
Review: Leonard, the "Innocent" title character, is a naive young Brit who finds himself transported to the strange environs of post WWII Berlin and into a world of emotions and intrigue he is ill-equipped to handle. Faced with the brash American Bob, who sees spies behind each face he meets, Leonard encounters the lovely Maria who captivates his imagination and his heart. Leonard doesn't heed Bob's warning against becoming involved with Maria and finds himself helplessly caught up in a web that eventually embroils him in a killing and jeopardized the project on which he is working. Leonard's struggle elicits a curious mixture of emotions in the reader. His awkwardness and confusion elicit empathy, while the laughter is short lived and tinged with a touch of sadness. Leonard is an Everyman, a true innocent, whose brief sojourn in this strange and bleak "wonderland" robs him of the one thing he had -- that unblemished innocence unique in a jaded, post war Berlin.
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Summary: Well written, tight novel
Review: McEwan deftly illustrates how turmoil and deception can lie just below the surface, whether that surface is a city street in divided Berlin, or the surface of a seemingly clean-cut, upright human being. In McEwan's world of post-war Germany, no one is truly innocent, or at least no one beyond page 20, and nothing is truly as it seems. All is a shade of grey, nothing is black and white. This book is gripping, as Leonard's life becomes more ensnared in lies and cover-ups. A terrific read.
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Summary: How NOT to dispose of your pesky ex.
Review: The detailed description of how two of the characters carve upa corpse and put the pieces into suitcases--and then try to carry thevery heavy suitcases--is worth the price of the book.
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Summary: Often the biggest secret is that there's no secret at all.
Review: The images of subterranean constructs, of buried lives and secret agendas, that permeate "The Innocent" continue to haunt us in the chilled aftermath of the Cold War. What we don't know can and does hurt us, now as then. Even the men and women who, like Leonard,the novel's title character, seemed to be intimately involved in the secret history of our time in fact knew nothing of the wishes of those who controlled them. The spy tunnel Leonard helps make operational beneath the streets of post-War Berlin is very real. It was a Top Secret operation of Western intelligence. And it was "blown" to its Soviet target before excavations had begun. So we are left to ponder: Who are the warriors? Who are the victims? On whose altars are the innocents sacrificed?
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Summary: A great tale of cold war Berlin
Review: The Innocent is my first encounter with the writing of Ian McEwan, whose considerable storytelling abilities have been applauded here by several Amazon reviewers. The Innocent was a great read, a novel of post-World War II cold war intrigue in Berlin that is largely based upon a real-life event, the digging of a tunnel to intercept Soviet telephone communications. Unlike some other "international espionage" writers like Lawrence Sanders or Ken Follett, McEwan is primarily interested in the lives and thoughts of his characters - the real-life historical context for the actions of these fictional people is an added bonus. The novel chiefly concerns British communications specialist Leonard Marnham, a young, naive agent who never lived on his own before, having just left his parents' house to come to Berlin. The maturation and loss of innocence of Marnham is the primary theme of the book, and I loved his daily letters back to his parents as he lived this wild existence in Germany, tapping Soviet phone lines and carrying on an affair with a beautiful German women he meets at a bar. The novel also touches upon some interesting themes involving the decline of Britain's influence in the post-war world, as the Americans come in and virtually take over the tunnel project. Britain and the U.S., although allies with a common purpose here, refuse to share information and generally mistrust each other. I thought the novel moved along at a nice rapid pace, with considerable suspense after the return of Maria's ex-husband spoils the idyllic mood. I won't give away the ending but I loved McEwan's use of a letter, and Leonard's return to Berlin decades later, as a fitting conclusion to the book. Four stars for a well-written, suspenseful novel.
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Summary: Slumming author wastes time of both of us
Review: The Innocent pretentiously invites a comparison with Kafka's The Castle, and then belabors it over 200 pages that prove satisfactory as neither serious novel or spy yarn. The point that spy work is often absurd has been made, thank you very much, dozens of times before; and the main character is such an astonishing drip and dolt (taking up with an East German woman who practically has Mata Hari stamped on her forehead) that it's impossible to care about his progress from virgin idiot to non-virgin idiot. Some will no doubt say that that's the point of the book, that Leonard is a real character, not a Follett-Ludlum (or even Greene-LeCarre) fantasy. To me, the fantasy is that he could have survived Basic Training without getting killed by either his own stupidity or his fellow recruits for the good of England....
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