Rating: 
Summary: Well crafted, a bit cold
Review: McEwan knows how to construct a story - he richly focuses on small moments in his tale and insightfully removes pieces other authors would find the need to write about. It's one of those books that helped me write better just by reading it.On the downside, I didn't buy the motivation behind the characters and felt the book's stark construction left me cold. I've heard his other work is much different - he obviously talented, so I'll read more of him for sure.
Rating: 
Summary: A new low for the Booker Prize
Review: I read this novel as part of an AAUW (American Association of University Women) Reading Group and it was roundly condemned by the same. Thank goodness I checked out of a library and didn't spend any money on this book. It is obvious and crass. This novel's brevity was only reason I completed its reading, along with a gross fanscination akin to observing the scene of a car crash. I kept thinking, it won a Booker Prize, it must get better at some point...
Rating: 
Summary: Greatly Marred by Lazy, Implausible Ending
Review: Ian McEwan is Britain's leading literary artist, so anything he publishes should be greeted with enthusiasm. However, this is a disappointment. This is a story of two men: one is a composer, Clive Linley, who is busy writing a symphony; and the other is a newspaper editor, Vernon Halliday, who publishes a series of photos in order to ruin a right-wing politician's career. A mutual lover, Molly Lane, who has since died, took the pictures. To publish them, Linley believes, would be to besmirch the memory of Molly Lane, whom they both loved. They fall out and their friendship sours; eventually, after a series of misunderstandings, themselves plot contrivances, turning to hatred. I won't give away the ending. I will only say that it is ridiculous. McEwan should read more Ian Banks to see how to develop clever but plausible twists to his endings. Failing that, just read a couple of Agatha Christies.
Rating:
Summary: There's Something About Molly
Review: [Warning: this review contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.] While McEwan's brilliant "Atonement" moves along at a snail's pace, "Amsterdam" is here and gone in the blink of an eye. It's not that the novel is fast-paced or a page-turner--there just aren't many pages. I finished the book over the course of 3 lunch hours at work and it wasn't that there was a lot of exciting stuff going on in the novel. The story is about two friends and a politician who all loved Molly Lane, who we never actually see because the story begins at her funeral. Vernon, the editor of a stodgy newspaper, receives some revealing pictures taken by Molly of the politician--who is in line to become the next prime minister--from Molly's widow. At the same time, Vernon's friend Clive is writing a Millennial Symphony and inadvertantly witnesses a rape in the mountains that he doesn't tell the police about. Clive is incensed when Vernon runs the pictures, because he feels it disgraces Molly's memory. Vernon is angry at Clive because Clive is angry with him and Vernon figures out that Clive witnessed the rape and didn't go to the cops. When the pictures come out, the politician is able to win the support of the people but is blackballed in political circles. So then, for reasons I still don't understand, Vernon and Clive poison each other in Amsterdam and are put to death by Dutch suicide doctors. Huh? Did they mean to kill each other or was it just an accident? A case of mistaken identity or something? That's what my first reaction was, but now I'm pretty sure they both meant to do it. Maybe I'll have to reread the book at some point (when I have a couple of free hours). The entire problem with this novel is that it's too short. There's simply not enough of a build-up to provide adequate reason for why two lifelong friends would decide to bump each other off. Granted they had difficulties, a couple of rows (as they say in England), but that wasn't reason enough for murder. Both guys were under quite a bit of stress, but would it really drive them to whack each other? I don't think so. Maybe it's because this book is British, but I know in America people would not be so forgiving if they found out a top politician was dressing as a woman and posing for pictures. Just because the man's wife comes out and says, "I know about it and I'm cool with it" doesn't mean everyone is going to instantly forgive him and call for the head of the newspaper editor who would dare to run the pictures. Thinking of recent presidential transgressions, people are more apt to shrug and say, "Well, it's OK as long as it doesn't affect him getting the job done." but an angry mob wouldn't storm the newspaper like Dr. Frankenstein's castle or anything. The entire scenario seemed contrived to me. To get on my soapbox for a minute, I think what would have really helped this book were some flashbacks. Don't just TELL us how much Clive, Vernon, the politician, and the widow cared for Molly, SHOW us through some flashbacks of the time they all spent with Molly. That would have not only fleshed out Molly, but also would have given readers a better understanding of why two old friends were willing to kill each other over her memory and it would have better defined her relationship with the politician so that we might know why he posed for those pictures in the first place. On the whole, I think that would have really helped the story by adding some useful length. McEwan's writing is competent as always, but having read "Amsterdam" and "Enduring Love", I'm really not impressed with his work other than "Atonement". I certainly wouldn't have given this book the Booker Prize (the British equivalent of a Pulitzer). "Atonement" was like a haunting, beautiful melody that sticks with you long afterwords (with its slow build-up I always think of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" you know, that song they used in "Platoon") while "Amsterdam" is a quick little pop song that went in one ear and out the other (like a Britney Spears song). It's too short, too underdeveloped to make it worth the purchase price.
Rating: 
Summary: Meet me at the cremation
Review: An odd beginning for McEwan's Booker Prize winner, but it's true. Two friends meet at the cremation of Molly Lane, a woman they 'shared.' One is a newspaper editor, the other is a composer. There's a 3rd guy, too, a politician. Then skullduggery enters the stage: the editor discovers photos of the politician in drag among Molly's things, and engages in a moral debate with himself about whether to publish them or not. There are several other issues, as well, that contribute to the book's focus on art, morals, politics, greed - and soon the two friends are bitter enemies.
Not nearly as good as Atonement, IMO, but still very, very good.
Rating:
Summary: Too Clever For Words
Review: Not sure how or why this won the Booker Prize. With one exception, the characters are a mean-spirited lot, and the novel just oozes cynicism. A couple of very funny bits provide some relief. But if you want this author's best, read Atonement. If you want a more satisfying story of betrayal and back-stabbing, read The Pardoner's Tale by Chaucer.
Rating:
Summary: "Amsterdam" in winter
Review: Ian McEwan is, without a doubt, one of the greatest writers of dark fiction today. But his novella "Amsterdam" is something of a misfire, reading more like the sluggishly-filled-out outline for a novel rather than a novel itself. His usual introspection and depth is both missing and sorely missed. Molly Lane is dead, her mind and body wrecked by an unspecified brain disorder. Now her assorted lovers and friends reunite one last time, including Molly's ex-boyfriends Clive and Vernon, respectively a prominent composer and a not-so-respected newspaper editor. Because of Molly, they are friends -- and they enter into a pact because of her death. But things go awry when Vernon gets his hands on photos of the Foreign Secretary Julian Garmony, cross-dressing and photographed by Molly. Eager to bring down Garmony and bring up his readership, Vernon wants to publish the photos in his newspaper; Clive is disgusted by this, yet he allows a rapist and murderer to go free for the sake of his musical inspiration. Which man is worse? "Amsterdam" is like a city in winter, pretty at a distance but rather empty and cold when you walk through it. In theory it has all the elements needed for a great novel, but it feels vaguely unfinished, as if McEwan was expanding an outline into a full-fledged novel but somehow never finished the job. It's too quick in places, crawls like a slug in others. The characters are lacking in the complexity found in most of McEwan's other books, where many dimensions can be found. Clive is almost impossible to connect with; Vernon is more understandable, given his waning career. Garmony is poisonous without it being clear why, and George Lane (Molly's staid husband) seems promising but doesn't go much of anywhere. Aside from the characters, the prose is rather obvious and often lacking in insight: it describes what the characters do, but very little of what they think. As a result, some of the actions -- such as Clive watching a woman being attacked -- seem almost random. It feels half-finished, as if McEwan weren't quite sure how to make the novel come to like. But in places, such as Mrs. Garmony's public speech about her husband and Vernon, his brilliance shines forth. So while an acceptable novel by most standards, it's perhaps the least of McEwan's works thus far. Has its moments of brilliance, but overall dreary and empty.
Rating:
Summary: Amsterdam succeeds, but doesn't exceed
Review: I finished reading McEwan's well-orchestrated Booker winner "Amsterdam" in a few hours. I found myself wrapped up in this book intensely, and I could not put it down. This book contains more entertainment than it does quality. It was a good book, but not as exceptional as the breathtaking "Atonement" or the beautifully disturbing "The Cement Garden". There are fuzzy bits in the end, but otherwise, the conclusion was daring, shocking, and...well, McEwan. He loves shaking his readers up in the end by throwing wild surprises at them. Clive, a composer, and Vernon, editor of the "Judge" broadsheet, have been friends for a while. They are former lovers of Molly Lane (dated her at one time or another in the past) , who died obviously of some type of disease but it is never really named. As the two enter a clear state of madness over this loss in their life, a pact is made. They agree if one of them is to go into madness as Molly did, the other one shall kill them. It is a euthanasia, which causes a chain reaction of events from beginning to end. As Vernon and Molly's husband (now a widower) dig up evidence that Julian Garmony, foreign secretary and former fling of Molly, is in fact a hypocrite, Clive tries to battle with his own demons of depression over the loss of Molly. This events lead to a stunning finale, and I was completely absorbed by every second.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Character Study!
Review: I loved the way this thought-provoking book inspired me to contemplate matters which probably would have never fallen under my consideration otherwise. Especially illuminating was the description of the composer's creative process as he works on his latest symphony. I found the book to be structurally flawed in its uneven pacing, sluggish at times and rushed at other times. Even though I liked the ending, I was disappointed by the somewhat contrived route by which the ending arrived. The books tracks the mercurial relationship of the two main characters, men of a long-standing friendship of many years and shared history, while each is undergoing undue stress at the same time. Even though there are marked differences in these two men in terms of talent, interests, home life, etc., they each respond to this stress in similar ways. Why? Could it be because their descent into emotional irrationality is just one of the truths of the human condition? McEwan so authentically and admirably depicts an innate human inclination common to all of us. For me, it made these men very sympathetic characters. A great book for introspection. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing though not Filling
Review: As in his current best seller "Atonement," McEwen takes an idea, a conceit, and carries it throughout the novel. In "Atonement," he explored the lifelong impact of a young girl's lie. In "Amsterdam," he examines a promise between two London gentlemen that each will kill the other if he becomes too ill to live with dignity.
The book begins with the memorial service of Molly, a good time London girl of the intelligentsia, which is filled with a number of her former lovers. Molly suffered from and eventually fell victim to a debilitating, crippling disease. Thus, the pact between the two London gentlemen.
This book examines a number of series themes: mortality, fidelity, integrity, journalistic standards, loyalty, decency. McEwen uses his characters and his plot to explore and expand on these themes-not the themes to develop his characters. At times, that can be frustrating. While I admired his plumbing of such serious issues, I wanted more about the characters.
I would recommend this book to those individuals who enjoyed "Atonement" and are looking for more McEwen. I also would recommend this book to those individuals who like contemporary fiction, particularly contemporary British fiction (e.g., Martin Amis). I would caution individuals who seek either extensive character and plot development or conversely, fun and easy reads, to think before they pick up this book. You may need something "heavier" or "lighter." However, most serious readers should like "Amsterdam."
|
