Rating: 
Summary: The story didn't leave anything to me.
Review: Too bad... This was one of a few books I got to read on my Christmas vacation. I was hungry for good stories, but this was a disappointment. The first chapter is fine, but the rest of the story is highly unrealistic.
Rating: 
Summary: All hot air after chapter one
Review: An amazingly gripping first chapter gives way to a slowly deflating novel. It would have made a better short story than a whole novel. But McEwan is the still the master of dark tales. Should I ever see a balloonist in distress I'll leave 'em to it!
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Enduring Love presents a terrific combination of page-turning plot, interesting characters, and beautiful prose. From an ordinary writer this would have been an interesting tale, but McEwan's style makes every sentence a pleasure to read. I was amazed to find the many negative comments about this book from other readers. Usually, I am the one wondering what all the critics loved about some ordinary book. In this case, I heartily agree with the considerable praise this book has received.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing
Review: I have been thinking about this book ever since I finished reading it several weeks ago. What I find most interesting is the contrast in the behavior of the narrator and his lover in relation to the obsessive love directed at the man. I, a woman, found myself identifying with the woman in the novel, dismissing the behavior of the deranged man as harmless and unimportant and feeling that the narrator was overreacting. I found myself in a state of tension brought about by the ambiguity of the situation. Once the mystery was resolved, the book seemed much more ordinary. The ambiguity was cleared up. What I most appreciate about this book was the imaginative way that the author tried to understand the two different points of view of the primary characters, man and woman. It further boggled my mind to realize that the appendix is apparently an actual document. I looked up references listed and found them to actually exist. This work is less a thriller than a philosophical construct on the nature of perception.
Rating: 
Summary: one of the worst books I've ever read
Review: I hate when someone gives me a book as a gift. Then, I feel obligated to read someone else's choice. When life is so short, and there are so many books this feels like a terrible burden. I usually refuse to do so on principal.Out of boredom, I broke this rule last week and read this book which I got for Christmas. I will never break this rule again. It was gripping in an irritating sort of way. There were many times it was suspenseful and I couldn't put it down, but the many climaxes were very disappointing. And the characters were HORRIBLE. I didn't like any of them and frankly, I hoped that bad things would happen to each of them.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, intense and violent.
Review: An accident with a balloon disturb the calm and organized life of Joe Rose, marking the start of a obsession,that test his racionalism. Enduring Love is the history of a ordinary man carried to the limit of the crim and the insanity. A compulsive reading.
Rating:
Summary: Simple-minded Plot but (obviously) well-written
Review: I read McEwan's "Enduring Love" to compare it with "Amsterdam" since the New Yorker said that E.L. should have received the Booker rathen than Amsterdam. I'm not so sure. Granted: about half of "Enduring Love's" chapters are crushingly well-written (the rest are all good to outstanding). But what I didn't like was the E.L.'s Plot and that fatuous Happy Ending...where did THEY come from, some flabby focus group or the book's assigned "nudge" publicist? Lamentably, the story's denouement is all-too (snore, huh?) predictable. But, in the event, the outcome of the story is meant to satisfy the shabbier impulses of society, it's the deviant -- and ONLY the deviant -- who pays.
Rating: 
Summary: Gripping and disturbing page-turner
Review: This well-crafted and erudite story relentlessly ratchets up the tension between Joe Rose and Jed Parry, two strangers whose lives become dangerously entangled, from start to finish. The plot twists and turns, sets you up and then surprises. One wonders throughout which of them is pathologically fixated on the other (or is there some creepy mutualism at work)? Also, one is compelled to compare the "conventional" relationship between Joe and his common-law wife, Clarissa, and that between Joe and Jed. I found the depiction of the Joe-Clarissa estrangement convincing, in that their arguments exemplied how easy it is for intelligent, caring people to say exactly the wrong things to each other. Indeed, the author pits logic and illogic against each other on many levels. I was intrigued to learn on the internet that the names of the psychiatrists who "authored" Appendix I (Wenn and Camia) are an anagram of Ian McEwan.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbing reflection on sudden solitude
Review: Definitely one of the most disturbing novels I have ever read. It leaves you feeling uneasy at every step, but unfortunately leaves you so in the dark as to the intentions of the antagonist that you sometimes begin to feel a bit bored. This is a highly psychological novel since almost everything occurs only in the mind of the main character, which is absolutely marvelous, if that is the type of reading you are up to at the moment. I particularly enjoyed the ending appendices, which I found very clever, although I obviously won't reveal anything about it here. I would love to know if the syndrome described in the book is real or invented, but I can imagine that, if it exists, it is quite rare. I think this novels is a poignant demonstration of how an ordinary person can find himself quite totally alone in life in a very sudden way and due to events completely beyond his control. I recommend this book, whose author was recently awarded the Booker Prize.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, disturbing, and worth reading
Review: I have to agree that none of the characters was particularly "likeable", but I don't consider that a weakness. As the book unfolds, Joe changes from a rational, self-assured (almost pompous) writer of science non-fiction to a very irrational person making bad decisions. But isn't that exactly the way one might respond in his situation? True, he went overboard, and it was his own obsession with the obsessed that drove the wedge between him and Clarissa. If you don't like books with characters who are easily classified as "good" or "bad", you won't like this book. But if you can handle the more subtle gradations in between, the book provides a powerful and disturbing view of one man's attempt to cope with an impossible situation. For those who are skeptical about the premise of the plot, you only need to read factual accounts of various celebrities who have been the victims of stalkers to find the insidious effects it can have on one's mental state.
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