Rating: 
Summary: Quite a ridiculous book
Review: I am shocked that so many people found this book to be worthy of even a precious minute. The story is so incredibly ridiculous. I could hear the seriousness in the author's voice, so I know it wasn't meant to be an amusing story, but I found myself laughing the whole time. In fact, the book and its events and characters got so ludicrous at one point that I put the book down and never regretted it, never wondered what happened to these stupid people. What happened to good, believable fiction? I've read more convincing books about leprechauns!
Rating: 
Summary: interesting gossip: did you know ...
Review: ...the Appendix at the end was written by McEwan after he finished the novel and as a joke he sent it to a british psychiatric journal under 2 pseudonyms which are actually an anagram of his name ... the "case-study" was accepted and duly published.i think for that alone he deserves a modicum of respect. HOWEVER i would like to contradict everyone by saying that although terrible scenario in chapter 1 is very clever, leading up to it is quite boring, isn't it. and the plot of the novel overall does become a bit forced and unevenly paced. ESPECIALLY the restaurant and hippie/gun scenes. i thought it was unconvincing of mcewan to randomly give us an insight into clarissa's frame of mind (that bit when she comes home from work cross and tired) and yet remain with joe for the rest of the novel - blatantly inconsistent. there were also minor inconsistencies in the text eg joe claims to have lime-flavour ice-cream in the restaurant, but when he relates the incident to the police it is apple-flavour. unusual for both an author as obsessed with detail as mcewan is, and for his eerily similar narrator joe. and yes the book can be intensely boring - not just when joe is going on about science, but also when mcewan is being generally pedantic about descriptions of ppl/places/events. i couldn't gauge whether mcewan was being boring and scientific because he couldn't help it, or whether he ws writing "in character" as joe. in the book's favour, i think mcewan invites us to compare ourselves with jed and empathise with him in the horrible way he makes us empathise with all his skewed characters. come on, how many times have you had a crush on someone and suspected/KNOWN that they knew, and they kind of liked you to, but couldn't say ... ? think about it ... think and shudder ...
Rating: 
Summary: First chapter is worth the price of the book
Review: "The Comfort of Strangers" spooked me out so bad I was afraid of my own shadows days after I'd read it. Such is the genius of Ian McEwan's craft in the genre of psycho suspense thrillers. That essential quality of "darkness", which has become a McEwanian trademark, is very much evident in "Enduring Love" but in surprising ways. Jed Parry's sudden obsession and stalking of Joe Rose is every bit as scary as the looming threat and encircling of the young visiting couple by the decadent older couple in TCOS. In "Enduring Love", the path chosen by McEwan to the heart of darkness is altogether different but stunning in its brilliance, the occurrence of a shock event that triggers off an emotional response that is menacing in its obsession and indifference to the havoc it creates to the lives of its victims. The now famous first chapter of "Enduring Love" is quite the most mesmerising piece of fictional writing, ever. The horror of the balloon accident is so vividly drawn and captured by McEwan's cleanly precise prose the scene remains firmly etched in your mind long after the action has moved on to another place. The "high" experienced in the opening chapter is so acute that what follows must inevitably seem anticlimatic. But what's surprising is that the novel veers off in a direction nobody could have anticipated after the heartstopping beginning, which on hindsight seems to be a kind of red herring. But that's a false charge. The real subject of novel isn't, to my mind, even about the effects of the de Clerambault disease but the fragility of the human condition, the absence of any solid foundation that underpins our self definition, and the ferocity of our self preservation instincts that lie buried within us, all ready to be sparked off by the unexpected. McEwan's expose on human frailty is painfully honest and may make some of us uncomfortable but the message seems to be that with self awareness, there is hope. "Enduring Love" is such a thrilling captivating read I guarantee you'd want to finish it in one sitting. It's quite the most entertaining novel I've read in a long time. Absolutely brilliant !
Rating: 
Summary: imperfect
Review: i am happy to agree with those, clearly ian mcewan-literate, who argue this is not his best book. given the genre he's put himself in until recently, one he's perfected if not invented (did james purdy invent that creepy, road-kill fascination thing?), this book is not going to measure up. there's not nearly enough illicit pleasure in the illicit (and probably illegal) pleasure, but i think it does nicely for what it wants to be: a set piece explication of circumstance and cleverness. it is likable for the sheer cheeky-monkeyness of it. it's not got a thing to do with enduring love. ps wouldn't it be nice if mcewan could tell us which of us reviewers got it right? couldn't someone who knows him convince him to opine?
Rating:
Summary: A Good Ride, Until the Tailspin
Review: Though "Enduring Love" is only two-thirds of an excellent novel, the book as a whole has a lot to recommend it: an abundance of vivid character detail and insights, wonderful language, and McEwan's scary ability to walk a grueling mile in very strange shoes indeed. (Readers of "The Child In Time" and "The Innocent" will find themselves half-convinced that McEwan himself once lost a child in an unexplained kidnapping, or that he personally spent some sweaty hours dismembering a corpse with a hack-saw). Sadly, after a bravura beginning, he loses control, starting with the shooting in the restaurant. This scene is preposterous: how could an unworldly shut-in like Jed Parry so quickly find a pair of professional killers willing to commit a brazen public murder, and why bother anyway, since he has Joe's address? After that, McEwan cannot pick up the threads again; his narrative, while still beautifully written, becomes a string of absurdities, from a farcical scene with hippy gun-dealers to a melodramatic climax. What the hell threw him? The answer may be that McEwan was trying to amuse himself at the expense of his own story. Many people know that the first chapter of the book--the balloon accident--ran in the New Yorker, word for word, months before the novel appeared. At that time, there was no suggestion that it was anything other than a short story, and in fact it stood very well on its own. But McEwan was having fun, jogging the readers' memories, gloating a little over his achievement: several years before this, the New Yorker had published its first Ian McEwan story. It was about a murder in a crowded restaurant, and its heroes were Joe and Clarissa. Maybe as a challenge to himself, McEwan re-worked this story into his novel--with a shoe-horn, apparently. He made few changes, but the original details (such as the setting, a near-future London fraught with Algerian-style, Fundamentalist violence; and Clarissa's physique, which is described as that of a midget), though strange, made perfect sense in context. McEwan thought he could make this elegant trifle richer and more resonant by throwing it into the pot that became "Enduring Love". Unfortunately he failed to incorporate it convincingly, and the icy logic of his fine novel was totally derailed.
Rating:
Summary: An engrossing, beautifully written book
Review: Many have praised the opening of this novel, and rightfully so, but that is only the first step in Ian McEwan's masterful creation. Told from the perspective of Joe Rose, a frustrated scientist turned journalist, the story captures our attention and never lets go. We share Joe's despair as the balloon rocks in the wind in the opening scene; we shiver as he finds himself being stalked by a delusional, obsessive intruder who thinks Joe is the love of his life. But Joe doesn't seem to trust himself entirely, and McEwan gives us plenty of reasons to distrust him even more, creating a tension in the narrative that makes us read on with a growing sense of impending calamity. In-between, McEwan explores the dichotomy of science and religion, logic and intuition, sanity and delusion. The writing is beautiful, as sharp and witty as we've come to expect of McEwan, but far more intricate and thoughtful. All that and a page-turner? It's a near-perfect read.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking - this is the art of writing at its finest
Review: In elegant, beautiful prose, whose richness of detail and breadth of emotion another writer can only envy, McEwan skillfully plumbs the depths of human consciousness. We can all see a reflection of ourselves in the figure of Joe, and the novel has a powerful, haunting impact that stays with the reader long after the final page, leaving behind it a lingering awareness of the frailty of the psychological, emotional and social constructs that shield us from the terrible randomness of existence. McEwan's mastery of the English language, his flawless control of mood and tone, and his delicate manipulation of the mechanism of suspense is nothing short of breathtaking. His attention to detail reveals an exquisite sensitivity to the complex subtleties of the human experience. I loved this novel.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful writing¿mind gymnastics
Review: The beginning of the book is beautifully written. The vocabulary is a real treat. There are lots of words with more than one or two syllables...nice for a change, eh? It's a compelling scene, this balloon accident. But then it gets kind of boring...pedantic literary stuff. Made me contemplate reading Keats, though. Fortunately, it's short enought that you aren't making an extraordinary commitment. Just get in there and enjoy the mind exercise...gives you a really feeling of superiority to those who are selecting the insulting best-sellers. The famous British humor doesn't seem to surface until the very very end....and I was waiting for it.
Rating:
Summary: Enduring Love
Review: Sometimes love last forever - love endures. Sometimes love is unbearable, but we put up with it - we endure love. So the two-sided title appropriately describes an engrossing novel about love in its very different forms. The opening scene has been justly praised as a perfect set piece, establishing the characters and introducing the theme. A postcard day, complete with a distant balloon over an English countryside - the ideal setting for Joe and Clarissa, two re-united lovers, enjoying a picnic. But then a bizarre accident, which could have so easily been avoided, takes the plot in a new direction. Instead of landing with its occupants safely in an open field, the gliding balloon is suddenly gusted away, out of control. Joe and several strangers rush to the aid of the struggling ballonist, ineffectually trying to secure the balloon and land it safely. But the incident ends in tragedy. Joe is wracked with questions. Could I have done more?..Was it my fault?..If only we had worked together... But as the days pass after the accident, a more ominous development occurs. Jed Parry, one of the would-be rescuers, develops a weird obsession with Joe. The future path of Joe's love, like the uncontrolled movements of the balloon, is about to take unexpected turns. A story is often be carried simply by the twisting events in the plot. But here the pace is maintained because the reader is in Joe's mind, following him every step, analyzing with him the unreasonableness of his lover, suffering the uncaring incompetence of the police, enduring the mania of a madman. It is hard to stop reading, because we empathize so completely with its suffering hero. Here and there are unexpected changes of style, which sometimes don't work. A glaringly incongruous scene occurs as Joe buys a gun from a group of aging hippies introduced by his druggy friend. It's a terrific scene - great characterization, very funny, imaginative, but somehow out of step with the rest. And yes, the ending is too neat, vindicating all of Joe's claims, justifying all his apparent paranoid behaviour, and proving that he was right all along. But overall, its a compelling read. The book is strongest when it sticks to its theme - love as a dominant, unchartable, unpredictable focus of our lives. I spent an entire day reading it. I couldn't stop. Well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Fiction writing at its best
Review: Ian is a writers leagues above others. His style shows a great command of deep human understanding, particularly his relationship with his wife. The book is masterfully structured with each chapter building tension and the reader will want to turn those pages over and over to find out what happens. The relationship between Joe Rose and Jed is masterfully created and the details so accurate and believable. His descriptions at the beginning of a balloon incident are truely inspired and written in a style that anyone who writes can only envy-and I envy. A must read for anyone!
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