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Do you like to people watch?You know what I mean... just sit somewhere in a busy place and watch people bustle past in all their colourful weirdness. It's a habit I've acquired with age. Sometimes I think back to being a teenager and remember how I always wondered if I was strange in some way - I guess a lot of teens wonder that same question: am I normal? I wonder, had I taken the time to people watch back then, if I would have felt so lost and strange. I don't see how I could have. People are
I have to stop reading McEwan's books, because I never enjoy them. There's something clinical, removed, about the way he tells his stories - I don't get the sense that he likes human beings, and he is writing about them to display his proficiency with structure and nuance rather than out of interest or sympathy. This is probably a three-star book, but a two-star experience.
FILM adaptation now out in UK, US, and elsewhere. I've appended a review/comparison of that to this review of the book.“ She felt shrunken to a geometrical point of anxious purpose .” This was my eighth McEwan. I rated On Chesil Beach as 5*, five others as 4*, and Black Dogs as 2*. That track record gave me high hopes for The Children Act, raised further by the intriguing dilemma at its heart: whether a bright and articulate Jehovah’s Witness boy, very nearly 18, should be forced to have a li...
THE CHILDREN ACT is about the law and sensational cases, but it is not a legal thriller. Rather, it is a beautiful and sad story of a High Court Judge forced to choose, literally, between life and death. Her ruling, though proper and legally sound, leads to both.
In my opinion McEwan is very uneven writer. I really enjoyed The Cement Garden, Enduring Love and Sweet Tooth; The Child in Time moved me deeply while Amsterdam, to put it mildly, was rather disappointment and The Comfort of Strangers total disaster. McEwan relishes quirk and macabre, likes to handling very disturbing and bizarre, not to say creepy behaviours and relationships in his novels. He is very efficient and his writer's skills are indubitable but there is some coldness about his writing...
4.5 stars. For me a book by McEwan is a low-risk pick, as he would unlikely let me down. If all else failed, I’d always have his exquisite prose and his good ear for music to fall back on. It turned out, this skinny 221-page book was one of my favorites of his. This book had two main themes running in parallel: the marriage crisis between 59-year-old high court family division judge Fiona and her geology professor husband Jack, and the emotional entanglement between Fiona and a 17-year-old boy A...
Not long ago, while having my morning coffee and while perusing GR, I encountered Fionnuala’s review of this book. It immediately drew my attention because not only am I a fan of Fionnuala’s takes on books and have liked several of McEwan’s books, but also because I was going to attend a trial in court within the next few hours.Children and parents. Parents and children. Oof!. What should be only a love relationship can easily, and too often, turn into a thorny one, charged with distressing emo...
The Children Act by Ian McEwan My seventh McEwan (Enduring Love, Nutshell, Amsterdam, Saturday, On Chesil Beach and Atonement).This one strikes me as a bit different from the others – almost like a “legal thriller” akin to a John Grisham although I don’t mean to imply that Grisham’s popular writing style is like McEwan’s more literary style.The main character is a woman at the peak of her career as a British family court judge (she is called “My Lady.”) In the acknowledgements the author cites h...
I’m embarrassed to say that before The Children Act, I was a McEwan virgin. But now I’ve turned into a McEwan slut, anxious to read his earlier books. I can’t help myself. What a great writer!This is the story of Fiona, a highly respected judge who presides over family court. She has to make hard decisions that determine the fate of families. She doesn’t seem to question her power or choices until her husband rocks her world and wants her to approve his plan to have an affair. Fiona, the ever ra...
You could argue that the character at the heart of this novel is dangerously close to being a misogynistic cliché - the career woman who deep freezes her feelings in order to succeed professionally. Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in her late fifties. At the beginning of the novel her husband, maddened by his wife’s sexual detachment, leaves to embark on an affair with a much younger woman. It’s easy to forget every judge has a personal life and that her professional life will have repercussion...
One of the Ian McEwan books I've most enjoyed and a book which inspired the most vigorous debate my book group has ever had - a debate which felt like a day in court as all the 'barristers' present argued their cases; one, for the rights of children; another, the rights of parents; a third the letter of the Law; a fourth, the rights of the characters; a fifth, the rights of readers; a sixth the wrongs of the author. No, scratch that last one off the record, court secretary; the conclusion was th...
"My Lady is Captivating"!"Adam Henry is Captivating"This entire story is """CAPTIVATING"""!!!Delicate Situations!!!!!!Written with real energy --totally 'ALIVE'....I've been a long time fan of Ian McEwan --and this small novel (with 5 parts) --confirms the depth and breadth of Ian's talents!
