The story and opening are haunting and gripping! Sadly there were a few instances, where the author started to ramble on about themes, that I absolutely did not care about, or had no effect on the story or character itself...It took me out of the story. Otherwise a very good novel.

Read it years ago!!!A tragic accident.....love, guilt, moral dilemma..............Thought-provoking prose........A terrific writer. One of my favorites!!!!!!!!!!!!!

During this stressful work week I was looking for a quick escape from one of my favorite authors, with much anticipation, but ended with a disappointment. Enduring Love was the weakest among the 9 McEwan’s books I’ve read so far.Scientific writer Joe rose met Jed parry during a heroic group act to rescue a 10-year-old boy during an air balloon accident, and unfortunately the uncoordinated act led to the death of one of the rescuers. Jed became obsessed with his unrequited love for already guilt-...

[25th book of 2021. No artist for this review, nothing occurred to me or made an impression.]Near my house is a road that snakes off from the long and smooth tarmac of Queen Street. The change from Q. Street to this road is quite remarkable, being so sudden. The houses are all the same dirty white; there are bits of wood, tiles, tarpaulins and chunks of rubble in gardens and by the side of the road; the cars are all in the same state of disrepair, with taped bodies, sagging bumpers and flat tyre...

Interesting to consider this as a precursor to Saturday: both have a scientist as the protagonist and get progressively darker through a slightly contrived stalker plot. Enduring Love opens, famously, with a ballooning accident that leaves its witnesses questioning whether they couldn’t have done more to prevent it. Freelance science journalist Joe Rose – on a picnic with his partner, Keats scholar Clarissa, at the time – was one of those who rushed to help, as was Jed Parry, a young Christian z...

I read a lot of books by this author. I like his writing. Some of them are very good and some IMO are not so good. This one I really enjoyed. Not exactly for the subject of the story but for the way it was told. I could not stop reading this book. I finished it very quickly. The story was told by the main character and I could not stop reading it. I really felt that "Atonement" was this author most outstanding book but I will continue to read him because when I find another book this good it's a...

This is a mid-career novel by McEwan, 1997. It’s about erotomania, the syndrome characterized by the delusional idea, usually in a young woman, that a man whom she considers to be of higher social and/or professional standing, who may be a complete stranger, is in love with her. He sends her signs and messages that only she can interpret, keeping the delusion alive. It can occur in males too, as it does in this story, especially in men who have social disabilities; are disconnected loners with n...

In ____ (place/time), _______________ (name of character) does __________ (action) so that __________ (goal), but _________ (conflict!). This book is _______ (adjective), ______ (adjective), and made this reader _____ (verb).come to my blog!

It's an idyllic afternoon in the English countryside; the bliss and quiet is is broken by the desperate pleas of a child in distress. Our protagonist rushes to the scene, as do a number of other people. A hot air balloon has lost its tether and a stricken child is frozen in fright as the balloon begins to ascend. Each of the people that have arrived grab hold of a rope to try hold the balloon down; then there's a strong gust of wind, and one by one the would-be-rescuers let go... all but one of

What happens when people confuse their own feelings of possession with love for another person, and expect the other person to buy into their delusion - a catastrophe in slow motion! The scary part of this novel, one of Ian McEwan's better works, is not the mentally ill stalker and his eruptions of violence. That bit is a psychological thriller of quite conventional dimensions. The scary part is how stress from an external source can reveal the incompatibility of two passionate lovers, believin...

Enduring Love is either a brilliant camp comedy or one of the worst attempts at serious fiction ever.Joe and his wife Clarissa are having a picnic when they spot a falling baloon. A man tries desperately to pin the balloon to the ground to save his son who's inside, traumatized.; Joe and a group of men who happened to be at the place run to help. The experiment goes bad; the man rolls to the ground while Joe and other men let go of the balloon. The balloon goes up into the air with one of the st...

Ian McEwan's novels tend to revolve around a single event, a single moment, or day. This day will change the character's life and everyone around them. It shows the past and the future spiraling around this one narrative point in the story. He's at his best in this format, and that definitely shows in Enduring Love. It is essentially a case study of a man suffering from extreme, disturbing delusions and a fierce obsession, and the man who struggles to deal with being the object of that obsession...

Trying to describe the deeply intimate & personal with psychopathology … this is precisely what made ‘Saturday’ the worst book ever contrived. (Emphasis on CONTRIVED.) Now, this dish is not devoid of that ingredient--it is again about a member of the upper class (DON’T EVER FORGET IT dear reader!) crashing head-on with a creep-o misfit, a defective misanthrope who has this eerie pathological condition stalking the incredibly intelligent and quick-witted protagonist for pages… a neo noir, a-la Sa...

Before I read (and amused myself by being overly critical about) Saturday by Ian McEwan, I'd also read The Cement Garden, Atonement, The Comfort of Strangers, The Child in Time and On Chesil Beach.Here are some Ian McEwan statistics based on my own reading habits: He's written 19 books so far and I've read seven of them which is representative of 36.84% of his total output (I've not included plays or short stories, just novels). Of these seven books, I have enjoyed four -The Cement Garden, The C...