Best-selling author, Ian McEwan has a knack for stories that
slowly build for the reader right up until the precipice. According to WikiPedia, Ian Russell McEwan (born 21 June 1948 14 days after my
birthday) is an English novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, The
London Times featured him on their list of "The 50 greatest British
writers since 1945" and The Daily
Telegraph ranked him number 19 in their list of the "100 most powerful
people in British culture." In
1998, he won The Booker Prize for Amsterdam. This 1997 novel, Enduring Love is among a few of his early works I have eagerly
devoured.
Joe and Clarissa have what seems to be an ideal
marriage. Clarissa is a therapist, who
is dedicated to her profession. Joe has
a doctorate in physics, but his research interests have withered. He is now a successful freelance writer. Clarissa has been away for some time, and
when she returns from her latest job, they want to rekindle their relationship
with a romantic picnic. McEwan writes,
“The beginning is simple to mark. We
were in sunlight under a turkey oak, partly protected from a strong, gusty wind. I was kneeling on the grass with a corkscrew
in my hand, and Clarissa was passing me the bottle—a 1987 Dauman Gassac, This was the moment, this was the pin prick
on the time map: I was stretching out my hand, and as the cool neck and the
black foil touched my palm, we heard a man’s shout. We turned to look across the field and saw
the danger. Next thing, I was running
toward it. The transformation was
absolute: I don’t recall dropping the corkscrew, or getting to my feet, or
making a decision, or hearing the caution Clarissa called after me. What idiocy, to be racing into this story and
its labyrinths, sprinting away from out happiness among the fresh spring
grasses by the oak. There was the shout
again, and a child’s cry, enfeebled by the wind that roared in the tall trees
along the hedgerows. I ran faster. And there, suddenly, from different points
around the field, four other men were converging on the scene, running like me”
(1).
This opening paragraph displays
the real power of McEwan as a writer.
His attention to details, the split-second reaction, all led Joe to a
nightmare of unusual proportions. In two
appendices, McEwan spells out a peculiar affliction known as “de Clerambault’s
Syndrome. Joe becomes a victim, when one
of the men, who attempted to rescue a child in the out-of-control balloon,
directs his obsession to Joey.
Unfortunately, no one has seen Jed, he has no police record, and the
stress is damaging Joe and Clarissa’s marriage.
I was amused by some of the
stories Joe heard from his students, and similar stories from Clarissas’s
patient. McEwan writes, “The student
[Clarissa] supervised yesterday, a raw girl from Lancaster, phoned her in tears
and shouted incoherently. When Clarissa
calmed her down, the girl accused her of setting her impossible reading tasks
and of sending her up blind alleys of research.
The Romantic poetry seminar went badly because two students appointed to
give discussion papers had prepared nothing and the rest of the kids had not
bothered with the reading” (85). Joe has
a similar experience with one of his students.
Ian McEwan is a masterful story teller with deep and
interesting examinations of the mind. No
one believes Joe, and he begins researching the syndrome. The marriage begins to shred. The climax of Enduring Love is unforgettable.
5 stars.
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