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Apart from the incessant stalking, it is the conditionals--the contingencies--that most frustrate Joe, a scientific journalist. If only he and Clarissa had gone straight home from the airport... If only the wind hadn't picked up... If only he had saved Jed's 29 messages in a single day... Ian McEwan has long been a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others' fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and--worst of all--becoming strangers to those who love them. Even his prose itself is a masterful and methodical exercise in de-familiarisation. But Enduring Love and its underrated predecessor, Black Dogs, are also meditations on knowledge and perception as well as brilliant manipulations of our own expectations. By the novel's end, you will be surprisingly unafraid of hot-air balloons, but you won't be too keen on looking a stranger in the eye. --Alex Freeman
245 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
really what the book is about is the conflict between a way of thinking based on logical scientific reasoning and one based on emotions. Literature, versus science: "Do the scientific illiterates who run the National Library really believe that literature is mankind's greatest achievement?" (or something to that effect), the protagonist is heard to say on one occasion. A provocative statement, Mr. McEwan.It is indeed provocative, and I also think it's at the heart of what the book is about. To me, however, the passage is intended to be deeply ironic. The hero, Joe, is a science journalist, and embodies a world-view arranged around a rather facile interpretation of science. Note that he isn't a real scientist; at one point he tries to get back into the world of scientific research, and is politely but firmly told that he's missed the boat.
There was another thing too, like a skin, a soft shell around the meat of my anger, limiting it and so making it appear all the more theatrical.
What I had thought was an expression was actually his face at rest. I had been misled by the curl of his upper lip, which some genetic hiatus had boiled into a snarl.This is writing I feel in my teeth—as if they are sinking into the meat he references—and my mouth waters.
L’inizio è facile da individuare. Eravamo al sole, vicino a un cerro che ci proteggeva in parte da forti raffiche di vento. Io stavo inginocchiato sull’erba con un cavatappi in mano, e Clarissa mi porgeva la bottiglia – un Daumas Gassac del 1987. L’istante fu quello, quella la bandierina sulla mappa del tempo: tesi la mano e, nel momento in cui il collo freddo e la stagnola nera mi sfioravano la pelle, udimmo le grida di un uomo. Ci voltammo a guardare dall’altra parte del prato, e intuimmo il pericolo. L’attimo dopo, correvo in quella direzione. Si trattò di un rivolgimento assoluto: non ricordo di aver lasciato cadere il cavatappi, né di essermi alzato, di aver preso una decisione, né di aver sentito la raccomandazione che Clarissa mi rivolse. Che idiozia, lanciarmi dentro questa storia e i suoi labirinti, allontanandomi di volata dalla nostra felicità, tra l’erba tenera di primavera accanto al cerro. Un altro grido e l’urlo del bambino, affievolito dal vento che spazzava le chiome alte degli alberi lungo le siepi. Accelerai la mia corsa. A quel punto, improvvisamente, da angolazioni diverse del prato, altri quattro uomini stavano convergendo sul luogo dell’incidente, correndo come me.