Ian McEwan is a swell writer I just can't get passionate about. Most of the time, when I read a new author, if I like him (or her) I read more. That makes sense. In some cases, I don't like the book I read, but I can tell there's more there--that the author in question has a ton of talent and a good voice and a masterpiece somewhere in his back catalog, or in his future for that matter; so in some of these cases, I'll read and read until...well, until I finish the next book, find myself mildly disappointed, and put it on the shelf, and after a year or two, I'll find another book by said-same author in a store and decide to give them another shot.
Ian McEwan I seem to come back to more regularly than certain other authors in that same category (Anthony Burgess, for example). The first book I read was "Amsterdam" while in the hospital and on some fantastic drugs; consequently, I don't remember much about it. I thought "Black Dogs" was very, very good--the central notion of history as an unshakeable force disrupting the lives of good, regular people isn't anything new, but it was beautifully expressed, short enough to read quickly but deep enough to leave an impression, a frisson-upon-finishing of satisfactory awe. Other works have impressed me less; "On Chesil Beach" was as filling as popcorn, "Enduring Love" took an obscure disease and tried to make a novel out of it, and "Saturday," though often interesting, ends with a textually inevitable but terribly, disappointingly melodramatic home invasion scenario.
My favorite, then, after "Black Dogs," is "The Innocent," a Cold War story about a tunnel built by the Americans underneath the Berlin Wall in the 50s and based off a true story--at least, the tunnel part was true; McEwan's characters are fiction. To explain why possibly explains his appeal: John Le Carre can write thrillers thick with detail and verisimilitude and plotting, but his characters are hard, stoic. McEwan's characters are...more empathetic. The reader can easily sympathize, easily understand; I'm not sure I ever quite got into Ian Smiley's head in Le Carre's stories, despite all of them tallying up at probably more than 2,000 pages, if you include "The Secret Pilgrim" et al. The point is: "The Innocent" is Le Carre fiction on a more human level, more understandable and sympathetic and because of that, more immediate in its enjoyability.
So all of that is just a sort of prelude to me wanting to say this: I just read Ian McEwan's last novel, "Sweet Tooth." It didn't blow my socks off. It had parts I liked and parts I didn't like. In a year or so, I may come across another novel of his in a used bookstore somewhere, and if it interests me there's a good chance I'll buy it, especially because, and this is the most important thing: Ian McEwan, even when he doesn't write great books, writes good reads.
I think that was the point I was trying to make.
Ian McEwan I seem to come back to more regularly than certain other authors in that same category (Anthony Burgess, for example). The first book I read was "Amsterdam" while in the hospital and on some fantastic drugs; consequently, I don't remember much about it. I thought "Black Dogs" was very, very good--the central notion of history as an unshakeable force disrupting the lives of good, regular people isn't anything new, but it was beautifully expressed, short enough to read quickly but deep enough to leave an impression, a frisson-upon-finishing of satisfactory awe. Other works have impressed me less; "On Chesil Beach" was as filling as popcorn, "Enduring Love" took an obscure disease and tried to make a novel out of it, and "Saturday," though often interesting, ends with a textually inevitable but terribly, disappointingly melodramatic home invasion scenario.
My favorite, then, after "Black Dogs," is "The Innocent," a Cold War story about a tunnel built by the Americans underneath the Berlin Wall in the 50s and based off a true story--at least, the tunnel part was true; McEwan's characters are fiction. To explain why possibly explains his appeal: John Le Carre can write thrillers thick with detail and verisimilitude and plotting, but his characters are hard, stoic. McEwan's characters are...more empathetic. The reader can easily sympathize, easily understand; I'm not sure I ever quite got into Ian Smiley's head in Le Carre's stories, despite all of them tallying up at probably more than 2,000 pages, if you include "The Secret Pilgrim" et al. The point is: "The Innocent" is Le Carre fiction on a more human level, more understandable and sympathetic and because of that, more immediate in its enjoyability.
So all of that is just a sort of prelude to me wanting to say this: I just read Ian McEwan's last novel, "Sweet Tooth." It didn't blow my socks off. It had parts I liked and parts I didn't like. In a year or so, I may come across another novel of his in a used bookstore somewhere, and if it interests me there's a good chance I'll buy it, especially because, and this is the most important thing: Ian McEwan, even when he doesn't write great books, writes good reads.
I think that was the point I was trying to make.
No comments:
Post a Comment