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Title: Amsterdam : A Novel by IAN MCEWAN ISBN: 0-385-49424-6 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 02 November, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.13 (234 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Compressed Quaility
Comment: McEwan's booker prize-winning novel traces the consequencesof a Machiavellian attitude towards work. Clive Linly a composer withan established reputation and Vernon Hailliday, editor of the struggle daily paper, The Judge, renew their former friendship at the funeral of their former lover, the larger than life forty-something year old Molly Lane.
There they meet George Lane, Molly's husband and another former lover Julian Garmony, the Foreign Secretary, who's despised by Molly's former lovers.
The novel traces the lives of the four men after Molly's funeral when they all face pinnacle moments in both their private and professional lives.
Amsterdam is a book without heroes. The characters fail to grab your sympathy, but this adds to the reader's curiosity as you try to unravel their true worth and nature. It's not a book about how the strong and ruthless survive but rather how obsession with work can turn into self-obsession and ultimately destruction as the books characters take personal desire over public responsibility.
The book's 196 pages make it more of a novella than a novel and some would argue that more time should have been given over to plot and character development. However an expansion of the books length could have faltered the quick tempo, that McEwan's rich language lends to the book, and the vagueness of the characters leads us to question rather than condemn them at the end, allowing for the books effect to linger long after the final page has been read.
This books quality has been questioned in comparison to other Booker winners but Amsterdam, a book so rich in dramatic irony should be judged on its own merits. This socio-political satire manages to examine such a thorny issue as human morality in a humorous and entertaining fashion and is a recommended read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Wonderful Start, Lukewarm Ending
Comment: Love Ian McEwan. This is a writer who'll call you names, but will giggle still and kiss you afterwards. His comedy and his portrait of modern life (or modern Britain during and after the Thatcher years) is without equal, and one should thank him for it.
But AMSTERDAM, his most critically-acclaimed work so far, is too obscure, too 'crammed' a book for this reviewer to highly recommend (Not that there is a need for it. This one, afterall, won THE Booker Prize). Here, four brilliantly constructed characters attempt to out-manouvre each other for no given reason (or is it perhaps because of pride? you decide). You will find it entertaining and inspiring to read how McEwan engineered each of his plots to deliver a psychological study (no matter how small the examination is) of his four major characters. You will feel their pain, their bitterness, their loneliness, their heartlessness, yet in a narrative that is straightforward and unsentimental. (His Julian Garmony, a cross-dressing politician of brilliant machiavellian talent, is one character you'll either love or hate. McEwan's account of Garmony's grasp of power simply is wonderful). Reading AMSTERDAM is like experiencing a Toni Morisson novel written by a PBS or an Economist (UK weekly mag) journalist, and this, I know, is not a bad thing.
This is a good introduction to McEwan, and a book highly enjoyable. But, as mentioned briefly above, the ending is quite lukewarm...
Rating: 4
Summary: Wonderful Start, Lukewarm Ending
Comment: Love Ian McEwan. This is a writer who'll call you names, but will giggle still and kiss you afterwards. His comedy and his portrait of modern life (or modern Britain during and after the Thatcher years) is without equal, and one should thank him for it.
But AMSTERDAM, his most critically-acclaimed work so far, is too obscure, too 'crammed' a book for this reviewer to highly recommend (Not that there is a need for it. This one, afterall, won THE Booker Prize). Here, four brilliantly constructed characters attempt to out-manouvre each other for no given reason (or is it perhaps because of pride? you decide). You will find it entertaining and inspiring to read how McEwan engineered each of his plots to deliver a psychological study (no matter how small the examination is) of his four major characters. You will feel their pain, their bitterness, their loneliness, their heartlessness, yet in a narrative that is straightforward and unsentimental. (His Julian Garmony, a cross-dressing politician of brilliant machiavellian talent, is one character you'll either love or hate. McEwan's account of Garmony's grasp of power simply is wonderful). Reading AMSTERDAM is like experiencing a Toni Morisson novel written by a PBS or an Economist (UK weekly mag) journalist, and this, I know, is not a bad thing.
This is a good introduction to McEwan, and a book highly enjoyable. But, as mentioned briefly above, the ending is quite lukewarm...
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Title: Atonement : A Novel by IAN MCEWAN ISBN: 038572179X Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 25 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Enduring Love : A Novel by Ian McEwan ISBN: 0385494149 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 29 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan ISBN: 0679749845 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 November, 1994 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Cement Garden by IAN MCEWAN ISBN: 0679750185 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 13 January, 1994 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Child in Time by Ian McEwan ISBN: 0385497520 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 02 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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