Contrary to the title, it's a thriller

books:


	• Enduring Love: A Novel Ian Mcewan Anchor, 1998 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 169 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Forever changed

The year this novel came out, I was living in London, going to university and working part-time at a book store. Stocking fiction paperbacks every week, I noticed how many of McEwan's books we always had coming in, but the title Enduring Love caught my attention. There was absolutely no description of the plot, only a few quotes of praise. Of course my curiousity meant I had to buy and read it. Perhaps b/c I read this novel w/ no expectations of any kind, reading this novel has been the single most pleasurable and altering reading experience of my life. While the ignorance that I approached this novel with may account for some of this experience, I do not think that another author could have had such a profound effect on my literary career. I began devouring all of his other writings, but this is still my favorite, and I believe his best work, with Amsterdam a close second. I recommend picking up any of his novels, carefully avoiding any specific reviews, synopsis, etc and just lose yourself in the carefully chosen words, for McEwan never wastes even one, and the poetry that is the sometimes enduring, sometime frightening genius of McEwan's explorations of the human psyche.

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Contrary to the title, it's a thriller

In "Enduring Love," Ian McEwan has written the most perfect first chapter I've ever read. Joe Rose, the narrator, begins by telling us, "Here's where it started" and you begin to realize, with horror, that what "it" is is the astonishingly rapid unraveling of the perfect life he has. The action begins when Joe happens to help with an accident waiting to happen--a hot air balloon buffeted by high winds, with a ten-year old boy cowering in the basket. Having acted unthinkingly to help save the boy, he and a handful of other men who happen to be nearby are towed upwards on the balloon lines, vainly attempting to bring it to earth. One by one they let go--all except one.

I won't divulge any more specifics than that, other than to say that McEwan is clearly a genius. His gift is in excavating the messy architecture of the human heart and exposing how very fleeting and tenuous some relationships are, while showing how firms the bonds of other relationships can be. The characters are realistically drawn and their interactions with each other true-to-life. There are a couple of twists, but they're believable--and they add to the general sense of loss and emotional horror and enforced loneliness this novel palpably sketches.

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A tale about obsession

Enduring Love deals with erotomania, or Clerambault's syndrome, most recently featured in the movie A La Folie...Pas Du Tout or He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not starring Audrey Tatou (of Amelie fame) and Samuel Le Bihan (of Brotherhood of the Wolf fame) - a rather chilling movie told in a cheerful, romantic comedy-esque manner. In McEwan's novel, how the two main characters meet is an event of remarkable proportions. A hot-air balloon appears to be flying out of control, tossed and buffeted by a strange wind, and four men rush to the aid of the pilot and a young boy trapped inside the basket. Suddenly they are lifted into the air, all the men hanging on to the ropes of the basket. Someone detects the danger and the futility of the effort, and drops first, then one by one, the others follow, save one. The balloon, after losing the extra weight, moves swiftly and farther away from the men who look on in horror. The last man hanging on eventually loses all strength and falls to his death. Ironically, the basket lands safely later and the boy is unhurt. One of the men, Jed Parry, becomes inexplicably drawn to the narrator, science writer, Joe Rose, after their joint witness of this awful incident. Something passes between them, according to Parry, and thus the novel unfolds its riveting tale of how life can change in a single instant. Murder and insanity ensue, of course.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

On a windy spring day in the Chilterns, the calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he witnesses a tragic accident: a hot-air balloon with a boy trapped in its basket is being tossed by the wind, and in the attempt to save the child, a man is killed. A stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety. But unknown to Rose, something passes between Parry and himself on that day--something that gives birth to an obsession in Parry so powerful that it will test the limits of Rose's beloved rationalism, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to the brink of murder and madness. Brilliant and compassionate, this is a novel of love, faith, and suspense, and of how life can change in an instant.

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