Product Description

Taut, brooding and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15730 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review
McEwan is a young Englishman whose first collection of short stories (five have appeared in little magazines) has been compared to Dahl and Collier. There are no elements of fine drawn invention and surprise here - only too literally does he manage to soil his hands. Most of them feature a nameless narrator of perverse preoccupations - like the one who graduates from whiskey, pot and masturbation but bypasses the prospect of Zulu Lulu for "Homemade" first sex with his kid sister. Little girls are never safe in McEwan's world: take the one who is promised a vista of "Butterflies" on a promenade down the path by a canal before she is assaulted and later drowns. There's the infantile retrograde in "Conversations with a Cupboard Man" who is finally sent packing by the mother who kept him that way to find a sanctuary in his attic room womb; there's another fatal accident in "Last Day of Summer"; a problem of "Solid Geometry" - the cleverest of the lot - you may not quite solve; the title story which reduces to the killing of a rat who has been scrabbling behind a wall of books; and finally the drag malice of "Disguises." Provocation of a sort, but is it really justified by such an overwhelming fetor? (Kirkus Reviews)

Julian Barnes
'A talented and genuine imaginative writer… the ironies, throughout this impressive collection, are tellingly weighted'

Time
‘A writer of uncanny power'

Customer Reviews

McEwan honing his craft
A sort of cross between A Clockwork Orange and The Wasp Factory; this was probably considered daring and probably well received for that reason on its publication in 1975. Macabre, and interesting mainly to see how McEwan has developed. It would be unreasonable to call this writing bad, it's just that it does not live up to the very high standards he set for himself later in Enduring Love and Atonement. Last Day of Summer, Homemade and Butterflies are the best of the stories here.

Unbearably depressing
I can't fault Ian McEwan's writing. It's largely because of the brilliance of his execution that I find myself, surprisingly, giving this a single star review. That's because I have to stick to my own star-rating system and reserve single stars for those books that I cannot finish. But while that dishonour is usually reserved for poorly written books, I couldn't finish this one as it was just too depressing, disturbing and altogether horrible.

The meticulously plotted rape of a child and a child sex murder are amongst the grim acts told in usually first person narratives - drowned babies, tortured cats and animal foetusses provide the casually violent backdrop. I read most of this book. But when I got to the last story, I just couldn't face any more. This is not to say that I haven't read much more graphically violent or explicit work and thoroughly enjoyed it - so this isn't a prudish problem. It's just that the relentlessly macabre, oppressive themes of these stories stuck in my brain and made me see the world as a gloomier place. So by the time I got to the final story, I decided enough was enough.

Of other works by the brilliant Mr McEwan, these stories most closely resemble, in my opinion, The Cement Garden. That claustrophobic, disturbing and dysfunctional tale seems almost to have `grown out of' this collection.

A victim of its own mercilessly dark prose, I can't recommend this book to anyone I'm afraid.

A perfect introduction to a great talent
I will try to be brief, but it won't be easy.

This was McEwan's first foray into print after attending the now famous Creative Writing course at UEA under the tutelage of Malcolm Bradbury.

This was an outstanding first collection for any writer and created plenty of waves when it first appeared in 1975. I personally remember the compulsion I felt and the sheer shock I experienced when I read it in 1980. "First Love, Last Rites" really was a milestone in short fiction, and the quality of the writing and its originality certainly stood out at the time.

Much of the subject matter is gruesome ("Homemade" and "Butterflies" to name but two) but the characterisation never falters and you believe in the narrators absolutely. Tellingly, perhaps, all but two of the stories are told in the first person, and they are done so convincingly and with plenty of panache.

However, the real gem of this collection, and the reason I still re-read it, is to be found in the second story.

"Solid Geometry" created quite a stir at the time as the BBC dramatisation of this eerie tale was banned before it even made it into production. What a shame that we had to wait until last year for such a marvellous tale to make it onto the small screen.

"Solid Geometry" is worth the price of this collection, alone. This is a dark, almost supernatural, tale that evokes everything that is great in the classic English Short Story tradition. It harks back to a past that still casts a shadow over the present, and has a grotesque quality all of its own. The first sentence is probably one of the most arresting of any short story of the twentieth century. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that "Solid Geometry" is probably one of the finest short stories ever written, comparable even with D.H. Lawrence's "The Rocking Horse Winner".

If you haven't read McEwan this is a perfect place to start. If you have read him, buy it for "Solid Geometry" alone. You will want to enjoy it again and again.