Product Description

In 1946, a young couple set off on their honeymoon. Fired by their ideals and passion for one another, they plan an idyllic holiday, only to encounter an experience of darkness so terrifying it alters their lives for ever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37900 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Observer
‘I judge it his best yet, which I should make clear is saying a great deal’

New York Times Book Review
‘Superbly evocative prose…The novel’s vision of Europe is acute and alive, vivid in its moral complexities’

New Yorker
'Brilliant…a meditation on the intoxications of violence and the redemptive power of love’

Customer Reviews

not yet fully developed, but good.
an early taste of the mcewan style, albeit not as full blown as some of the later works, but definitely one worth reading. the great mcewan themes already well in evidence and well worked. the interface of history and individual lives; the contrast and interweaving of the universal and the particular; the detailed observation of situations developing; the gradual unfolding of character and plot; the subtleties of attraction and repulsion within a couple's relationship; brilliant statements (in the last 10 pages as it happens) on the tragedy of war, and on the winding configurations of events that produce the details of our lives.

Disappointing
Having read Enduring Love, Atonement and Saturday I was expecting to be blown away once again by Ian McEwan.
I was glad when I had finished the book. Although well written I found the constant change from one decade to another intensely irritating and I
failed to really grasp the import of the black dogs as far as June was concerned.
Such an anti-climax and a book that seemed to go nowhere.

Unsatisfying and overly wordy
I usually like McEwan, even though he often enjoys using 250 words where 10 would have done. The fact that Black Dogs took forever and a day to get going didn't surprise me either - again that's a McEwan trademark. But whereas with, for example, Atonement, the patient reader is rewarded by a knock-em-dead story once it does kick in, the same cannot be said of this novel. The symbolism is contrived and heavy-handed and, in my opinion, the characters are too spoilt and naive to be sympathetic. This is a short novel that almost feels like a prelude to something else, which perhaps echoes the thin nature of the narrative. Not necessarily the best example of McEwan's work.