Product Description

"Black Dogs" is built around a brilliant short story, a memerically slow-motion encounter with two terrifying dogs by an English couple who are honeymooning just after the war in a French mountain village.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38319 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

Engrossing exploration of the dark heart of the 20th Century
This is less of a gripping page turner than some of McEwan's later books, and may suffer in comparison as a result. However, it rewards on other levels. As always in McEwan the characterisation is totally convincing, but it is the book's engagement with history that really compels. McEwan takes in war, revolution and the nature of evil, and the image of the black dogs haunted my imagination as it did the characters in the book. The scenes in Berlin as the wall comes down were also memorable, but more than anything I enjoyed this book because it made me think, and because it showed that the author himself had really grappled with the themes of the book without ever losing sight of the every day reality of being human.

The sadness of love
This time McEwan holds the tension between the opposites though his characters cannot (he doesn't kill them off as in Amsterdam). Brilliant insights into what keeps us apart, the wall that doesn't come down between a man and wife, even when there is love. The dogs are terrifying. I was held throughout. It gave me hope, and energy. A wonderful book.

Unenjoyable and disappointing
This was the 7th Ian McEwan book I have read - all of the others I have either loved or really liked. Enduring Love and Amsterdam are two of my favourite all-time novels. Black Dogs is the only one of his books I did not enjoy and actually disliked. Not only is there nothing to keep the story moving along, but the symbolism is absurdly obvious and the events implausible.