Product Description

One windy spring day in the Chilterns Joe Rose's calm, organized life is shattered by a ballooning accident. The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in mere tragedy, but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry. Unknown to Rose, something passes between them - something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose's beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3565 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Joe planned a postcard-perfect afternoon in the English countryside to celebrate his lover's return after six weeks in the States. The perfect day turns to nightmare, however, when they are involved in freak ballooning accident in which a boy is saved but a man is killed

In itself, the accident would change the couple and the survivors' lives, filling them with an uneasy combination of shame, happiness, and endless self-reproach. But fate has far more unpleasant things in store for Joe. Meeting the eye of fellow rescuer Jed Parry, for example, turns out to be a very bad move. For Jed is instantly obsessed, making the first of many calls to Joe and Clarissa's London flat that very night. Soon he's openly shadowing Joe and writing him endless letters. (One insane epistle begins, "I feel happiness running through me like an electrical current. I close my eyes and see you as you were last night in the rain, across the road from me, with the unspoken love between us as strong as steel cable.") Worst of all, Jed's version of love comes to seem a distortion of Joe's feelings for Clarissa.

Apart from the incessant stalking, it is the conditionals--the contingencies--that most frustrate Joe, a scientific journalist. If only he and Clarissa had gone straight home from the airport... If only the wind hadn't picked up... If only he had saved Jed's 29 messages in a single day... Ian McEwan has long been a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others' fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and--worst of all--becoming strangers to those who love them. Even his prose itself is a masterful and methodical exercise in de-familiarisation. But Enduring Love and its underrated predecessor, Black Dogs, are also meditations on knowledge and perception as well as brilliant manipulations of our own expectations. By the novel's end, you will be surprisingly unafraid of hot-air balloons, but you won't be too keen on looking a stranger in the eye. --Alex Freeman

Amazon.co.uk Review
Joe Rose has planned a postcard-perfect afternoon in the English countryside to celebrate his lover's return after six weeks in the States. To complete the picture, there's even a "helium balloon drifting dreamily across the wooded valley." But as Joe and Clarissa watch the balloon touch down, their idyll comes to an abrupt end. The pilot catches his leg in the anchor rope, while the only passenger, a boy, is too scared to jump down. As the wind whips into action, Joe and four other men rush to secure the basket. Mother Nature, however, isn't feeling very maternal. "A mighty fist socked the balloon in two rapid blows, one-two, the second more vicious than the first," and at once the rescuers are airborne. Joe manages to drop to the ground, as do most of his companions, but one man is lifted sky- high, only to fall to his death.

In itself, the accident would change the survivors' lives, filling them with an uneasy combination of shame, happiness and endless self-reproach. (In one of the novel's many ironies, the balloon eventually lands safely, the boy unscathed.) But fate has far more unpleasant things in store for Joe. Meeting the eye of fellow rescuer Jed Parry, for example, turns out to be a very bad move. For Jed is instantly obsessed, making the first of many calls to Joe and Clarissa's London flat that very night. Soon he's openly shadowing Joe and writing him endless letters. One insane epistle begins, "I feel happiness running through me like an electrical current. I close my eyes and see you as you were last night in the rain, across the road from me, with the unspoken love between us as strong as steel cable." Worst of all, Jed's version of love comes to seem a distortion of Joe's feelings for Clarissa.

Apart from the incessant stalking, it is the conditionals--the contingencies--that most frustrate Joe, a scientific journalist. If only he and Clarissa had gone straight home from the airport... if only the wind hadn't picked up... if only he had saved Jed's 29 messages in a single day... Ian McEwan has long been a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others' fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and--worst of all--becoming strangers to those who love them. Even his prose itself is a masterful and methodical exercise in defamiliarization. But Enduring Love and its underrated predecessor, Black Dogs, are also meditations on knowledge and perception as well as brilliant manipulations of our own expectations. By the novel's end, you will be surprisingly unafraid of hot-air balloons, but you won't be too keen on looking a stranger in the eye.

Bill Bryson, Sunday Times
'I cannot remember the last time I read a novel so beautifully written…utterly compelling from the very first page'

Customer Reviews

Beautifully written and constructed
Enduring Love is one of Ian McEwan's finest works. It is
also one of the most beautifully written and emotionally
engaging books to have come out of Britain in the past
decade. Fans of McEwan familiar with his superb wartime
novel, Atonement, will enjoy Enduring Love very much.
The novel focuses on love and obsession and the factors
that drive us and how we perceive ourselves through the prism
of our relationships in the modern world.
The story also renders a nuanced expose of the stalking
phenomenon and is constructed in such a way as to encourage
the reader to ponder whether the central character Joe
is imagining the stalking he seems to be undergoing.
An informed and well written dissection of this modern
phenomenon complete with the usual McEwan themes of love, loss
and beautiful prose.
I enjoyed this novel and found it an excellent companion piece
to Atonement. I must admit I prefer McEwan in this form
than to his enjoyable but farcical Booker-prize winning romp, Amsterdam. I would also encourage fans of the recent film
starring Daniel Craig and Samantha Morton to read the novel
as it differs in some regards from the film, which is
also excellent, though the medium lacks the same narrative
scope.

Perhaps Britain's finest novelist today.

Gripping - and just a little implausible
This is my first McEwan, and it drew me in entirely from the opening lines of Chapter One. The opening scene is beautifully, movingly, and intriguingly presented, and it sparks a ravenous curiosity in the reader.

I thoroughly enjoyed McEwan's narrative in the early parts of the book, however the characters never really sat comfortably for me nor evoked my sympathy.

The writing was really powerful in places - and then rather self-conscious in others. Maybe this is because McEwan was trying to stay true to the case study he presents in the Appendices.

The denouement felt a bit over-worked, as if McEwan was trying too hard for plausibility. The lack of viewpoints other than Joe Rose's through the book leads to an ending which feels rather rushed and contrived.

Some scenes are presented with masterful suspense and subtle pointers, yet when the action finally happens it feels weak. McEwan strikes me as being a very intellectual writer, which is great, and I wonder if some of the immediacy of the action suffers because of that.

I would have liked a bit more on Jed Parry, maybe an insight into his mindset or explanation about why he was in that Oxfordshire field, and why he became so entranced with Joe in particular, though I guess this isn't possible with a first person account. If there'd been an omniscient narrator instead this would have been more feasible - and I think might have made a more powerful, more convincing narrative, although a rather different type of book altogether.

The case study included in the end was enlightening, though it left me with lots of questions about why McEwan couldn't have broadened the scope of his novel to explore the facts of the case study more thoroughly, and in a more literary sense, rather than tagging on some scientific notes to the end in a kind of "told you so" gesture.

An extremely thought-provoking read, compelling in parts, though perhaps a bit narrow in scope, and with a bit of a dashed-off feel about it. Nevertheless a great discussion book!

Enduring Love, Ian McEwan
It is difficult to give a synopsis of this book, as after all so much of its cumulative power and suspense lie in the gradual revelation of its plot movement. It is really enough just to say that this is a novel about one man and his stalker. It begins with possibly the most sublime and perfect first chapter, which is a demonstration of McEwan's acute ability to create a teasing, hypnotic and terrible suspense from mere hints. From the events of that first chapter, one man's life is set on a new and potentially dangerous path.

In a way, McEwan's depiction of how people's lives can be adversely affected by brushing up against someone who, in accepted terms, is not quite "normal", is distinctly Rendellian. Though, while McEwan's portrayal of this particular malign influence is certainly powerful, here it is not quite as convincing or effective, even though it works well enough for the purposes of the plot. Another large slice of this novel's magic comes from McEwan's ability, through his tempered, reasonable prose, to make the most surreal of things seem entirely possible, even probable. Gradually, this book becomes a fascinating and satisfyingly oblique examination of obsession and all forms of love: familial, sexual, parental, as well as study in what love itself means, though the various character's experiences. The brilliant double-take title places a sharp gloss onto these themes, setting mental cogs in motion to top the excellent ensemble off perfectly.

Another of McEwan's trademarks is on brilliant display here, too: the depiction of the gradual disintegration of human relationships. He is a true master in this area, understanding with deadly realism how fragile relationships are, how even the smallest shifts can irreparably damage them if those changes are reinforced, if the requisite fixing is not done in time. This has long been a theme of McEwan's work, right from his first novel, "The Cement Garden", through to his Booker Prize-winning "Amsterdam", and here he tackles them possibly with more clarity and precision than ever before. He also manages a quite brilliant balance of science and emotion, which grounds the novel as well as allowing it to look upwards and outwards at the same time, into the soul.

His prose is also as tempered and spare as ever, perfectly succinct and tight, and is a virtuoso lesson in detachment. Eerily and atmospherically so, as this novel is written in the first person, giving an odd but effective personal juxtaposition between the reader and characters.

Enduring Love is a gripping, literate pageturner. It's not a book for people who like Pattersonesque comic-book style novels, but for those who like to savour the words, the semantics, the sentences - everything that lies hidden behind the scenes, as well as the story. Full of provoking pensive passages, it's one of the most compelling and intelligent novels yet from one of the world's literary heavyweights.