I hated the first half and almost tossed it in. Hopefully that's danced around to many spoilers! ( )Ĭan this author really be the same man who wrote Atonement? I have now read enough of his books to know there is a range from horrid to sublime and a bit of everything in between, and this one is the in between. Hence my ambivalence about the truth of the matter. I can understand his discomfort at what ensues, but I'm not sure he went about dealing with it in a logical manner, which is something he prided himself on.

But then, I am speaking fomr an agnostic position, in the same way that Joe is from an atheistic one. It's well done, but the religious mania element, while entirely relevant to the story, felt to have been laid on rather heavily at times. Joe is presented as unreliable narrator, and even after the appendix, I'm still left with the nagging feeling that he's not been entirely honest, either with us or himself, about something. It's quite a sad book as there is the ending and a fruitless beginning wrapped up in this one story. The relationship that is formed is one sided and not at all healthy, but it does endure, as the second appendix makes clear. The incident is the point at which the two male characters are first brought together and one of them completely misinterprets what's taking place. The various people arrive, take hold of the balloon's ropes but are unable to keep it under control and there is a dreadful accident. In this, the story starts with an accident, where a group of disparate people come together to try and hold a hot air balloon on the ground after the pilot miscalculates. I think I'm going to space hos books out, too many at once could lead to increasing instability. It's very clever, it's also rather unsettling.

In this, the seeds are planted mid way through that what Joe is saying might not be true, he might be seeing things, he might be the one with the mental instability. IN Amsterdam you're left wondering if there is a mastermind at work, pulling all the strings. In Atonement, he did the whole rip the carpet out from under your feet in the last chapter trick. He writes very different stories, but in all of them you are left with a nagging sensation that there's something that's not been said, that there is more to this that you've been told.

I think I've worked out what McEwan's 'thing' might be.

Enduring love book review