IAN MCEWAN is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.
Whitbread Prize Winner
"A death-defying story, inventive, eventful, and affirmative
without being sentimental." —Time
"Luminous, haunting, restrained ... cuts to the core of human
existence." —Chicago Tribune
"Resonates with psychological reality: the beautifully layered
relationships, the tracing of the many-layered love between father
and child, husband and wife.... As artfully conceived as it is
poignantly realized." —The New York Times Book Review
"A great pleasure to read.... McEwan writes as if Dickens,
Lawrence, and Woolf were in his bones.... Funny and unsentimentally
passionate." —The Wall Street Journal
There are actually several childen in McEwan's new novel: Stephen Lewis's kidnapped daughter; the barefoot boy his friend Charles tries (with fatal results) to become; the hypothetical child under study by the Official Commission on Child Care, on one of whose subcommittees Stephen sits. And there are several fictional modes at work, ranging from a realistic account of wrenching personal loss to a satire on bureaucracy. Unfortunately these varying aspects undercut rather than reinforce one another, and the result is a muddle. English writer McEwan made his name with the scarifying stories in First Love, Last Rites ( LJ 6/15/75). Despite a happy ending, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that here he's working in an uncongenial genre. Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Whitbread Prize Winner
"A death-defying story, inventive, eventful, and affirmative
without being sentimental." -Time
"Luminous, haunting, restrained ... cuts to the core of
human existence." -Chicago Tribune
"Resonates with psychological reality: the beautifully
layered relationships, the tracing of the many-layered love between
father and child, husband and wife.... As artfully conceived as it
is poignantly realized." -The New York Times Book Review
"A great pleasure to read.... McEwan writes as if Dickens,
Lawrence, and Woolf were in his bones.... Funny and unsentimentally
passionate." -The Wall Street Journal
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |