Enduring Love
A Novel
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3.6 • 69 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement—a brilliant and compassionate novel of love, faith, and suspense, and of how life can change in an instant.
"A remarkable novel, haunting and original and written in prose that anyone who writes can only envy." —The Washington Post
The calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he sees a man die in a freak hot-air balloon accident. A stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety, but unknown to Rose, something passes between Parry and himself on that day—something that gives birth to an obsession in Parry so powerful that it will test the limits of Rose's beloved rationalism, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The stunning beginning of McEwan's latest novel delivers a vivid visceral jolt: six men run across a verdant English field, each bent on rescuing a man dangling by a rope from a helium balloon while a small boy cowers in the basket, about to be swept away. One of the would-be rescuers will become a victim instead, falling to his death. But the tragedy is just the catalyst of what will be another one of McEwan's (The Child in Time) eerie stories of bizarre events and personal obsessions. As always, his work is imbued with a mounting sense of menace as the unthinkable intrudes into the everyday. Narrator Joe Rose is astonished, then repelled, then deeply frightened when one of the men, an unstable, delusional young man called Jed Parry, sees the incident as fated, a divine command to him to bring Joe to God. The tightly controlled narrative charts Joe's psychological disintegration as Jed stalks him with accelerating frenzy. Jed's mad demands feed into Joe's sense of guilt about his behavior during the fateful afternoon and his frustration with his career as a science writer. The ultimate casualty, after two more violent events occur, is Joe's relationship with his lover, Clarissa, a professor and expert on Keats. McEwan wrings wry meaning from the contrast of poetry and science, the limitations of rational logic and the delusive emotional temptations of faith. As he investigates the nature of obsessive love, McEwan takes some false steps in explaining Clarissa's misperceptions of Joe's behavior, somewhat lessening his story's credibility but not its powerful impact. Perhaps it is this lapse that persuaded the Booker judges not even to nominate the book, touted by the British press early on as a sure choice for winner. Whatever its limitations, however, the tightly controlled narrative, equally graced with intelligent speculation and dramatic momentum, will keep readers hooked. First serial to the New Yorker; author tour.
Customer Reviews
Very clever. This is reality?
Another taut psychological thriller from McEwan. I almost gave up a times, but I stuck with it, based on having thought well of many if his previous books. Though I cannot say the ending was satisfying in any sense, it was well worth the effort, and I'm glad I trusted the author and stuck with it.
Fantastic
One of the best books I’ve read. Years later, I still recommend this ingenious page turner. This was a hard book to write well, but it was written by a master.
Enduring Love
The best thing about this story is the reality that our hero Joe could be imagining the "other" and the other's love. We know for sure that he exists and then we don't And then ultimately, we do.
The illness described could be attributed to any moonstruck person who wants desperately to believe that his love for another is noticed, acknowledged and returned tenfold. How many of us has mistaken a word, a gesture, a glance to be something other than what it is? In Jerry Seinfeld's world the phrase "tell George I said hi" is much more meaningful than "give George my regards" and everyone in the scenario knows it.
McEwan's description of the bereft woman whose husband died in an attempt to save the child in the balloon who didn't need saving anyway and her life and lot touched the core of my being -- I felt true warmth and true contempt for her; she was a mixture of all things, all emotions.
I do not write long reviews. Too many reviews of books and especially films, give away the plot and reveal too much about the characters. I realize it is not enough to simpy say this is a gre book -- a great study -- just go and read it and yo won't b sorry, but