Ian McEwan

Amsterdam

I found the writing style somewhat average, but was very entertained by the story and the characters. Feels like this was a way for the author to raise a few interesting, shocking questions (although without truly going ahead and discuss them). I enjoyed seeing this questions raised, and it made me as a reader think about them, even if the book itself doesn't really go through.

Pedro

In the affairs of his dead wife, a British publisher discovers compromising pictures of the foreign secretary who was her lover. An opportunity for revenge on both the political and personal level.

A very mid book lol. Some nice writing and parts made me laugh but the end was unconvincing. Kind of like Clive's symphony 

Nina 

Michael Springer

This is a morality tale, and the moral is OH MY GOD, EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD IS CORRUPT!

illya

I'd make a full review but it's not worth my time

Jeff Brown 

An odd little book that is written masterfully (except for the final two dozen pages or so -- a really jarring, quizzical finish).

The pact between two men who are attending the funeral of their former lover was interesting, but that was just the start of the moral roadblocks for these characters.

One of the men was a tedious fellow, but as a newspaper editor, his moral dilemma was quite interesting.

But the best writing came through the other gentleman -- a composer who is so obsessed with the piece that is due, that he ignores the moral possibilities that are obviously before him.

A very good book, described as a dark comedy. The Brits are very good at that, but I probably missed a couple of examples of it.

The writing was so good, I will put McEwan's popular "Atonement" on my TBR list, without even knowing what it's about!

Mary Baldwin

A beautifully written book with the prospect of an incredible plot that is always left out of reach. If you want character and depth, this is your thing. If you want the love triangle murder mystery hinted at by the blurb then it isn't for you.

I'm a huge McEwan fan but this just didn't do it for me. The first three chapters had such great prospect but they didn't develop as I hoped.

Two old friends, Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday, both former lovers of the late Molly Lane, meet to pay their last respects and make a pact that will have unforeseen consequences

A Novel

Trevor Berrett

This is the funniest McEwan book I've read. It's also probably one of the funniest Booker winners I've read. That's not to say it's light, but its dark humor definitely hits the right spot. 

McEwan's style is excellent. When he wants the book to speed up, the prose forces the reader to move quickly. When he wants things to slow down (which doesn't happen often in this quick read) he manages to slow it down while still being interesting.

The story is a lark. I had a lot of fun with it. It picks out three men in their fifties. Each has been a lover of Molly's, who's dead on the first page. Each attends her funeral. Clive is a composer, about to write his most important work, a work that will cement his place as a genius. Vernon is top editor of The Judge, one of London's newspapers, and he's got a story that is guaranteed to push it to the top. The other, Julian, is a politician, favored to become PM. These characters and the novel as a whole parodies the world in which we live wonderfully. Impressively, though it's been ten years since Amsterdam won the prize, and even though the world has changed, many things, the things this novel picks up and plays with, have not changed at all, and this novel still hits the right spots in the eary twenty-first century. 

That said, I didn't really think it was much more than that. It had some great commentary on society and art, jealousy and ambition, death and revenge; however, the commentary seemed more fitting to a column in a high-brow newspaper than a Booker prize winner. It was ironic, it was witty, and it was fun. But unlike other Bookers and other McEwan novels nothing else really stood out. What was unique was the story, not what it said. Or maybe more will come to me with time, and I'll see just how profound this book really was. Still, a quick, fun read that I recommend. It's better than this last paragraph makes it sound.

Amsterdam

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