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Amsterdam: A Novel (Man Booker Prize Winner) Paperback – November 2, 1999
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On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is a newspaper editor. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen…
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateNovember 2, 1999
- Dimensions5.15 x 0.55 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100385494246
- ISBN-13978-0385494243
The chilling story of the abduction of two teenagers, their escape, and the dark secrets that, years later, bring them back to the scene of the crime. | Learn more
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"A dark tour de force, perfectly fashioned." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"A well-oiled machine.... Ruthless and amusing." —The New York Times Book Review
"Beautifully spare prose, wicked observation, and dark comic brio." —The Boston Globe
"At once far-reaching and tightly self-contained, a fin de siécle phantasmagoria." —New York
"Ian McEwan has proven himself to be one of Britain's most distinct voices and one of its most versatile talents.... Chilling and darkly comic." —Chicago Tribune
"By far his best work to date ... an energizing tightrope between feeling and lack of feeling, between humanity's capacity to support and save and its equally ubiquitous penchant for detachment and cruelty." —The San Diego Union-Tribune
"You won't find a more enjoyable novel ... masterfully wrought, sure to delight a reader with even half a sense of humor." —The Atlant Journal-Constitution
"McEwan writes the sort of witty repartee and scathing retort we wished we thought of in the heat of battle. On a broader scale, McEwan's portrayal of the mutually parasitic relationship between politicians and journalists is as damning as it is comic." —The Christian Science Monitor
From the Inside Flap
In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life. A sharp contemporary morality tale, cleverly disguised as a comic novel, Amsterdam is "as sheerly enjoyable a book as one is likely to pick up this year" (The Washington Post Book World).
From the Back Cover
In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life. A sharp contemporary morality tale, cleverly disguised as a comic novel, Amsterdam is "as sheerly enjoyable a book as one is likely to pick up this year" ("The Washington Post Book World).
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"She never knew what hit her." "When she did it was too late." "Rapid onset." "Poor Molly." "Mmm."
Poor Molly. It began with a tingling in her arm as she raised it outside the Dorchester Grill to stop a cab--a sensation that never went away. Within weeks she was fumbling for the names of things. Parliament, chemistry, propeller she could forgive herself, but less so bed, cream, mirror. It was after the temporary disappearance of acanthus and bresaiola that she sought medical advice, expecting reassurance. Instead, she was sent for tests and, in a sense, never returned. How quickly feisty Molly became the sickroom prisoner of her morose, possessive husband, George. Molly, restaurant critic, gorgeous wit, and photographer, the daring gardener, who had been loved by the foreign secretary and could still turn a perfect cartwheel at the age of forty-six. The speed of her descent into madness and pain became a matter of common gossip: the loss of control of bodily function and with it all sense of humor, and then the tailing off into vagueness interspersed with episodes of ineffectual violence and muffled shrieking.
It was the sight now of George emerging from the chapel that caused Molly's lovers to move off farther up the weedy gravel path. They wandered into an arrangement of oval rose beds marked by a sign, THE GARDEN OF REMEMBRANCE. Each plant had been savagely cut back to within a few inches of the frozen ground, a practice Molly used to deplore. The patch of lawn was strewn with flattened cigarette butts, for this was a place where people came to stand about and wait for the funeral party ahead of theirs to clear the building. As they strolled up and down, the two old friends resumed the conversation they had had in various forms a half-dozen times before but that gave them rather more comfort than singing "Pilgrim."
Clive Linley had known Molly first, back when they were students in '68 and lived together in a chaotic, shifting household in the Vale of Health.
"A terrible way to go."
He watched his own vaporized breath float off into the gray air. The temperature in central London was said to be twelve degrees today. Twelve. There was something seriously wrong with the world for which neither God nor his absence could be blamed. Man's first disobedience, the Fall, a falling figure, an oboe, nine notes, ten notes. Clive had the gift of perfect pitch and heard them descending from the G. There was no need to write them down.
He continued, "I mean, to die that way, with no awareness, like an animal. To be reduced, humiliated, before she could make arrangements, or even say goodbye. It crept up on her, and then . . ."
He shrugged. They came to the end of the trampled lawn, turned, and walked back.
"She would have killed herself rather than end up like that," Vernon Halliday said. He had lived with her for a year in Paris in '74, when he had his first job with Reuters and Molly did something or other for Vogue.
"Brain-dead and in George's clutches," Clive said.
George, the sad, rich publisher who doted on her and whom, to everyone's surprise, she had not left, though she always treated him badly. They looked now to where he stood outside the door, receiving commiseration from a group of mourners. Her death had raised him from general contempt. He appeared to have grown an inch or two, his back had straightened, his voice had deepened, a new dignity had narrowed his pleading, greedy eyes. Refusing to consign her to a home, he had cared for her with his own hands. More to the point, in the early days, when people still wanted to see her, he vetted her visitors. Clive and Vernon were strictly rationed because they were considered to make her excitable and, afterward, depressed about her condition. Another key male, the foreign secretary, was also unwelcome. People began to mutter; there were muted references in a couple of gossip columns. And then it no longer mattered, because the word was she was horribly not herself; people didn't want to go and see her and were glad that George was there to prevent them. Clive and Vernon, however, continued to enjoy loathing him.
As they turned about again, the phone in Vernon's pocket rang. He excused himself and stepped aside, leaving his friend to proceed alone. Clive drew his overcoat about him and slowed his pace. There must be over two hundred in the black-suited crowd outside the crematorium now. Soon it would seem rude not to go over and say something to George. He got her finally, when she couldn't recognize her own face in the mirror. He could do nothing about her affairs, but in the end she was entirely his. Clive was losing the sensation in his feet, and as he stamped them the rhythm gave him back the ten-note falling figure, ritardando, a cor anglais, and rising softly against it, contrapuntally, cellos in mirror image. Her face in it. The end. All he wanted now was the warmth, the silence of his studio, the piano, the unfinished score, and to reach the end. He heard Vernon say in parting, "Fine. Rewrite the standfirst and run it on page four. I'll be there in a couple of hours." Then he said to Clive, "Bloody Israelis. We ought to wander over."
"I suppose so."
But instead they took another turn about the lawn, for they were there, after all, to bury Molly.
With a visible effort of concentration, Vernon resisted the anxieties of his office. "She was a lovely girl. Remember the snooker table?"
In 1978 a group of friends rented a large house in Scotland for Christmas. Molly and the man she was going about with at the time, a QC named Brady, staged an Adam and Eve tableau on a disused snooker table, he in his Y-fronts, she in bra and panties, a cue rest for a snake and a red ball for an apple. The story handed down, however, the one that had appeared in an obituary and was remembered that way even by some who were present, was that Molly "danced naked on Christmas Eve on a snooker table in a Scottish castle."
"A lovely girl," Clive repeated.
She had looked right at him when she pretended to bite the apple, and smiled raunchily through her chomping, with one hand on a jutting hip, like a music hall parody of a tart. He thought it was a signal, the way she held his gaze, and sure enough, they were back together that April. She moved into the studio in South Kensington and stayed through the summer. This was about the time her restaurant column was taking off, when she went on television to denounce the Michelin guide as the "kitsch of cuisine." It was also the time of his own first break, the Orchestral Variations at the Festival Hall. Second time round. She probably hadn't changed, but he had. Ten years on, he'd learned enough to let her teach him something. He'd always been of the hammer-and-tongs school. She taught him sexual stealth, the occasional necessity of stillness. Lie still, like this, look at me, really look at me. We're a time bomb. He was almost thirty, by today's standards a late developer. When she found a place of her own and packed her bags, he asked her to marry him. She kissed him, and quoted in his ear, He married a woman to stop her getting away/Now she's there all day. She was right, for when she went he was happier than ever to be alone and wrote the Three Autumn Songs in less than a month.
"Did you ever learn anything from her?" Clive asked suddenly.
In the mid-eighties Vernon too had had a second bite, on holiday on an estate in Umbria. Then he was Rome correspondent for the paper he now edited, and a married man.
"I can never remember sex," he said after a pause.
"I'm sure it was brilliant. But I do remember her teaching me all about porcini, picking them, cooking them."
Clive assumed this was an evasion and decided against any confidences of his own. He looked toward the chapel entrance. They would have to go across. He surprised himself by saying rather savagely, "You know, I should have married her. When she started to go under, I would have killed her with a pillow or something and saved her from everyone's pity."
Vernon was laughing as he steered his friend away from the Garden of Remembrance. "Easily said. I can just see you writing exercise yard anthems for the cons, like what's-her-name, the suffragette."
"Ethel Smyth. I'd do a damn better job than she did."
The friends of Molly who made up the funeral gathering would have preferred not to be at a crematorium, but George had made it clear there was to be no memorial service. He didn't want to hear these three former lovers publicly comparing notes from the pulpits of St. Martin's or St. James's, or exchanging glances while he made his own speech. As Clive and Vernon approached they heard the familiar gabble of a cocktail party. No champagne trays, no restaurant walls to throw back the sound, but otherwise one might have been at one more gallery opening, one more media launch. So many faces Clive had never seen by daylight, and looking terrible, like cadavers jerked upright to welcome the newly dead. Invigorated by this jolt of misanthropy, he moved sleekly through the din, ignored his name when it was called, withdrew his elbow when it was plucked, and kept on going toward where George stood talking to two women and a shriveled old fellow with a fedora and cane.
"It's too cold, we have to go," Clive heard a voice cry out, but for the moment no one could escape the centripetal power of a social event. He had already lost Vernon, who had been pulled away by the owner of a television channel.
At last Clive was gripping George's hand in a reasonable display of sincerity. "It was a wonderful service."
"It was very kind of you to come."
Her death had ennobled him. The quiet gravity really wasn't his style at all, which had always been both needy and dour; anxious to be liked, but incapable of taking friendliness for granted. A burden of the hugely rich.
"And do excuse me," he added, "these are the Finch sisters, Vera and Mini, who knew Molly from her Boston days. Clive Linley."
They shook hands.
"You're the composer?" Vera or Mini asked.
"That's right."
"It's a great honor, Mr. Linley. My eleven-year-old granddaughter studied your sonatina for her final exam in violin and really loved it."
"That's very nice to know."
The thought of children playing his music made him feel faintly depressed.
"And this," George said, "also from the States, is Hart Pullman."
"Hart Pullman. At last. Do you remember I set your Rage poems for jazz orchestra?"
Pullman was the Beat poet, the last survivor of the Kerouac generation. He was a withered little lizard of a man who was having trouble twisting his neck to look up at Clive. "These days I don't remember a thing, not a fucking thing," he said pleasantly in a high-pitched, chirpy voice. "But if you said you did it, you did it."
"You remember Molly, though," Clive said.
"Who?" Pullman kept a straight face for two seconds, then cackled and clutched at Clive's forearm with slender white fingers. "Oh sure," he said in his Bugs Bunny voice. "Molly and me go way back to '65 in the East Village. I remember Molly. Oh boy!"
Clive concealed his disquiet as he did the sums. She would have turned sixteen in the June of that year. Why had she never mentioned it? He probed neutrally.
"She came out for the summer, I suppose."
"Uh-uh. She came to my Twelfth Night party. What a girl, eh, George?"
Statutory rape, then. Three years before him. She never told him about Hart Pullman. And didn't she come to the premier of Rage? Didn't she come to the restaurant afterward? He couldn't remember. Not a fucking thing.
George had turned his back to talk to the American sisters. Deciding there was nothing to lose, Clive cupped his hand about his mouth and leaned down to speak in Pullman's ear.
"You never fucked her, you lying reptile. She wouldn't have stooped to it."
It wasn't his intention to walk away at this point, for he wanted to hear Pullman's reply, but just then two loud groups cut in from left and right, one to pay respects to George, the other to honor the poet, and in a swirl of repositioning Clive found himself freed and walking away. Hart Pullman and the teenage Molly. Sickened, he pushed his way back through the crowd and arrived in a small clearing and stood there, mercifully ignored, looking around at the friends and acquaintances absorbed in conversation. He felt himself to be the only one who really missed Molly. Perhaps if he'd married her he would have been worse than George, and wouldn't even have tolerated this gathering. Nor her helplessness. Tipping from the little squarish brown plastic bottle thirty sleeping pills into his palm. The pestle and mortar, a tumbler of scotch. Three tablespoons of yellow-white sludge. She looked at him when she took it, as if she knew. With his left hand he cupped her chin to catch the spill. He held her while she slept, and then all through the night.
Nobody else was missing her. He looked around at his fellow mourners now, many of them his own age, Molly's age, to within a year or two. How prosperous, how influential, how they had flourished under a government they had despised for almost seventeen years. Talking 'bout my generation. Such energy, such luck. Nurtured in the postwar settlement with the state's own milk and juice, and then sustained by their parents' tentative, innocent prosperity, to come of age in full employment, new universities, bright paperback books, the Augustan age of rock and roll, affordable ideals. When the ladder crumbled behind them, when the state withdrew her tit and became a scold, they were already safe, they consolidated and settled down to forming this or that--taste, opinion, fortunes.
He heard a woman call out merrily, "I can't feel my hands or feet and I'm going!" As he turned, he saw a young man behind him who had been about to touch his shoulder. He was in his mid-twenties and bald, or shorn, and wore a gray suit with no overcoat.
"Mr. Linley. I'm sorry to intrude on your thoughts," the man said, drawing his hand away.
Clive assumed he was a musician, or someone come to collect his autograph, and shrank his face into its mask of patience. "That's all right."
"I was wondering if you'd have time to come across and talk to the foreign secretary. He's keen to meet you."
Clive pursed his lips. He didn't want to be introduced to Julian Garmony, but neither did he want to go to the bother of snubbing him. No escape. "You show the way," he said, and was led past standing clumps of his friends, some of whom guessed where he was going and tried to lure him from his guide.
"Hey, Linley. No talking to the enemy!"
The enemy indeed. What had attracted her? Garmony was a strange-looking fellow: large head, with wavy black hair that was all his own, a terrible pallor, thin unsensual lips. He had made a life in the political marketplace with an unexceptional stall of xenophobic and punitive opinions. Vernon's explanation had always been simple: high-ranking bastard, hot in the sack. But she could have found that anywhere. There must also have been the hidden talent that had got him to where he was and even now was driving him to challenge the PM for his job.
The aide delivered Clive into a horseshoe grouped around Garmony, who appeared to be making a speech or telling a story. He broke off to slip his hand into Clive's and murmur intensely, as though they were alone, "I've been wanting to meet you for years."
"How do you do."
Garmony spoke up for the benefit of the company, two of whom were young men with the pleasant, openly dishonest look of gossip columnists. The minister was performing and Clive was a kind of prop. "My wife knows a few of your piano pieces by heart."
Again. Clive wondered. Was he as domesticated and tame a talent as some of his younger critics claimed--the thinking man's Gorecki?
"She must be good," he said.
It had been a while since he had met a politician close up, and what he had forgotten was the eye movements, the restless patrol for new listeners or defectors, or the proximity of some figure of higher status, or some other main chance that might slip by.
Garmony was looking around now, securing his audience. "She was brilliant. Goldsmiths, then the Guildhall. A fabulous career ahead of her . . ." He paused for comic effect. "Then she met me and chose medicine."
Only the aide and another staffer, a woman, tittered. The journalists were unmoved. Perhaps they had heard it all before.
The foreign secretary's eyes had settled back on Clive. "There was another thing. I wanted to congratulate you on your commission. The Millennial Symphony. D'you know, that decision went right up to cabinet level?"
"So I heard. And you voted for me."
Clive had allowed himself a note of weariness, but Garmony reacted as though he had been effusively thanked. "Well, it was the least I could do. Some of my colleagues wanted this pop star chap, the ex-Beatle. Anyway, how is it coming along? Almost done?"
"Almost."
His extremities had been numb for half an hour but it was only now that Clive felt the chill finally envelop his core. In the warmth of his studio he would be in shirtsleeves, working on the final pages of this symphony, whose premiere was only weeks away. He had already missed two deadlines and he longed to be home.
He put out his hand to Garmony. "It was very nice to meet you. I have to be getting along."
But the minister did not take his hand and was speaking over him, for there was still a little more to be wrung from the famous composer's presence.
"Do you know, I've often thought that it's the freedom of artists like yourself to pursue your work that makes my own job worthwhile . . ."
More followed in similar style as Clive gazed on, no sign of his growing distaste showing in his expression. Garmony, too, was his generation. High office had eroded his ability to talk levelly with a stranger. Perhaps that was what he offered her in bed, the thrill of the impersonal. A man twitching in front of mirrors. But surely she preferred emotional warmth. Lie still, look at me, really look at me. Perhaps it was nothing more than a mistake, Molly and Garmony. Either way, Clive now found it unbearable.
The Foreign Secretary reached his conclusion "These are the traditions that make us what we are."
"I was wondering," Clive said to Molly's ex-lover, "whether you're still in favor of hanging."
Garmony was well able to deal with this sudden shift, but his eyes hardened.
"I think most people are aware of my position on that. Meanwhile, I'm happy to accept the view of Parliament and the collective responsibility of the cabinet." He had squared up, and he was also turning on the charm. The two journalists edged a little closer with their notebooks.
"I see you once said in a speech that Nelson Mandela deserved to be hanged."
Garmony, who was due to visit South Africa the following month, smiled calmly. The speech had recently been dug up, rather scurrilously, by Vernon's paper. "I don't think you can reasonably nail people to things they said as hot-head undergraduates." He paused to chuckle. "Almost thirty years ago. I bet you said or thought some pretty shocking things yourself."
"I certainly did," Clive said. "Which is my point. If you'd had your way then, there wouldn't be much chance for second thoughts now."
Garmony inclined his head briefly in acknowledgment. "Fair enough point. But in the real world, Mr. Linley, no justice system can ever be free of human error."
Then the foreign secretary did an extraordinary thing that quite destroyed Clive's theory about the effects of public office and that in retrospect he was forced to admire. Garmony reached out and, with his forefinger and thumb, caught hold of the lapel of Clive's overcoat and, drawing him close, spoke in a voice that no one else could hear.
"The very last time I saw Molly she told me you were impotent and always had been."
"Complete nonsense. She never said that."
"Of course you're bound to deny it. Thing is, we could discuss it out loud in front of the gentlemen over there, or you could get off my case and make a pleasant farewell. That is to say, fuck off."
The delivery was rapid and urgent, and as soon as it was over Garmony leaned back, beaming as he pumped the composer's hand, and called out to the aide, "Mr. Linley has kindly accepted an invitation to dinner." This last may have been an agreed code, for the young man stepped across promptly to usher Clive away while Garmony turned his back on him to say to the journalists, "A great man, Clive Linley. To air differences and remain friends, the essence of civilized existence, don't you think?"
Product details
- Publisher : Vintage (November 2, 1999)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0385494246
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385494243
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.15 x 0.55 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #102,468 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #881 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #1,573 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #7,514 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels for adults, as well as The Daydreamer, a children's novel illustrated by Anthony Browne. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His other award-winning novels are The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, and Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize.
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Customers praise the writing quality and humor of the book. They describe it as well-written, easy to read, and witty with irony. Many find the book short and enjoyable. However, opinions differ on the plot and readability. Some readers appreciate the mature insight into the twists of fate, while others feel the plot is flawed and rushed toward its ending. There are also mixed reviews regarding the character development, with some finding them amazing and sharply drawn, while others consider them annoying or shadowy.
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Customers praise the writing quality of the book. They find the language delightful, the plot engaging, and the writing tight. The book is easy to read with satisfying pacing and a satisfying conclusion. Readers appreciate the passages about music as among the author's best.
"...Well-written, with a dark humor pervading its pages, Amsterdam is a good, brief read." Read more
"...Despite the beautiful prose, the terse writing style, and the wonderful mature insight into the twists of fate, there was too much symetry and a too..." Read more
"...It was easy to see how the pivotal moments after Molly's death transformed them toward their darker sides...." Read more
"...is set at the core of a cultural elite who enjoys expensive wine, produces art and makes decisions that can change the future of a nation,..." Read more
Customers find the humor in the book witty, ironic, and well-written. They describe it as a good, brief read with dark realism and a biting commentary on literary/artistic pretensions. The wit and irony keep the book light without being superficial, making it quirky and entertaining.
"...Well-written, with a dark humor pervading its pages, Amsterdam is a good, brief read." Read more
"...McEwan themes such as fidelity, politics, writers as characters and irony...." Read more
"This is certainly a well written short novel. It is clever, bitter, witty, and moves at such a quick pace that I suggest reading it in one sitting..." Read more
"...level, and it ruined what had, up till then, been a highly enjoyable, witty and insightful work...." Read more
Customers find the book a quick and enjoyable read. They describe it as a good, brief novel, with an excellent title. The author is described as one of the best storytellers around today, never wasting a word.
"...At less than 200 pages of relatively big print, Amsterdam is a short novel that can be read pretty quickly...." Read more
"...Entertaining and thoughtful, this quickly read short book is certainly above average but certainly not great literature." Read more
"...Still, this is a very pleasant, short, brief, light and entertaining read." Read more
"...a good reputation, but this book left you feeling it was a too long short story or a too short novel... interesting characters, a different plot..." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the plot. Some find it interesting enough, with a mature insight into twists of fate. Others feel the plot is flawed and predictable, with an inherently unbelievable ending.
"...Although it starts slowly, the story soon becomes quite compelling...." Read more
"...There are some lessons without being preachy on 'judge not lest ye be judged.' It is very tongue in cheek, like the very best of Ian McEwan." Read more
"...are not adequately explained, but in more essential ways the plot line is deeply flawed...." Read more
"...beautiful prose, the terse writing style, and the wonderful mature insight into the twists of fate, there was too much symetry and a too tightly..." Read more
Customers have different views on the book's readability. Some find it a pleasant, light, and entertaining read with seamless transitions between interior and exterior perspectives. Others feel the book is disappointing, overly complicated, and underdeveloped.
"...of his that I've read, and, even if it's not his best, it is still a good book...." Read more
"...however, feels a little unbalanced in this respect, and therefore underdeveloped - one might easily, one suspects, have transcended the doom and..." Read more
"...Entertaining and thoughtful, this quickly read short book is certainly above average but certainly not great literature." Read more
"...dark humor isn’t my type but that didn’t diminish from what was an enjoyable read...." Read more
Customers have different views on the character development. Some find the characters amazing and sharply drawn, with great insight into their minds and daily lives. The author is praised for his attention to plot details and talent. However, others feel the rhythm is slow and the characters are not interesting at all.
"...many familiar McEwan themes such as fidelity, politics, writers as characters and irony...." Read more
"...The book has shallow, self-indulgent characters, but that doesn't mean they are not interesting...." Read more
"...as any other contemporary writer, McEwan pays great attention to the intricacies of plot and character...." Read more
"...started plotting, I found the pages turning rapidly; I then engaged with the characters, their vulnerabilities, as well as the streak of evil that..." Read more
Customers have different views on the book's pacing. Some find it fast-paced and engaging, with a taut plot and sharply drawn characters. Others feel the story starts slowly and lacks direction, with a slow rhythm and rushed ending.
"...Although it starts slowly, the story soon becomes quite compelling...." Read more
"...It is clever, bitter, witty, and moves at such a quick pace that I suggest reading it in one sitting if possible...." Read more
"...how well the characters have been developed although the time frame is just a few weeks...." Read more
"...is typically McEwan: an intriguing story told in depth, but the extremely slow pace gives it an air of unbelievability...." Read more
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- Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2006Although Ian McEwan has been around for a while, his first really `big" novel was Atonement. For me, as probably with many others, Atonement was my first exposure to McEwan, but I decided it wouldn't be my last. Amsterdam is the fourth book of his that I've read, and, even if it's not his best, it is still a good book.
There are three principal characters in this novel: Clive Linley, a classical music composer; Vernon Halliday, a newspaper editor; and Molly Lane, who though dead before the book begins (the story starts at her funeral), is the sun around which all the characters orbit. Clive and Vernon have both had love affairs with Molly and still have deep affection for her; despite this (or because of this), they are friends. Generally, they agree in their contempt for two people: Molly's husband George and another one of her lovers, an extremist politician, Julian Garmony.
Clive, under pressure to finish a symphony he was commissioned to do, takes a vacation to a rural area. There, he witnesses a possible crime and reacts to it an improper manner. Meanwhile, Vernon receives through George some compromising pictures of Julian and is faced with the decision about publishing them in his struggling newspaper. The repercussions of both Clive's and Vernon's actions will affect them in ways they could not have imagined at the outset and the damage to their friendship may be the least of the issues.
As is typical of McEwan novels, the book focuses on characters making bad decisions and the effects that these choices have on a number of people. At less than 200 pages of relatively big print, Amsterdam is a short novel that can be read pretty quickly. Although it starts slowly, the story soon becomes quite compelling. Well-written, with a dark humor pervading its pages, Amsterdam is a good, brief read.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2015To be fair, I am generally (although not unequivocally) a fan of Ian McEwan. Amsterdam includes many familiar McEwan themes such as fidelity, politics, writers as characters and irony.
These themes are cleanly entwined in the plot as Clive and Vernon mourn the death of Molly.
Clive and Vernon each have a past with Molly, but remain longtime friends who lean on each other in their time of grief.
They also share a strong dislike toward Molly's politician paramour, Julian, as well as her husband, George. They don't understand her choice of Julian or George, as they consider both to be bland in personality and looks. These feelings are acerbated because Julian is shown to be a bit of a political snake, and George keeps his free spirit wife confined and away from her friends as her illness progresses.
Clive and Vernon ask each other for an important favor, the kind you only ask a dear and lifelong friend.
Some time later, they each face a moral dilemma. Being as close as they are, they each confide in each other regarding the moral dilemma. They each are able to reason that they themselves only did what they had to in their own dilemma, but harshly judge the other's actions.
This is where the true irony comes into the story.
Like all of McEwan's writing, Amsterdam says quite a bit in a few words. There are some lessons without being preachy on 'judge not lest ye be judged.' It is very tongue in cheek, like the very best of Ian McEwan.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2006This is certainly a well written short novel. It is clever, bitter, witty, and moves at such a quick pace that I suggest reading it in one sitting if possible. Even though it is pure black comedy, I found it full of dark realism.
What did I find engaging in the book?
First, McEwan captured perfectly the tense, rushing, crisis focused, deadline driven world of newspaper publishing in the character of Vernon Halliday. The world of contemporary newspapers is one of balancing entertainment with deliberation, scandal with foresight. Unfortunately the forces of cheap entertainment and contrived scandal overpower careful policy analysis,which usually gets squeezed off the page. Vernon is a survivor in this world and his timing is usually impecible, until the event that brings the politically astute board of directors down on his head and career. He is revealed as calculating opportunist who may be losing his sharp edge.
Second, the world of the elitist artist is certainly captured in the life of Clive Linley who is so absorbed in intellectual dissection of his every creative impulse that he shows incredible moral cowardice when he fails to save a young women from a rapist on a wooded path. He is revealed as spent and ethically bankrupt.
Third, the world of the political scandal is captured in Julian Garmony, the conservative politician who engages in cross-dressing. No sooner is the scandal revealed that this politician and his saintly pediatric surgeon wife command the stage, command the issue, and thus control a potentially disasterous event in the life of a politician.
Fourth, all of Molly Lane's former lovers wonder what she sees in her older rich husband, George Lane. Well, this character emerges as a master manipulator and brilliant strategist who comes out of all the scandals smelling like a rose.
Fifth, McEwan knows about the twists of fate, how to control them if you can and how to get out of their way if you can't. Poor Molly, the hippie journalist/photographer with her many lovers, had such a twist with her quick death from cancer. However her lovers follow as the fates quickly provide them with their due rewards.
What bothered me about the book?
Despite the beautiful prose, the terse writing style, and the wonderful mature insight into the twists of fate, there was too much symetry and a too tightly wrapped up clever ending. Two old friends offer to help kill each other once their ability to fully live is spent. Neither fellow suspects that the fateful date was fast approaching both of them.
Entertaining and thoughtful, this quickly read short book is certainly above average but certainly not great literature.
Top reviews from other countries
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in the United Kingdom on December 8, 2024
4.0 out of 5 stars Creepy but very entertaining
As it says in the title. If you like his earlier, dark writing you will enjoy this
- Ugam KumarReviewed in Germany on September 2, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Great novel
The media could not be loaded.
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KARINAReviewed in Mexico on February 7, 2020
4.0 out of 5 stars TIEMPO
Llego en tiempo
- preeta kuhad baliaReviewed in India on July 5, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Ian McEwan
Stupendous and everything that's essential to good storytelling! As brilliant a work as any, a rare gem! McEwan is a wiz!
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眞野Reviewed in Japan on December 7, 2017
4.0 out of 5 stars おすすめ
ラストが面白いです。
でもこの作者の一番ではないかな。
読んでみる価値はあると思います。薄いのですぐ読めるし。