Ian McEwan and the Mess of Living

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2022/08/ian-mcewan-lessons-perfect-mess

by apollinaire • 4 years ago

23 8 4 years ago

JNRowe3• 4 years ago

Lacking the shame to avoid asking for recommendations from time to time¹.

Imagining you're the type of person that really wanted to like Machines Like Me for its concept but found the exposition truly painful, are other McEwan books worth a read? Basically was Machines Like Me an outlier or standard McEwan?

[Edit: Worded harshly, but without too much malintent; books are art, and appreciation is personal.]

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22418898

kevmarsden• 4 years ago

I haven't read Machines Like Me, but Atonement is one of my all-time favorite novels. To give you an idea of my general tastes, I'm drawn towards late 19th and early 20th century writers. McEwan's style reminds me of English writers in that period, such as Maugham and Greene.

JNRowe3• 4 years ago

Graham Greene's wikipedia article is a wonderful rabbit hole of weirdness and apparent coincidence¹. Famous spies, well-known con artists, involvement in huge moments in history, etc.

¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene

shakabrah• 4 years ago

I really enjoyed Nutshell. Although it is narrated by an unborn fetus (really) it is still pretty verbose, if that’s what you meant by painful exposition. I’ve only read parts of Amsterdam and it just seems to be his way.

JNRowe3• 4 years ago

I can't quite put my finger on what felt wrong to me. I think it was partly the verbosity, but in the end I talked myself in to being annoyed at having to get to the end which was never going to help.

As for Nutshell, it looks like exactly the type of story I'd love to enjoy. I'm going to pick it up, then move on to kevmarsden and teh_klev's tips if it pans out.

Thanks peeps!

teh_klev• 4 years ago

Lacking the shame

Never be ashamed.

Sweet Tooth[0] is an interesting novel. It's about how the (British) MI5 involves itself with artists to promote anti-communism in the 70's. The novel opens itself up to to discovering Francis Stonor Saunders' "Who Paid the Piper"[1] which is a book about how the CIA used literature as a cultural weapon against the Soviet Union, also very interesting.

Ian McEwen can take us to all sorts of strange places.

I'm not a big reader of McEwan, but the next thing on my shelf is "Solar" which looks quite interesting. If you want to expand your reading outside of McEwan then dip into his pal Martin Amis and his earlier works such as Dead Babies, or even The Rachel Papers (ignore the film).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Tooth_(novel)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Paid_the_Piper%3F

jakubmazanec• 4 years ago

Atonement is one of the best novels ever, and I would also recommend On Chesil Beach.

Ian McEwan and the Mess of Living

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