Featured Reading Guide
Ian McEwan
One windy spring day in the Chilterns Joe Rose’s calm, organized life is shattered by a ballooning accident. The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in mere tragedy, but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry. Unknown to Rose, something passes between them – something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose’s beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.
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topAbout the Book
One windy spring day in the Chilterns Joe Rose’s calm, organized life is shattered by a ballooning accident. The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in mere tragedy, but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry. Unknown to Rose, something passes between them – something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose’s beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.
topIan McEwan interview/review
From an interview in The Observer, 20 September 1998 by William Leith.
McEwan has always taken an interest in death. In his early stories, death seemed to hold no fear; his protagonists killed deftly and without conscience, in the same way that they committed incest. In the more recent work, death has become a more complex and pressing issue; the stories are thick with the possibility of accidental death, or the practical need to bludgeon someone to death and dispose of the body. In Enduring Love.. what appears to be an accidental death actually occurs in a grey area of moral responsibility.
—•—
On the writing of Enduring Love, from an Interview with Natasha Walter
“I’d been reading a lot of science,” he begins. “I wanted to write something about rationality, about how there’s something to be said for rationality,. And the fictional form most about the rational is the detective novel, so I started there. I had a narrator tell us how he went to get a gun from some hippies, and I started to think, who is this guy? I began to realise that he wasn’t interested in being a detective, he didn’t talk like one. Then I heard about the balloon accident. And then I read about de Clerambault’s syndrome – that strange parody of what it is to fall in love – and somewhere along the line I realised that the balloon was the focus.”
topStarting Points for Discussion
- The author plants many incidents which raise suspicion as to the reliability of Joe Rose’s account. At what point did you know for sure that Jed Parry was a genuine threat to Joe?
- Joe Rose is as an ardent believer in scientific rationalism while Clarissa is more inclined to the subjectivity of the Romantic poets. How do these positions affect the way they deal with the Jed Parry situation?
- The novel offers both a compelling story and a discussion of certain scientific issues. Were you interested in the scientific enquiries?
- With which character or characters do you sympathise?
- The novel ends with a conclusion of the question over John Logan’s fidelity. How does this sub-plot contribute to your understanding of the themes in the novel?
- The novel is concluded with a set of appendices offering a solid medical account of Parry’s condition. Without these, would you have understood the novel differently?
Other Books by Ian McEwan
Amsterdam
Atonement
On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees…
Suggested Further Reading
- The Collector ~ John Fowles
- Possession ~ A S Byatt
- In the Cut ~ Susanne Moore
- The Keepsake ~ Kirsty Gunn
- The Way I Found Her ~ Rose Tremain
- Perfume ~ Patrick Süskind