Falling in love again

With Ian McEwan. Atonement remains one of my favorite books, but when I tried Saturday I just couldn't connect with the book. When I saw his book the Innocent, set in one of my favorite periods, the mid-Cold War, I just had to try it. The setting turns out to be relatively unimportant. This isn't really a Cold War thriller, but is a classic McEwan exploration of the inner life of a few people.

In this case, we have the inexperienced British civil servant, Leonard , who is sent to work on a joint US-British spy operation in mid-50s Berlin. While there he falls in love with a young German woman named Maria. This is his first love affair, and his internal monologues are perfect. Even in this relatively early novel ( 1990) he has mastered the little foibles and mental tricks we play on ourselves. The relationship between them is lovingly rendered, but this is a McEwan novel so you know something is going to go wrong, most likely horribly.

And oh does it ever. McEwan keeps you guessing as to how things will go wrong, as there are a number of characters through which catastrophe might rear its ugly head. Speaking of ugly, the book features one chapter that is flat out disturbing. McEwan shows an act, often used a joke in films and describes in grotesque, lengthly, nearly vomit inducing detail.

While that might seem gratuitous, it ties into the theme of innocence and its loss. For some characters innocence is well and truly lost after that event. But McEwan plays, not unlike William Boyd in a Good Man in Africa, on just who the Innocent in the title is. It would appear that every character is far from it, but that turns out not to be true.

Many authors can conjure up a good wistful, stare thoughtfully into the distance novel, but McEwan goes a step further by arguing, with his ending, that life, despite all its horror and our mistakes, is well worth living and there is still time to do what we must. This ties the book to Atonement as I think McEwan was saying something similar in that book.

Now you are no doubt desperate to buy as much McEwan as you can, but how can you? Well, Powell's is having a McEwan sale, with new books at 30% off and a wide range of used books. I picked up Black Dogs for myself.