Gonna make you burn, gonna make you sting

McEwan's Black Dogs was written in 1992 and follows up the Cold War Innocent with a story that includes both the beginning and the end of the War. It is far more metaphorical than its predecessor, using the story of a failed marriage to show how we react to horror. In 1946, a young pair of newly married socialists travel to France where the bride has a run-in with a pair of malevolent black dogs. Their contrasting reactions destroy their marriage. These reactions, in one case spiritual and in other hyper-rational are stand ins for societal reaction to pure evil. And in their cases, the evil is the suffering caused by World War 2. The black dog manifest itself in the story in other ways, such as the all too common recourse to violence.

We learn about the details of their lives from their son-in-law who lost his own parents at a young age. He wants to write a biography of these people, perhaps, because he never knew his own parents. As usual with McEwan, he captures the inner lives of people wonderfully, and his narrator tries to breakdown the differences between internal perception and external reality.

While McEwan's prose is wonderful as ever and his theme is worthy and well explored, I didn't enjoy this book as much as Atonement, the Innocent or Enduring Love. That's not to say it isn't worth reading, just set your expectations accordingly.