Biography Ian McEwan and Literature Review

Biography 

Ian Russell McEwan CH CBE FRSA FRSL (born 21 June 1948) is a British novelist and screenwriter. In 2008, The Times featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 19 in its list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". McEwan began his career writing sparse, Gothic short stories. His first two novels, The Cement Garden (1978) and The Comfort of Strangers (1981), earned him the nickname "Ian Macabre". These were followed by three novels of some success in the 1980s and early 1990s. His novel Enduring Love was adapted into a film of the same name. He won the Booker Prize with Amsterdam (1998). His next novel, Atonement, garnered acclaim and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film featuring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. His later novels have included The Children Act, Nutshell, and Machines Like Me. He was awarded the 1999 Shakespeare Prize, and the 2011 Jerusalem Prize.

Literature Review 

The real genius that McEwan demonstrates is his ability to vary the pace and tenor of his writing to suit the events or feelings he describes. The first section of the book is set on a single, stiflingly hot, summer’s day in 1935. The story flits, like a summer firefly, from one character to another, giving the reader access to their inner monologue and private preoccupations. Progress is slow until the evening comes and then accelerates just enough to tip you unwillingly towards the novel’s apex. As it becomes increasingly clear to the reader what is about to happen, the flitting around stops and you are instead stuck inside the perspective of a single character — both central and peripheral — who only vaguely understands the magnitude of the events she has set in motion.

I found it to be a masterclass in showing rather than telling, building tension without ever once instructing the reader to feel tense. In allowing you to understand your view was simultaneously complete and incomplete.

The following sections are conducted in a very different context. Whereas the first is marked by the languid meandering of a misspent summer, the second is the ceaseless march of a retreating soldier. Again McEwan doesn’t so much tell you that as let you feel it. The pain of the physical exertion, the fear of not making it, the pure, unvarnished horror of being attacked. In many ways this part of the story is familiar — Dunkirk is part of our national story — but he nevertheless allowed me to see it afresh.

There are two more sections, both similarly adept in their fusion of technique and literary flare. There are scenes in both that I’m sure will live long in the memory. The ending is however perhaps the most interesting part of all. It acts as a kind of coda to the main story. You might expect it to resolve the unresovled events of the earlier story. But instead it does quite the opposite. The unreliability of the narration is amplified and the veracity of the proceeding action questioned. I found myself at the end wishing I could spend longer working out what had happened next.

At its heart this is a book about how a single event ripples through time. But more importantly it is about perspective and how that same event can differ wildly depending on who sees it and how it is seen.