Ambigous Love (Enduring Love - Ian McEwan)

Member Name: Amarie

Product:	Enduring Love - Ian McEwan
Date:	10/06/04 (917 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gripping storyline, Suspense, descriptive

Disadvantages: very scientific approach

Joe Rose and Clarissa Melon have been in a relationship for 7yrs and one day as Joe is picking Clarissa from the airport , a chance encounter with a ballooning accident changes their relationship. The accident runs the story inot three storylines, each involving people affected by the accidet.
Jed Parry is one of the people who coincidentally helps out at the scene of the accident. He is a loner and he falls in love with Joe and his homo erotic fixation makes him beleive that God planned for Jed and Joe to be together. His obsession gets more and more dangerous as the story progresses leading into a psychological thriller, where the recipient of the love is ironically damaged by the love which he himself finds fascinating.
Joe's secrecy at the start of the nightmare leads Clarissa into thinking that he does not trust her. This initially drives them apart. After Jed discovers his love is not going to be rekindled, he gets bitter and unsuccessfully attempts to take Joe's life. Like a typical horror story, Joe is the only one who beleives Jed is dangerous. He is proved right when Jed holds Clarissa hostage and the thriller that had picked up pace comes to an end to be replaced by romantic genre.
Jean Logan is the widow in the story who beleives her husband died while on his way to a picnic with his mistress. Like a typical detective series, McEwan uses this storyline to create a character who is obsessed about finding out the truth. At the end of the book, Jean Logan's is brought out of the dark but left for the worse as she seeks forgiveness from someone who is dead. Her grief re-unites the two lovers, Clarissa and Joe and the aftermath of the main storyline is explained in the two appendices.

McEwan is very clever in his mixing of genres in this gripping book. We discover that no one genre in the book could've stood out on its own without the other genres, hence the message in the book which points out that Science and art can&
#39;t stand on their own. The antagonistic relationship between these two parts of life is what drives Joe and Clarissa apart. The book when read carefully left me thinking about it for a long time unlike other novel. It question human rationality and blurs the line between the sane and insane, sometimes making the victim and the attacker(Jed) look quite similar in their obsessions with certain areas of life.
I enjoyed this book very much and thefact that I did it for my exams made it exceptional. I would recommend it to anyone who loves gripping storylines with plenty of suspense. It is a great book to read at any time.

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