Sep 05, 2016 08:18 PM
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Ian McEwan wields a pen deftly. He writes simply, yet expresses himself well. His books are true page turners, as the reader is drawn in by McEwan's style. Regrettably ambition too often gets the better of him as he foists unlikely or even absurd plots on this fine framework of well-wrought writing. It hardly needs be said any more, after so many books, but yet again McEwan has found a story that is too much for him. In this one the friend and former lover of a composer, Clive Linley, and a newspaper editor, Vernon Halliday, descends with frightening speed into mental decay, losing her mind before she even realizes it and then quickly dying. Frightened by this Clive and Vern make a pact of sorts that should they ever show signs of the onset of such an illness the other would mercifully cut short their lives. The Amsterdam of the title, is of course, one of the places where such selective euthanasia is, perhaps, tolerated, and needless to say that is where the novel will wind up. At the beginning of the book Clive, the most renowned classical composer in England, is composing a "Millennial Symphony", though he is having trouble with it. Vern is editor of a troubled newspaper. Each is then put in a position where they must make a moral choice, of sorts, one possibility being to do the so-called right thing, the other to think basically only of themselves. Both choose their own advancement, and at first the decisions seem to be the correct ones. Here McEwan is almost on the right track, effectively showing their illusionary rise before the grand fall. Many of the details are unlikely-seeming, but they can be accepted. The ignominious fall and failure of the two also seems an appropriate come uppance. Unfortunately, McEwan feels the need to do more, and so he sends them to Amsterdam, with predictable results. It is an ending that is astonishingly bad, and not even McEwan seems fully convinced of what he is doing. It is a slight book, and most of it is fun to read. For those who are satisfied with endings that see justice done and round off a book, regardless of how ridiculous the means employed to do so are, it is a decent enough book.(Readers who have previously enjoyed McEwan's books and did not mind similar absurd plotlines, as in Enduring Love, should also enjoy this.) We wish McEwan would not try so hard, sticking to his talents and not losing them in absurd and oversimplified plotlines.
