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Post by Jep Gambardella on Jun 20, 2018 18:41:52 GMT
I saw "On Chesil Beach" yesterday, based on a screenplay by Ian McEwan adapted from his own book. I quite liked it and I am interested in reading the book now.
I have only read part of one of his books ("Saturday"). I didn't finish it, but not because I wasn't enjoying it; quite the contrary, I was loving it. I stopped for some reason that I can't remember, then didn't pick it up again, and then months passed. Now I would have to start it again.
Opinions on "On Chesil Beach" or any of his other books?
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mrdanwest
Sophomore
@mrdanwest
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Post by mrdanwest on Jun 23, 2018 0:21:06 GMT
I’ve read Atonement (which I thought was brilliant), Black Dogs (very good), and Amsterdam (which did really work for me).
I will probably try to read something else by him this summer.
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Shadow
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@shadow
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Post by Shadow on Jun 24, 2018 3:59:38 GMT
I just wrote in another post that McEwan needs to stop writing plot, because he's so bad at it.
Then I come here and see you talking about On Chesil Beach, my favorite McEwan book, precisely because it has little to no plot. The whole book is about something that DIDN'T happen! This allowed him to play to his strengths.
He's absolutely brilliant at characterization, revealing more about a character in a few paragraphs than some writers can in a few chapters. He's also very good at describing, with wonderful humanity and depth, people's relationships. You can see why On Chesil Beach was perfect for him.
ETA: if you like McEwan, you might want to sample David Mitchell. I don't care for his pomo stuff very much, but Black Swan Green was amazing, and though The Bone Clocks is rather postmodern as well, it's grounded enough in narrative that he doesn't lose himself, like I think he did in some of his earlier work.
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Post by darknessfish on Jun 25, 2018 8:28:47 GMT
I've read a few books of his, of which Atonement was easily the best. Prose-wise, he's a great stylist, but he suffers from being self-satisfied with the quality of his text, and writing interaction between characters like he's never seen two people talking before. The entire concept of Enduring Love is a really common trope in modern film and literature, but he's so pleased with his plot-device that he even has an epilogue where he discusses how he managed to come up with such an enlightened, innovative idea. The relationship between the main character and his wife/girlfriend (I forget her actual status) is so ludicrously drawn, the lack of sensible dialogue just to get over major plot-holes, it just collapses into a laughable heap. I stopped reading another of his novels (Saturday, I think) for similar reasons, the lack of understanding of simple human interaction was just a stumbling block that I couldn't get over. I've never bothered with his books since.
For similar inexplicably praised crapulence, see Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending.
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Post by ellynmacg on Jun 26, 2018 14:19:04 GMT
I have read only Atonement, and while I admired its prose-poetry style (I could understand why it was so critically acclaimed), it is not my preferred style. More importantly, I so detested the character of Briony Tallis that the triumph of this hateful, self-satisfied little snip over the decent people whose lives she ruins left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Do I think she succeeded in "atoning" for her horrendously indefensible actions? !@#$%, NO!
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