AUTHOR: Ian McEwan
STARTED: December 6, 2009
FINISHED: December 8, 2009
PAGES: 150
GENRE: Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: Ever since I lost mine in a road accident when I was eight, I have had my eye on other people's parents.
SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] Set in late 1980s Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Black Dogs is the intimate story of the crumbling of a marriage, as witnessed by an outsider. Jeremy is the son-in-law of Bernard and June Tremaine, whose union and estrangement began almost simultaneously. Seeking to comprehend how their deep love could be defeated by ideological differences Bernard and June cannot reconcile, Jeremy undertakes writing June's memoirs, only to be led back again and again to one terrifying encounter forty years earlier--a moment that, for June, was as devastating and irreversible in its consequences as the changes sweeping Europe in Jeremy's own time. In a finely crafted, compelling examination of evil and grace, Ian McEwan weaves the sinister reality of civilization's darkest moods--its black dogs--with the tensions that both create love and destroy it.
THOUGHTS: I was disappointed in this book. After liking McEwan's Atonement, I expected more from Black Dogs. I wanted to like this book, I really did. But I find that I cannot force myself to like a novel that just isn't my style. I read for stories, and this book was composed more of allegory and political discussion.
What I want to read was a story about the people: the failing marriage, Jeremy acting as a cuckoo, and interaction of the various characters. Instead, I got hoity-toity, holier-than-thou discourse on politics disguised as a novel. I could have cared less when the characters digressed into pages upon pages of political theory discussion. I got enough of that in my poli. sci. courses in college, thank you very much. Passages of this book, the ones that focused on human relationships, were incredibly interesting. Too bad they weren't the whole book.
If McEwan wanted to write a book about communism, he should have written than instead of this bundled mess. There was a great story here, too bad it was hidden by an author who seems to want his readers to know that he is oh-so-much smarter than them.
RATING: 3/10 [Poor, Lost Interest]
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