Amsterdam: Ian McEwan - Softcover

McEwan, Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099272776 ISBN 13: 9780099272779

Publisher: Vintage, 2005

Synopsis

***WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE***

Two old friends – Cline Linley and Vernon Halliday – meet at the funeral of gorgeous, witty Molly Lane. Both men had been Molly’s lovers years before their dazzling success; Clive is Britain’s most eminent modern composer and Vernon is the editor of the respected broadsheet, The Judge. In the weeks that follow, Clive and Vernon’s lives become bound together in ways neither could have imagined. Two dubious moral decisions and a pact made in extremis lead them both to the heart of Amsterdam.

About this title

Review:

When good-time, fortysomething Molly Lane dies of an unspecified degenerative illness, her many friends and numerous lovers are led to think about their own mortality. Vernon Halliday, editor of the up-market newspaper The Judge, persuades his old friend Clive Linley, a self-indulgent composer of some reputation, to enter into a euthanasia pact with him. Should either of them succumb to such an illness, the other will effect his death. From this point onwards we are in little doubt as to the novel's outcome--it's only a matter of who will kill whom. In the meantime, compromising photographs of Molly's most distinguished lover, foreign secretary Julian Garmony, have found their way into the hands of the press, and as rumours circulate he teeters on the edge of disgrace. However, this is McEwan, so it is no surprise to find that the rather unsavoury Garmony comes out on top. McEwan is master of the writer's craft, and while this is the sort of novel that wins prizes, his characters remain curiously soulless amidst the twists and turns of plot. --Lisa Jardine

Review:

"A psychologically brilliant study of heartlessness" (Sunday Telegraph)

"One of the finest writers alive" (Sunday Times)

"Full of gusto, straightforward, and delivers blows to the gut...shocking" (A. S. Byatt Literary Review)

"McEwan writes here with unobtrusive panache" (Daily Telegraph)

"Amsterdam is brilliantly engineered and marvellously entertaining" (Evening Standard)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0099272776
• ISBN 13: 9780099272779
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192