First Love, Last Rites: Stories (Vintage International) - Softcover

McEwan, Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679750193 ISBN 13: 9780679750192

Publisher: Anchor Books, 1994

Synopsis

Ian McEwan's Somerset Maugham Award-winning collection First Love, Last Rites brought him instant recognition as one of the most influential voices writing in England today. Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness. These tales are as horrifying as anything written by Clive Barker or Stephen King, but they are crafted with a lyricism and intensity that compel us to confront our secret kinship with the horrifying.

About this title

Review:

"McEwan [has] a powerful talent that is both weird and wonderful." --Boston Sunday Globe

"Ian McEwan's fictional world combin[es] the bleak, dreamlike quality of de Chirico's city-scapes with the strange eroticism of canvases by Balthus. Menace lies crouched between the lines of his neat, angular prose, and weird, grisly things occur in his books with nearly casual aplomb." --The New York Times

"McEwan is a splendid magician of fear." --Village Voice Literary Supplement

From the Publisher:

A brilliant performance. There's an assured and terribly macabre depravity about Ian McEwan's short stories - as if some of the characters from early Angus Wilson had been painted by Francis Bacon - Observer

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0679750193
• ISBN 13: 9780679750192
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176