The Child in Time - Softcover

McEwan, Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385497520 ISBN 13: 9780385497527

Publisher: Anchor Books, 1999

Soon to be on public television starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

Stephen Lewis, a successful writer of children's books, is confronted with the unthinkable: his only child, three-year-old Kate, is snatched from him in a supermarket. In one horrifying moment that replays itself over the years that follow, Stephen realizes his daughter is gone.

With extraordinary tenderness and insight, Booker Prize-winning author Ian McEwan takes us into the dark territory of a marriage devastated by the loss of a child. Kate's absence sets Stephen and his wife, Julie, on diverging paths as they each struggle with a grief that only seems to intensify with the passage of time. Eloquent and passionate, the novel concludes in a triumphant scene of love and hope that gives full rein to the author's remarkable gifts. The winner of the Whitbread Prize, The Child in Time is an astonishing novel by one of the finest writers of his generation.

Review:

The Child in Time opens with a harrowing event. Stephen Lewis, a successful author of children's books, takes his 3-year-old daughter on a routine Saturday morning trip to the supermarket. While waiting in line, his attention is distracted and his daughter is kidnapped. Just like that. From there, Lewis spirals into bereavement that has effects on his relationship with his wife, his psyche and time itself: "It was a wonder there could be so much movement, so much purpose, all the time. He himself had none." This beautifully haunting book won a 1987 Whitbread Prize.

Review:

"A death-defying story, inventive, eventful, and affirmative without being sentimental." --Time

"Luminous, haunting, restrained . . . cuts to the core of human existence." --Chicago Tribune

"Resonates with psychological reality: the beautifully layered relationships, the tracing of the many-layered love between father and child, husband and wife. . . . As artfully conceived as it is poignantly realized." --The New York Times Book Review

"A great pleasure to read. . . . McEwan writes as if Dickens, Lawrence, and Woolf were in his bones. . . . Funny and unsentimentally passionate." --The Wall Street Journal

• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0385497520
• ISBN 13: 9780385497527
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272