Date Posted:18:58:18 06/14/08 Sat Author:geoff Herbert Subject: Lovely Enduring Love
The plot line in Enduring Love is bizarre. It seems to reflect in part upon the writer's failing or failed marriage [circa 1995]. There is something eerily unrealistic about the train of events, from balloon to obsession to climax, and the marriage seems synthetic.
The film version only serves, by its cinematic failure, to emphasise the difficulty of the storyline.
In other words, when the superb writing is shaken off, there is precious little to support it.
Quite how McEwan refers to homosexuality is itself worthy of deeper research.
As in his [now denounced by him as no longer a valid expression] The Comfort of Strangers, the male homosexual is portrayed as obsessive and murderous.
I have extreme difficulty also in accepting the storyline of Atonement.
In Saturday, his brilliant exploration of the neurosurgeon is spoiled by a trivial application of a road rage encounter and an aircraft [not a balloon]in difficulties.
There is a strange other-worldly aspect to McEwan. he is aware of the world out there, but he struggles superficially to bring it to book.
