Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

I first read Enduring Love perhaps about two years ago and I admit I was entirely impressed by the elocution of the author and the bravery at giving the main supporting character Jed a disorder which caused him to fall madly in love with the male lead.

Rather disappointingly, however, when I came to read it again as a somewhat more matured young reader, I was extremely displeased with what I was reading.

Let me explain.

At first, the novel seems like an exciting read; indeed it's marketed as such, and a movie was even made with Daniel Craig as the star. But when you start to be able to see past the beautiful, if heavily scientific language and the pseudo-psychology terminology describing erotomania (rather sweetly referred to as "de Clerambault's Syndrome", it's layman's term), you can see that it is in fact not a very strong story really.

The basic idea is this. A group of men who have never met before end up forced to work with one another to save two people, a child and older man (relative, don't worry) who are in a rogue hot air balloon. Joe, the main character, tries his best, but eventually, one lets go of the rope. No-one's quite sure who let go first, but one man did not have the chance to let go, and falls to his death as the balloon rises rapidly. This is where the madness begins. Joe runs to check for any signs of life, but the deceased in in such an awful state that, well, it's just not possible for him to have survived. Jed, the polar opposite of Joe, meets the scientist and then, well, things just get weird. Long story short, Jed falls madly in love, is convinced Joe feels the same, is a massive God-lover. Joe is the self centered science worshiping madman. It all ends in blood and bullets. (No-one dies, but no-one's happy either)

Personally, I think there are way too many side stories in this novel. At the same time as Joe being stalked by a religious nutter, he's angry with his so-called friend for being, well, evil; his relationship with his girlfriend is terrible because she's beginning to see how self-centered he is; he is co-operating with the police as well as arguing with them, he has contacts from whom he can buy a gun and he's also trying to help the widow of the balloon-death man put together all the pieces.

As if that wasn't confusing enough, it's written in a lot of psychobabble which can really have you sleeping within seconds. It's not easy on people wanting a light read; especially when so many of the sentences are long, drawn out metaphors, often involving science things like the Hubble telescope.

Rather than a good thriller, I see this novel as a vehicle for McEwan's religious bias. A lot of the novel is to do with Jed and his "insane" views on Christianity. I'm not a Christian (anymore) but really, much of the story just constantly puts down the idea of religion and dismisses it totally. In fact, it's a lot like reading a dissertation on the non-existence of God.

I do take issue with the epilogue telling us that Jed was admitted to an insane asylum and administered pimozide, a radioactive drug which was very commonly used, but due to health risks cannot be used very much anymore. It seems to be that, like many a novelist before, McEwan just took the drug of the day and fed it to someone with the most risque mental illness.

I don't take issue with the way it's written, though. It is a beautiful novel, and I would read it again. The story just seems a bit ridiculous and there is a lot going on. After doing it myself, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone doing a book study in English - it's just too messy.