E-Book Overview
Understanding Ian McEwan provides a full discussion of the fiction written by one of Britain's most highly regarded novelists and the winner of the 1998 Booker Prize. David Malcolm places Ian McEwan's work—admired by critics for its polished, understated treatment of themes of aberrance and obsession—in the context of British literature's particular dynamism in the last decades of the twentieth century. He also examines McEwan's relationship to feminism, concern with rationalism and science, use of moral perspective, and proclivity toward fragmentation. Malcolm offers close readings of McEwan's early short stories, which he recognizes as traditional and conservative in technique despite their shocking subject matter, and all of McEwan's novels. Employing the third novel, The Child in Time, as the fulcrum for his discussion, Malcolm explores the themes of incest, espionage, moral self-flagellation, sexual fixation, political dysfunction, and personal antipathy evident in the other fiction. He illumines the continuities obscured by the conventional approach to McEwan's fiction and raises the question whether McEwan is a novelist of brilliant fragments or of overall coherence.
E-Book Content
UNDERSTANDING
IAN MCEWAN
Understanding Contemporary British Literature Matthew J. Bruccoli, Series Editor
Understanding Kingsley Amis • Merritt Moseley Understanding Martin Amis • James Diedrick Understanding Julian Barnes • Merritt Moseley Understanding Alan Bennett • Peter Wolfe Understanding Anita Brookner • Cheryl Alexander Malcolm Understanding John Fowles • Thomas C. Foster Understanding Graham Greene • R. H. Miller Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro • Brian W. Shaffer Understanding John le Carré • John L. Cobbs Understanding Doris Lessing • Jean Pickering Understanding Ian McEwan • David Malcolm Understanding Iris Murdoch • Cheryl K. Bove Understanding Harold Pinter • Ronald Knowles Understanding Alan Sillitoe • Gillian Mary Hanson Understanding Arnold Wesker • Robert Wilcher Understanding Paul West • David W. Madden
UNDERSTANDING
Ian MCEWAN David Malcolm
University of South Carolina Press
© 2002 University of South Carolina Published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press Manufactured in the United States of America 06 05 04 03 02
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Malcolm, David, 1952– Understanding Ian McEwan / David Malcolm. p. cm. — (Understanding contemporary British literature) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57003-436-2 1. McEwan, Ian—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series. PR6063.C4 Z78 2001 823'.914—dc21 2001003343
for Cheryl Alexander Malcolm
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CONTENTS
Editor’s Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Chapter 1 Understanding Ian McEwan 1 Chapter 2 The Short Stories: First Love, Last Rites and In between the Sheets 20 Chapter 3 Fiction and Evil (I): The Cement Garden 45 Chapter 4 Fiction and Evil (II): The Comfort of Strangers 66 Chapter 5 Change, Dystopia, and the Way Out: The Child in Time 88 Chapter 6 Brushes with History (I): The Innocent 110 Chapter 7 Brushes with History (II): Black Dogs 131 Chapter 8 Science and Fictions: Enduring Love 155 Chapter 9 Other Works: Screenplays, the Oratorio, Children’s Fiction, and Amsterdam 182 Notes 197 Bibliography 207 Index 211
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EDITOR’S PREFACE
The volumes of Understanding Contemporary British Literature have been planned as guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers. The editor and publisher perceive a need for these volumes because much of the influential contemporary literature makes special demands. Uninitiated readers encounter difficulty in approaching works that depart fro