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Amsterdam

3.36 of 5 stars 3.36 · rating details · 18,156 ratings · 1,447 reviews

When good-time, fortysomething Molly Lane dies of an unspecified degenerative illness, her many friends and numerous lovers are led to think about their own mortality. Vernon Halliday, editor of the upmarket newspaper the Judge, persuades his old friend Clive Linley, a self-indulgent composer of some reputation, to enter into a euthanasia pact with him. Should either of th...more

Paperback, 178 pages

Published April 29th 1999 by Vintage (first published 1998)

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Jul 30, 2012 Arun Divakar rated it 2 of 5 stars

The richly air conditioned and plushly carpetted conference halls, bottles of water and pieces of chocolate on the table, writing pads & pens, the rich buffet lunch, tea & coffee in a timely fashion.

I can sum up many a professional training session at best in these words. In most cases, what happens afterwards is that on getting home and reflecting a bit on the days spent, I invariably end up remembering close to nothing from those glitzy presentations nor the content. I am sometimes...more

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Oct 18, 2010 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: Man Booker Winner 1998, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006 version)

Shelves: 1001-non-core, booker

My 2nd book by Ian Russell McEwan (born 1948). I have a copy of all his 11 novels except his latest ones, On Chesil Beach and Solar. I am waiting for them to show up in my favorite second-hand books store.

Enduring Love was my first by him. I read it last year and I liked it so much that I would not want to read another of his book. I guess I was afraid I would be disappointed and considering that I have all his books, what would I do with them if I did not like the 2nd? That is possible, right?...more

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Mar 27, 2008 will rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

Is it just me or do other people "shy away" from books that look a little too intellectual for them? I read because I enjoy it. I am at an age where I don't need to read to impress. I like a good book (and I hate a bad book) and will read anything that interests me. I am shallow enough to pick a book up because I like the picture on the front or I like the title. I occasionally read books that others have recommended but I have to know what the other person likes. Too oft...more Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

Is it just me or do other people "shy away" from books that look a little too intellectual for them? I read because I enjoy it. I am at an age where I don't need to read to impress. I like a good book (and I hate a bad book) and will read anything that interests me. I am shallow enough to pick a book up because I like the picture on the front or I like the title. I occasionally read books that others have recommended but I have to know what the other person likes. Too often I have started books that people tell me are "absolutely brilliant" to get halfway through and wonder what the hell I am doing. At this point I should mention I hated The Da Vinci Code with a passion however I will defend it with a greater passion. You see, the other thing I hate is book snobs. People who start off with the line: "Oh I never read any book on the best seller list - they are too populist!" In an anti-snob way I have a tendency to avoid any book that says "Winner of the Booker/Pulitzer Prize", more fool me! I worry that the book is going to be full of "big words" and "purple patches" - sometimes studying English Literature at school can kill any desire to read a "literary must read". I love my Neil Gaiman/Nick Hornby/Mil Millington. And then I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and enjoyed it. It was only afterwards that I noticed the big sticker on the front "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize" - hey, maybe all intellectual books aren't that scary :^)

Amsterdam is the winner of The Booker Prize. It is a small, dull looking book. It tells the story of three men, linked by being ex-lovers, and what happens after the love of their lives dies. The three men are "the greatest living composer", the editor of an intellectual newspaper, the foreign secretary. It just sounds dull, dull, dull. It sounds like a book that I would pass up reading every single time I finish one book and return to the bookshelf trying to find another book to read.

Picked it off the shelf yesterday morning at just past ten, lived a fairly active "doing" day and yet, before ten at night, I had finished the book. I realised, as I closed it, that I had been secretly (or not so secretly) going back to it at every possible chance: sitting on the balcony for a cigarette - read; waiting for a scan of Dani's drawing to upload - read; watching the Yorkshire puddings rise in the oven - read; sit watching Spirited Away with the kids - read.

A very enjoyable book and not as dull as it pretends to be :^)(less)

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Aug 06, 2011 Gloria Mundi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-winners-and-nominees, contemporary-fiction, 1001-books, murder, anti-hero-es, humorous, music, twist-n-shout, london

I needed something starting with A to read for the A to Z book challenge and this has been sitting on my shelf since I went through a frenzy of buying booker shortlisted novels several years ago, back when I was still keen to impress myself and fellow commuters with my reading choices.

The books starts with a funeral of Molly Lane, a member of that happy breed of fabulous women who has a horde of ex and current lovers with all of whom she remains friends. We never learn much else about her but sh...more

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Jun 06, 2011 VivaPalestina rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

It's hard knowing where to start with this review, I couldn't help drawing lines of similarities between this book, and the other shadowy version of Enduring Love that remains in my mind. In both we start off with a death, in both we have the stories of a group of people brought together by a person, an incidence of death. His style while unique is similar in his books I think; and both allow us to become part of the characters minds and thoughts.

Amsterdam is a story of the four lovers of Molly,...more

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Apr 17, 2011 Blair rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker-prize, contemporary, read-on-kindle

I'm beginning to think that the shorter a book is, the less I have to say about it. Amsterdam is a very short book and, while I enjoyed it, at the end I felt more like I'd finished a short story than an actual novel. It's the tale of two friends - Clive, a successful composer troubled by (the musical equivalent of) writer's block, and Vernon, a newspaper editor whose career is beginning to flounder - and their involvement in a plot to terminate the career of Julian Garmony, a right-wing politici...more

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Nov 18, 2008 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I tried to read McEwan's Enduring Love, was bored by a little too much phoned-in prose, and ended up reading Amsterdam instead, because it sat on the shelf of my rental, between The Lovely Bones and a Harlequin Intrigue sampler.

In retrospect, that was about right. What the hell, Amsterdam. I read you in two days, like you were a Hardy Boys book. You are about eight pages long, and part of the thrill of reading you was glancing up and being like "I'm 25% of the way through! I'm halfway already! L...more

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Apr 10, 2008 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, brit-lit, owned, 20th-century-postwar-to-late

I suppose my experience of reading this book can be best compared to hearing Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, then the Ninth Symphony, and then being played the Moonlight Sonata. It isn't that this book is any less deserving of praise than Atonement or Enduring Love (I shall leave it to you to figure out which one I classed as the Eroica and which one as the Ninth. :)), but I believe the purpose and the scale of those two books are on a completely different plane than Amsterdam, but intentionally so...more I suppose my experience of reading this book can be best compared to hearing Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, then the Ninth Symphony, and then being played the Moonlight Sonata. It isn't that this book is any less deserving of praise than Atonement or Enduring Love (I shall leave it to you to figure out which one I classed as the Eroica and which one as the Ninth. :)), but I believe the purpose and the scale of those two books are on a completely different plane than Amsterdam, but intentionally so.

Both the plot and the scope of Amsterdam are very tightly controlled, and clearly driven towards the point at the end. One could feel the prose moving you along McEwan's intended course towards the proper mood to find the end. This is not to say that the language isn't as important as his other novels. I think in fact that it is even more important here. Rather than the sometimes beautifully rambling tone of his other work that could take a bit of a scenic route to get towards its point, letting it creep up on you unawares, McEwan instead makes his piercingly described and chosen words serve a double purpose. This would make Amsterdam perhaps the most poetic of his novels in technique, considering how carefully every word seemed to be chosen.

McEwan still manages to deal with very big themes here. The basic plotline his patented single event with a moral problem and the various consequences for the people involved. In this case, it is the death of Molly Lane, a woman beloved of at least four of the men featured, and how their reactions to her death shape all of their lives. His standard dilemma of moral decisions gone wrong is present, of course. He writes about the meaning of friendship, how mere moods and selfishness change our entire worldview, love lost, the effect of one's death upon loved ones, and embodies three different kinds of need in the three major male characters in the novel. I won't elaborate too much but I think it is debatable which of these men feels love, which desire, which the need to be saved. Or if it is a combination of all three. He still manages to sneak in a bit of black comedy (for some reason all the reviews on the book seemed to focus on this one point. Perhaps because it is so unusual in a McEwan novel.) as these characters start to unravel over the course of the novel into a horrible, twisted joke upon themselves and the world. This book is heartbreaking, make no mistake, but in a quieter way. In an awful, unexpected way that is no less touching for the brevity of his treatment of it. In a way, I think it makes it more powerful that the book is so short. We miss so much, we are left to imagine and fill in the gaps.

I don't know if you've seen Casablanca, those reading this. But if you have... in some ways, I believe that this novel was McEwan's answer to Bogart's famous quote near the end of the movie when he's trying to make Ingrid Bergman leave with her husband: "I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

I think Amsterdam both tragically agrees with that and ironically, laughingly disagrees at the same time. This little short statement is by no means his grandest novel, either in tone or subject, but I do not think that detracts from its value. In any case- very much recommended. I would read Enduring Love or Atonement first so as to understand the scope of what the author is capable of, but then this, to show the lovely, little, other end of the spectrum. I think that this has value, too.(less)

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Jan 06, 2009 Caitlin Elizabeth rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2008, fiction

Ian McEwen wrote Atonement, which I enjoyed immensely in spite of avoiding it for quite some time. Since then I have read The Comfort of Strangers (less then great – but it had it’s moments), On Chisel Beach (Horrible), and now Amsterdam. I read this immediately before The Emperor’s Children and had similar complaints about both of them in regards to unrealistic characters. Perhaps this is a trend in modern literature (as I have noticed it before), and is not failure on the author’s part but on...more

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Feb 18, 2013 Lobstergirl rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Henryk Górecki

Shelves: fiction

Maybe a bit too neatly tied up with a bow for my taste, almost in the manner of O. Henry. Still, I liked it three times better than the egregious Saturday. At first I thought I was going to be annoyed by Clive Linley, a composer who has been called, to his irritation, "the thinking man's Gorecki" and who is depressed to learn that children play his music. But Clive grew on me, a little fungally it is true, but he grew. I don't know what McEwan knew about music before setting out to write this, b...more

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Nov 24, 2012 Maggi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved the first half (2/3?) of the book, but when the moral dilemma posed and the carefully crafted plot devolved into the absurdity (view spoiler) the book was ruined for me. Prose like this hooked me: he was infinitely diluted; he was simply the sum of all the people who had listened to him, and when he was alone, he was nothing at all to describe a newspaper editor, or to think of civilization as the sum of all the arts, along...more

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May 05, 2012 George rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: fans of modern fiction and other McEwan novels

Amsterdam is a superb, eerie book. In it McEwan's theme is the moral limit of man when the potential for personal greatness and fame is present. At certain points the relentless selfish ambition of characters is astounding.

McEwan constructs a world that is recognisably our own using key components of modern society and culture, and roots every idea and word that he writes in our time and place. This is something that I love about McEwan's work: it is situated in a dimension that is recognisable,...more

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Oct 27, 2009 Alison rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of M. Night Shyalaman who pretend to read philosopher before pilates class.

I'm tired of the super-twist endings and the ponderous philosophical musings on guilt and morality. I'm tired of successful, monied people in nicely renovated townhouses feeling sorry for themselves. Maybe I don't get Ian McEwan. I'm okay with that. But I'm not going to read another one of these.

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May 06, 2008 Jill rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audible

I enjoyed "Amsterdam," but not as much as I wanted to enjoy it. The conclusion was quite succinct and surprising, even though I knew where it was going. In my opinion, McEwan really ironed out the 'ole 1-2 punch in his later work.

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Feb 15, 2009 David rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

[I "read" this in audiobook.:] When a common friend Molly Lane dies of a degenerative illness, her friends and numerous lovers reflect on her past and passing. Vern, editor a newspaper, and his old friend Clive, a composer of some reknown, deal with Molly's progress to demise in part by entering into a a pact which mandates that should either of them be stricken with an illness in which they cannot control their own destinies, the other will bring about his death as an act of euthanasia. Plot de...more

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Mar 05, 2012 H rated it 4 of 5 stars

“Brilliant” is the word I would use to describe Ian McEwan’s novel, Amsterdam, which won the Booker Prize in 1998.

A master of shocking revelations and plot twists, McEwan has managed to turn a 178 page novel into a dark tale of morals, and vengeance.

The two main characters of this novel are Clive, a famous modern composer, and Vernon, an editor of a national broadsheet – two former lovers of Molly Lane, a character who dies at the beginning of this novel.

Due to Molly’s sudden death, Clive and Ve...more

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Oct 22, 2012 Marc Maitland rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is yet another brilliant work from the master of the subtly macabre, Ian McEwan. Always firmly grounded in real time and space, this is a story with a twist (as is so often the case).

I won’t even begin to spoil the reader’s surprise by revealing anything of this, or even the plot. Suffice to say that it involves so many of the themes that one comes to expect of Mr. McEwan’s works – the carefully interwoven lives of believably real individuals, with a smattering of sexual intrigue, fetishism...more

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Jan 18, 2012 Tanuj Solanki rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: library, britain, booker

Average Read.

McEwan belabored prose and over-engineered plot -- an overall swindling the reader into aceepting the final farce -- come up short rather pathetically. Each sentence carries a certain beauty, but as a whole the novel is colossally unconvincing. Never once does the reader care, think about, or even believe in, what McEwan is driving him into. I understand now why McEwan has been panned for his 'construction'. 'Amsterdam' - not too kindly for its author - seems to be a novel thought o...more

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Mar 06, 2011 هلال rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

رواية جميلة أساءت لها الترجمة بشكل كبير . العمل في فصول التأليف الموسيقي جميل بحق. التقطيع الفصلي جيد. الكاتب يوازن بين الوصف والأحداث. الأصل لديه هو الأحداث لكن مع فهم نفسي عميق لكل الشخصيات. البداية جميلة. الرواية - أظن- لها اسقاطات محلية في ذلك الوقت على الوضع السياسي في انكلترا. أعجبني شبح مولي الميتة الذي يخيم على كل الأجواء فيظهر من دون أن تظهر. مولي المربكة التي لا تعرف أن ترتب غرفها تأتي لتقلب حيات الشخصيات كل على عقب. أعجبني اندفاع شخصيات ثانوية لتختم بنفسها الرواية. الرواية تعتمد على ا...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Naomi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, fiction, kindle

this is a re-read. Amsterdam is the first book by Ian McEwan that i ever read. one reason i decided to re-read it is that i just returned from Amsterdam and wanted to see if i recognized anything in the book; the other is that i wanted to revisit the novel that compelled me to become a fan of McEwan.

set at the end of the 20th century, Clive has been asked to write a musical piece to commemorate the occasion. his friend, Vernon, is a newspaper editor of a failing paper. the book starts as they at...more

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Feb 20, 2009 Andrew rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book reminded me of a point E.M. Forster made in "Aspects of the Novel" about the conflict in novels between plot and character.

"The balance between them is sometimes difficult to achieve though, because characters, to be real, ought to run smoothly, but a plot ought to cause surprise. Sometimes a plot triumphs too completely. The characters have to suspend their natures at every turn, or else are so swept away by the course of Fate that our sense of their reality is weakened."

This describ...more

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Jul 26, 2008 Belinda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

McEwan has come a long way since 1998 when "Amsterdam" was published, which really is remarkable considering that most authors would kill to have the remarkable prose style of even the early years of McEwan. But nonetheless, if you've read his later works (like I have) and then are working your way through his other works, you will discern the growth of his style.

But, onward with "Amsterdam." It's a short work, and easily a "leave me alone, I'm going to read the *whole* thing now" book of fewer...more

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Jun 28, 2008 Darren rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've read three books by McEwan now - this one, "The Innocent," and "Atonement" - and although "Amsterdam" isn't nearly as good as the other two, it provides a nice microcosmic explanation for why McEwan is a wonderful writer and why he's maybe the least fun wonderful writer on the planet.

"Amsterdam" has a neat little set-up - two former lovers of a woman go to her funeral, setting them on a path of reminiscence and leading them to make a death pact (in a nutshell, "Don't let me become a dodderi...more I've read three books by McEwan now - this one, "The Innocent," and "Atonement" - and although "Amsterdam" isn't nearly as good as the other two, it provides a nice microcosmic explanation for why McEwan is a wonderful writer and why he's maybe the least fun wonderful writer on the planet.

"Amsterdam" has a neat little set-up - two former lovers of a woman go to her funeral, setting them on a path of reminiscence and leading them to make a death pact (in a nutshell, "Don't let me become a doddering old vegetable.") At some point, I forget when, the book splits off in two radically different direction. One of the men, Clive, is a composer who may be a genius, writing a symphony for the Millennium which could make or break his legend. The other man, Vernon, is the editor-in-chief of a London newspaper which desperately needs more readers.

The descriptions of both mens' lives - the dramatic interiority of Clive's writing, the endless bustle of the newsroom - are captured in exquisite detail. Everything about how McEwan writes is "exquisite," and clean, and pleasantly symmetrical. Which is part of the problem. The three books I've read by him all suffer from a great feeling of sarcastic non-dread - his characters, in the book's middle section, so often have such violently optimistic imaginations for the future, that you become sick with the foreshadowing of their oncoming doom.

Vernon and Clive part ways over moral choices that each have to make, which leads both to reconsider the friendship. It feels remarkably true - to a point. The problem is, that point seems to be the point of the whole book. Practically the whole book runs on coincidence, which in itself isn't so bad, except that the coincidence plays like Greek Tragedy where everyone is damned before they even do anything damnable.

I'm torn. In some ways, this book reminds me of some of Graham Greene's looser entertainments - with plots that messily depend on any number of coincidences (in "A Gun For Sale," the girlfriend of a police lieutenant who's investigating an assassination happens to be on the same train car as the assassin.) But Green's books were always fun. The more you read "Amsterdam," the more it reads like a misanthropic anti-fun parable, with a simple gloomy message: Don't make friends, and don't outlive your ex-girlfriends.(less)

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Apr 30, 2008 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have become a full-fledged devotee of Ian McEwan. Along with Zadie Smith, he's currently my favorite writer.

It takes most of the novel for McEwan's characters to get to Amsterdam, but there are memorable chapters in London and out in the Lake District along the way. The novel is centered around a couple of friends, each of whom has been lovers and friends with Molly, who is memorialized at the beginning of the book. They then end up on opposite sides of an ethical dispute after having promised...more

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Mar 01, 2008 Ashlea rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The premise of this book really intrigued me– two friends, having been lovers with the same woman over a period of years, now meet again at her funeral. The men are both successful and driven egoists; as the teaser for the book suggests, they engage in a pact of sorts after the lover's death, and ensuing choices present a moral dilemma for each. All of this could a great set-up for an honest questioning of career and ethics, life after a love's death...

I believe it tries for this, but Amsterdam...more

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Mar 18, 2008 Kartix rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Kartix by: Goodreads

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Clive Linley, a music genius, was working on a simphony for the new millenia. Vernon Halliday, editor of the daily newspaper ‘The Judge’, was desperately trying to increase the paper’s circulation figures. Both are the former lovers of Molly Lane, an energetic garderner who sometime before her death found that she had lost the control of her body function and therefore has to be cared by her husbang, George Lane. She must had been a very beautifull woman, this Molly Lane, since apart from Clive,...more Clive Linley, a music genius, was working on a simphony for the new millenia. Vernon Halliday, editor of the daily newspaper ‘The Judge’, was desperately trying to increase the paper’s circulation figures. Both are the former lovers of Molly Lane, an energetic garderner who sometime before her death found that she had lost the control of her body function and therefore has to be cared by her husbang, George Lane. She must had been a very beautifull woman, this Molly Lane, since apart from Clive, Vernon, and George, she was also loved by Jullian Garmony, a despicable Foreign Secretary.

The story evolves around Clive and Vernon. There was a detailed description on how Clive had to build an atmosphere around him in order to write each specific part of his symphony, how he had to go a special walk to find the perfect ending of his music. The silent atmosphere around Clive, the way McEwan describes each scene, had me come to a conclusion that it is true that writting is a lonely profession, that includes writting a piece of music.

Meanwhile, it was the oposite in Vernon’s part of the world. His hectic schedule, the many people he has to relate in his works, his appointments and meeting. In fact, throught the book, I see Vernon connects to other characters by going places, while Clive stood perfectly still in his solitude.

Molly’s death brings Clive and Vernon to a pact where the will not see each other die the way Molly did. It was a humiliation for the two of them having somebody take care of you up until the point where your privacy is no longer existed. However, the end of Clive and Vernon has nothing to do with physicall illness rather than their carrier’s downfall. Clive’s symphony was a disaster, according to the music director who played his music, not to mention there was a similarity with Beethoven’s piece in the end part. Vernon’s death warrant was the pictures of Jullian Garmony, taken by Molly during their time together, published as a mean to bring down Garmony’s political carrier. When Garmony’s wife defended her husband with a smart TV interview, Vernos’ day in the newspaper business was ended.

The book is very well written, the story was beautifully wrote. I actually looking forward to another McEwan’s book. (less)

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Dec 28, 2007 Tanja rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those that like a comeuppance

Shelves: fiction

After I put down the book, two thoughts immediately crossed my mind. These thoughts had begun to form while reading, but they remained hesitant and unfocused, and only really solidified afterwards. One was a general sense of unpleasantness mostly centered on the characters, primarily their selfish disregard for others, their inability to acknowledge their own faults while at the same time being quick to respond to perceived slights and faults in others. They were always capable of justifying the...more

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Nov 24, 2007 Becky rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-winners

another booker prize winner, amsterdam is a tightly constructed little novel filled with black humor and sharp satire. it begins with four men, ex-lovers of a dead woman, meeting up at her funeral. two of them, old friends, make a pact to kill each other if they become as insane as the recently deceased became toward the end of her life. that pact, unsurprisingly, has unexpected consequences as their friendship begins to spin out of control, devolving into hatred and revenge. many complain that...more

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Aug 22, 2007 Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookgroup

This is my book groups September book. This was the first book I've read by Ian McEwan.

Molly Lane has passed away and gathered at her funeral are all her ex-lovers: Clive, the composer; Vernon, the editor of a tabloid newspaper; Julian, high up in London government; as well as her husband George. Clive and Vernon, old friends make a pact that they will never let each other suffer the way that Molly suffered at the end of her life. In the next few weeks/months Clive and Vernon each make decisions...more

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Sep 25, 2008 Kellie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2007-reads

-This book was very odd. The story begins with the death of Molly. Molly who was the friend of several men, and the lover of several others even though she was married. Two of her previous lovers, Clive and Vernon, attend the funeral and pay their respects. Then they go off and continue to live their lives, but they have both been changed as a result of the loss of their mutual friend. I am still trying to figure out what the plot was. Is jealousy the main theme or friendship gone array? Is it t...more

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About Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan was born on 21 June 1948 in Aldershot, England. He studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970. He received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.

McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last...more

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Trivia About Amsterdam

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Quotes from Amsterdam

“He would work through the night and sleep until lunch. There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.” — 13 people liked it

“We knew so little about eachother. We lay mostly submerged, like ice floes with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white. Here was a rare sight below the waves, of a man's privacy and turmoil, of his dignity upended by the overpowering necessity of pure fantasy, pure thought, by the irreducible human element - Mind. ” — 12 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114226.Amsterdam?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1171684212l/114226.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114226.Amsterdam?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Amsterdam by Ian McEwan[/url]

Amsterdam

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