Amsterdam

by Ian McEwan

book data

4,997 ratings, 3.34 average rating, 553 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		11%
4		33%
3		37%
2		14%
1		3%

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published

November 2nd 1999 (first published 1998) by Anchor

binding

Paperback, 208 pages

characters

Vernon Halliday, Clive Linley, Julian Garmony, Molly Lane

literary awards

Man Booker Prize 1998

isbn

0385494246 (isbn13: 9780385494243)

description

When good-time, fortysomething Molly Lane dies of an unspecified degenerative illness, her many friends and numerous lovers are led to think about the...more

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03/23/08

will rated it:

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 ot...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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11/18/08

Chris rated it:

Read in November, 2008

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...more

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03/05/08

Kelly rated it:

bookshelves: brit-lit, fiction

Read in April, 2008

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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01/06/09

Caitlin rated it:

bookshelves: read-in-2008

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...more

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04/24/08

Jill rated it:

bookshelves: audible

Read in April, 2008

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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02/15/09

David rated it:

Read in February, 2009

[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 euthanas...more

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07/26/08

Belinda rated it:

Read in July, 2008

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 ...more

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06/28/08

Darren rated it:

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...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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04/30/08

Stephanie rated it:

Read in April, 2008

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 hav...more

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03/01/08

Ashlea rated it:

Read in February, 2008

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,...more

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02/25/08

Kartix rated it:

Read in March, 2008

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 ...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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12/28/07

Tanja rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: those that like a comeuppance

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 th...more

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11/22/07

Becky rated it:

bookshelves: booker-winners

Read in November, 2007

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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08/22/07

Readerbean rated it:

bookshelves: bookgroup

Read in August, 2007

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 eac...more

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09/25/08

Kellie rated it:

bookshelves: 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? ...more

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02/24/08

jeremy rated it:

(review of isbn 0385494238)

Read in February, 2008

though mcewan is gifted with an exquisite command of language, the novel succeeds more for its moral implications than it does on account of its narrative. as with many ethical quandaries, there are often varying shades of what can quantifiably be deemed "right" or "wrong." amsterdam triumphs in unearthing these murky hues, nearly compelling the reader to unemotionally examine the multiplicity of seemingly virtuous action. the entangled relationships and conflicted loyal...more

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08/17/08

Cari rated it:

Read in October, 2008

this was my first book by Ian McEwan - he's been on the list for awhile. I found this book very readable, and I really enjoyed the development of the main characters. However, I didn't really buy the ending - it was an interesting plot and twist at the end but I thought it pushed the characters to far beyond the boundaries he created for them. Of note though - he describes the process of writing music (one of the main characters is a composer) very dynamically - I felt like I was in the guy's...more

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01/06/09

Laurie rated it:

Read in December, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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03/22/09

Saralynn Tauras-craig rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in March, 2009

Another impeccably written social satire from mcewan. I still enjoyed enduring love more.

Favorite passage - note - "he" is the composer

He had arrived, as he had intended, in the stalls above and behind the orchestra, behind the percussionists, in fact. The musicians could not see him, but he was right in view of the conductor. Giulio Bo's eyes, however, were closed. He was standing on tiptoe, craning forward, his left arm extended toward the orchestra, and with ...more

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05/31/09

Ailsa rated it:

(review of isbn 0099272776)

bookshelves: contemporary, fiction

Read in May, 2009

I have long been a self-professed Ian McEwan fan, ever since I first read Atonement. Also completely shallowly, I feel a strange affinity for writers who are alumni of my university. I don't know why that should be, but there we go: it is what it is. So Amsterdam, which has been strangely languishing in a box since last year's birthday (oh, the nomadic life of a uni student) was really something of a find when I was tidying out my things last week, and so I was pretty excited to settle down to r...more I have long been a self-professed Ian McEwan fan, ever since I first read Atonement. Also completely shallowly, I feel a strange affinity for writers who are alumni of my university. I don't know why that should be, but there we go: it is what it is. So Amsterdam, which has been strangely languishing in a box since last year's birthday (oh, the nomadic life of a uni student) was really something of a find when I was tidying out my things last week, and so I was pretty excited to settle down to reading what I was sure would be an excellent book. After all, it won the Booker, right?

It is with no lack of confusion then, that I ended the novel with a sense of disappointment. I couldn't help thinking why, and what was the point? In many ways that is an unfair representation of the book: it is in many ways a pleasure to read. The style of McEwan's prose is as ever crisp, and there are some truly beautiful passages, worthy of his finest works. It is also an interesting study, I suppose, of the kind of (a)moral decisions that shape lives in which McEwan seems so interested. But so much of this felt unnatural, or knowingly clever: the delight in ramming home to the reader how the little clues that later became major plot points had been set up, for example. And the novel's denouement whilst 'shocking' (as someone on the dust jacket described it) was also strangely melodramatic and unconvincing.

Another major issue I had with book was to do with the character of Clive Linley. Linley is a composer and spends the majority of the novel working on his 'Millenial Symphony'. Whilst Linley allows McEwan to muse on the nature of art and workmanship (etc, etc) it is also incredibly difficult to evoke music in writing, I think. I was longing to hear, alongside Linley, the haunting melody in his mind, but, try as he might, McEwan was unable to evoke it for me. This left me more than a little frustrated I have to say.

As I have been writing this review, the main "issues" I have with the novel have crystallised. It is not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with this novel - indeed there are many places where it is promising. It touches on fascinating themes such as public and civic responsibility, the right to privacy, the nature of friendship and so on and so forth: but it only ever really skims each theme before skating on to the next DRAMATIC EVENT, that leaves the end of the novel feeling crammed and somewhat rushed. For quite a short novel there is just too much going on that doesn't ever really seem to be satisfactorily addressed.

I don't know: my thoughts about this book aren't very coherent. Maybe I'm missing something, maybe a reread at a later date will reveal to me wherein the greatness of this novel lies. But for the moment I'm sticking to believing that Atonement and Enduring Love are far superior books. (less)

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