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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6871.Black_Dogs_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Black Dogs: A Novel" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1165604786m/6871.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6871.Black_Dogs_A_Novel?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Black Dogs: A Novel</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2408.Ian_McEwan">Ian McEwan</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8710828?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 3 of 5 stars The protagonist of Black Dogs states early on that the memoir he set out to write quickly turned into something else: the word he uses is "divagation," and it's impossible to imagine McEwan's novels without their digressions. In this novel, though, they don't work as well as they do in Atonement, Enduring Love or Saturday. The passage that best illustrates why is the short vignette that closes part 3. In it, the narrator is having dinner in a nearly-deserted hotel restaurant when a family of three walks in. They are conspicuously quiet - "wrapped in their own silence, a luminous envelope of familial intensity" - and the narrator assumes that the child has just been reprimanded for some minor offense. Soon enough, though, the child is hit by both his mother and his father while the narrator and the wait staff awkwardly look on.
 
 "Then [the waitress] came back to take the salad bowl from the family and bring clean plates. I think I understand what happened to the boy just then. As the table was readied for the next course, as the stewed rabbit was set down, he began to cry; with the coming and going of the waitress came confirmation that after his humiliation, life was to proceed as normal. His sense of isolation was complete and he could not hold back his despair."
 
 It's fair to say that McEwan does "understand what happened to the boy" - the moment seems psychologically true - but it also seems redundant to state so explicitly. Imagine Raymond Carver writing the same scene and you'd be left with just one sentence: "As the table was readied for the next course, as the stewed rabbit was set down, he began to cry." The rest is subtext.
 
 McEwan solved this problem later on, but not by writing stripped-down short stories. He did so by choosing narrators who could go on their own digressions rather than commenting on the author's scaffolding. In Atonement, it's an author at various stages in her career; in Enduring Love (the best example of this technique), a popular science writer; in Saturday, a neurosurgeon.
 
 Either way, a minor work by McEwan's standard is still a very good book, and Black Dogs is worth reading if you've already made your way through McEwan's later books.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/138294?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Hanny's review
rating:
bookshelves: ian-mcewan
recommended for: McEwan fans

The protagonist of Black Dogs states early on that the memoir he set out to write quickly turned into something else: the word he uses is "divagation," and it's impossible to imagine McEwan's novels without their digressions. In this novel, though, they don't work as well as they do in Atonement, Enduring Love or Saturday. The passage that best illustrates why is the short vignette that closes part 3. In it, the narrator is having dinner in a nearly-deserted hotel restaurant when a family of three walks in. They are conspicuously quiet - "wrapped in their own silence, a luminous envelope of familial intensity" - and the narrator assumes that the child has just been reprimanded for some minor offense. Soon enough, though, the child is hit by both his mother and his father while the narrator and the wait staff awkwardly look on.

"Then [the waitress] came back to take the salad bowl from the family and bring clean plates. I think I understand what happened to ...more The protagonist of Black Dogs states early on that the memoir he set out to write quickly turned into something else: the word he uses is "divagation," and it's impossible to imagine McEwan's novels without their digressions. In this novel, though, they don't work as well as they do in Atonement, Enduring Love or Saturday. The passage that best illustrates why is the short vignette that closes part 3. In it, the narrator is having dinner in a nearly-deserted hotel restaurant when a family of three walks in. They are conspicuously quiet - "wrapped in their own silence, a luminous envelope of familial intensity" - and the narrator assumes that the child has just been reprimanded for some minor offense. Soon enough, though, the child is hit by both his mother and his father while the narrator and the wait staff awkwardly look on.

"Then [the waitress] came back to take the salad bowl from the family and bring clean plates. I think I understand what happened to the boy just then. As the table was readied for the next course, as the stewed rabbit was set down, he began to cry; with the coming and going of the waitress came confirmation that after his humiliation, life was to proceed as normal. His sense of isolation was complete and he could not hold back his despair."

It's fair to say that McEwan does "understand what happened to the boy" - the moment seems psychologically true - but it also seems redundant to state so explicitly. Imagine Raymond Carver writing the same scene and you'd be left with just one sentence: "As the table was readied for the next course, as the stewed rabbit was set down, he began to cry." The rest is subtext.

McEwan solved this problem later on, but not by writing stripped-down short stories. He did so by choosing narrators who could go on their own digressions rather than commenting on the author's scaffolding. In Atonement, it's an author at various stages in her career; in Enduring Love (the best example of this technique), a popular science writer; in Saturday, a neurosurgeon.

Either way, a minor work by McEwan's standard is still a very good book, and Black Dogs is worth reading if you've already made your way through McEwan's later books....less

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