First Love/last Rites

by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan's Somerset Maugham Award-winning collection First Love, Last Rites brought him instant recognition as one of the most influential voices writing in England today. Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness. These tales are as horrifying as anything written by Clive Barker or Stephen King, but they are crafted with a lyricism and intensity that compel us to confront our secret kinship with the horrifying.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, British Literature, Literary Fiction, Horror, Literature

183 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Ian McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970 and later 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 Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year.

McEwan lives in London.

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

L’ULTIMO GIORNO D’ESTATE


Dal racconto “Conversazione con l’uomo nell’armadio” è stato tratto il film polacco del 1993 “Rozmowa z czlowiekiem z szafy” diretto da Mariusz Grzegorzek.

L’ultimo giorno d’estate è il titolo del racconto che ho preferito. La raccolta ne contiene altri sette, incluso quello che offre il titolo al libro (sia nell’edizione italiana che in quella originale).
È l’esordio letterario di McEwan, pubblicato nel 1975. Nascita di uno scrittore. E, secondo me, uno di quelli notevoli.

Otto storie, quasi tutte raccontate da un io narrante, che trattano di incesto, stupro, violenza, pedofilia, morte, crudeltà sugli animali. Con sottile atrocità. Producono inquietudine, non c’è dubbio.
Ma non m’è parsa mera voglia di trasgressione, soltanto desiderio di stupire, o morbosità. C’è altro: come se fosse una personale ridefinizione di Bene e soprattutto Male.
Nella quarta di copertina della mia edizione McEwan parla di ossessioni. Che diventano incubi. Almeno per il lettore.


”L’ultimo giorno d’estate” è diventato l’omonimo TV movie del 1984 diretto da Derek Banham.

E parla di pastiche: ogni racconto ispirato da un certo stile, da un certo scrittore (per esempio, McEwan nomina Henry Miller per quello intitolato Fatto in casa, il primo della raccolta). Una parodia, che però poi prende la mano allo scrittore e diventa narrazione personale, autonoma, originale. Si potrebbe definire una specie di laboratorio letterario.
E sin da qui si percepisce la qualità di scrittura di McEwan, che non è mai banale.

Al centro di ogni storia c’è quell’età che separa l’infanzia dall’età adulta, maledetta e benedetta, chiamata adolescenza.
E come nell’adolescenza, il tema del sesso è vitale, centrale, pulsante.
Come ovvio corollario, si parla di verginità, virilità, affermazione della propria identità sessuale.


”First Love, Last Rites” il film di Jesse Peretz del 1997. Qui Natasha Gregson Wagner e Giovanni Ribisi.

Il racconto del titolo è diventato un film omonimo nel 1997.
Farfalle ha avuto addirittura due adattamenti cinematografici: uno tedesco nel 1988, e poi uno inglese nel 2005.
Conversazione con l’uomo nell’armadio ha prodotto un film polacco nel 1993.
L’ultimo giorno d’estate un tv movie inglese nel 1984.
Altri hanno dato vita a cortometraggi.


”Schmetterlinge” di Wolfgang Becker, 1988.

Lo stesso McEwan ha firmato qualche sceneggiatura originale: per esempio, The Ploughman’s Lunch – L’ambizione di James Penfield film diretto da Richard Eyre nel 1983 (con Jonathan Price nel ruolo principale).
A testimonianza di un rapporto tra la letteratura di Ian McEwan e il cinema particolarmente fecondo e ripetuto, ma purtroppo non sempre felice: ricordo almeno un paio di romanzi, tra i suoi che preferisco, che sono diventati film poco riusciti: The Innocent (in italiano il libro è uscito come Lettera da Berlino), nonostante John Schlesinger alla regia, e The Comfort of Strangers – Cortesie per gli ospiti, nonostante la regia di Paul Schrader.

Ecco l’incipit lapidario di Farfalle:
Giovedì ho visto il mio primo cadavere.


”Butterflies” di Max Jacobi, 2005.

[Vit Babenco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories are dark and moody. I could often feel some Charles Bukowski’s motifs though the tales are told with quite original bleakness. It was probably the atmosphere of the time.
Ian McEwan seems to be in search of his own literary style and he often manages to find it.

In Melton Mowbray in 1875 at an auction of articles of ‘curiosity and worth’, my great-grandfather, in the company of M his friend, bid for the penis of Captain Nicholls who died in Horsemonger jail in 1873. It was bottled in a glass twelve inches long, and, noted my great-grandfather in his diary that night, ‘in a beautiful state of preservation’.

Angst of the youth… Fantasies hidden deep in minds… Strange events and occurances… Life showing its odd sides… First love… Last rites…

From the beginning of summer until it seemed pointless, we lifted the thin mattress on to the heavy oak table and made love in front of the large open window. We always had a breeze blowing into the room and smells of the quayside four floors down. I was drawn into fantasies against my will, fantasies of the creature, and afterwards when we lay on our backs on the huge table, in those deep silences I heard it faintly running and clawing.

There is a time when everything starts… And there is a time when everything ends…

[Taufiq Yves · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an evil, strange and disturbing book. The descriptions in the book are extremely detailed and exquisite, with no taboos. And when reading it, I always have this feeling: this book is like a heavy metal album, because it's rebellious, weird, and dark enough.

In this collection of short stories, the first one that fascinated me was Homemade, which tells a story of incest between siblings. Speaking of incest, I've found that many artists, when exploring this theme, adopt a very solemn attitude. However, in Homemade, Ian McEwan’s narrative about incest has a sense of playfulness, which, in my opinion, is a very novel and bold narrative approach. What is hidden in the text is not "meaning," but "pleasure." Reading is not a kind of "spiritual communication," but a sexual game between bodies. When reading frees itself from the tyranny of knowledge, ecstasy follows. I like this view, and in my opinion, this is the truth about reading. Moreover, I've found that the books I intend to read again are the ones that give me intense pleasure when I read them.

Ironically, I think the reason why a book containing such shocking short stories can be published in Asia is probably because of the footnote on the last page - there are 2 viewpoints: one is that "the suspected incest incident at the end is actually a playful fantasy of the author," while the other is that this novel "has an unusually urgent moral purpose, with the serious intention of revealing social ills and exploring the human condition."

I personally prefer to interpret this novel in this way: for the subversion of those stale morals or meanings, new and more humanistic morals and meanings can be derived.

Next, I wanna talk about another short story in this book, Butterflies. This story explores the inner world of a severely autistic person, the psychology of a pedophile, and the criminal psychology of a murderer. Of course, to be precise, the protagonist may not strictly be a pedophile. The reason why he chose a young girl as his target of harm is simply because, as an adolescent, he was a complete social outcast. He didn't know how to interact normally with others, so he couldn't seduce a girl over 14 in a normal way and relieve his sexual desire on her.

I've always tried to understand the protagonist's psychology from McEwan’s perspective, because I felt what he’s trying to magnify here is that many boys during puberty suffer the greatest pain from being unable to relieve their unusually strong sexual desire through the body of a different sex. When I was in middle school, those who had the opportunity to have sex with girls were basically those with very high emotional intelligence and a lot of courage. These boys never lacked the courage to fight and pick up girls. The reason why these boys dared to fight was not because they were physically developed, but simply because they were bold and had high emotional intelligence, which made them have many followers, and as a result, they could always win in fights by numbers. In fact, my observation tells me that when children fight, it's not about physical development, it depends more on courage and emotional intelligence..

I boldly guess that the vast majority of adolescent boys, when they cannot find a normal way to vent their sexual desire, will often also conceive of sexual fantasies related to rape, but fortunately, porns and their pair of lifelong “sex partners” save them. For this reason, many did not become a rapist.

Besides these 2, the other 6 short stories in this collection also have their own characteristics, but I will not elaborate on them here. You have had too much now.

I’ve always believed that, in a strange way, dark - themed art can purify the soul, while erotic art can soften the heart. Yet, in today’s mainstream culture, both these forms of art are often condemned. I wonder if this is because some people fear a society of individuals with sound minds and strong characters. After all, such people might not be easily manipulated.

I believe that there will be some who will criticize this book, morally. All I want to say is that moral criticism is very easy, and countless people are best at doing this, but it is also human beings who are the most capable of internal fighting, and it is also human beings whose moral system is the most chaotic. When encountering problems, why don’t we think about whether those so - called good people are hypocritical, think about why those so - called bad guy became bad because of social reasons, thinking like this, I think people in general will become more and more tolerant.

Looking at human history, it is not difficult to find that the most cruel and inhumane things in the world are often done by those who are full of moral righteousness; while those whose words and deeds often go beyond the secular standards of good and evil are often the most tolerant people in the world, and these people can help us rethink the definition of human beings.

And First Love, Last Rites, which transcends the secular standards of good and evil, is, in a sense, a book that can help us rethink the definition of human beings.

I am glad that I am an open - minded person, and I will never have the guts to do anything harmful to heaven or earth, but for everything that happens in the world, whether good or bad, I can still tolerate its existence.

After all, no one is perfect.

3.7 / 5 stars

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly modern societies outcasts and/or outliers are featured in these at times dark and macabre short stories centred round compulsion, sex and mortality - Eight interesting and original tales by the literary giant that is Ian McEwan. 6 out of 12, Three Star read.

2011 read

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ian McEwan, you are one sick fuck. Sick sick sick sick sick sick siiiiiiiiick. But, man you can write. The gorgeous sparse prose – no words are wasted with you. I have come to expect the warped characters you write about, yet you still manage to surprise me. The way you get into their heads...wow.

This was me reading your collection of stories (most of this happened inside my head, but some of it happened audibly):

{read read read} Sigh…beautiful.
{read read read} Yeah.
{read read read} Goddamn it. You didn’t have to bring a cat into this. Asshole.
{read read read} Wha - What?
{read read read} AW, NAW!
{read read read} Nononononono...OH!

And that was just one story. And you keep doing that.

Whenever I read a collection of stories, I am tempted to pick my favorites and talk about them. With this one, they’re all so good I can’t highlight just one.

(Well, if I’m being honest, I should admit a little extra fondness for “Disguises” and “Conversation with a Cupboard Man.”)

Thanks.

[Jamie (semi-hiatus for a week) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have no idea what the heck I just read but I didn't like it. And it's not because I'm over here clutching my pearls over the subject matter, although it's admittedly unpleasant – the story where a teenager molests his younger sister (“Homemade”) is actually the best of the bunch, believe it or not. Some of these stories are depraved, some are dull and pointless, and some are both. I'm guessing that Ian McEwan just isn't for me, which is too bad … I mean, where else will I get my unnecessarily long short stories about incest and molestation and murder and animal abuse? 🤮 1.6 stars, rounded up.

[Manny · Rating 1 out of 5]

My relationship with Ian McEwan did not get off to a good start. I was an 18-year-old student at Cambridge, and a friend came to visit over the weekend. He had a copy of this book, which he praised extravagantly. Out of curiosity I read the first story. I really didn't like it.

That evening, he went out to visit another person he knew in town, and came back late and much the worse for wear, after having sampled the beer in three or four pubs. Somewhere around 2 am, I was woken by sounds of vomiting from the living room. I went to investigate, and discovered that Paul had thrown up all over "First Love, Last Rites", which he had left beside his sleeping bag. I remember commenting approvingly that, if he was anyway going to be sick, he had picked the very best spot in the room to do it.

Who would have guessed that McEwan would now be one of my favorite authors? Initial impressions can sometimes be misleading.

[Maciek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ian, that Ian. This is his first published work - a collection of perverse and sinister short fiction. This isn't the Ian McEwan of Atonement or even Saturday. This is the young Ian McEwan who's just starting out, and who would begin with works such as The Cement Garden and The Comfort of Strangers - dark, horrific and nightmarish novels. Published all the way back in 1975, these stories are set in some latter-day urban England filled with waste, pus, smog and rot and populated with walking, crawling and dancing monstrosities with various fears, obsessions and fetishes.

Most of the protagonists in this stories are children, or people who never quite got through adolescence. Acts of mental and physical violation abound, as they experiment with and on each other; the stories are brief but all have this uncomfortable feeling of things being very wrong hanging over them. It is the 70's - the time of sexual liberation and progression of society into a new era, but McEwan is not interested in offering judgment or opinion. These stories are narrated in a remarkably passionate way, offering no moral stance, interested merely in seeing where a boundary could lie and crossing it. McEwan is interested in seeing his protagonists act, shying away from clearly victimizing/antagonizing them. They live lives of loneliness and deprivation, filled with a quiet thirst for some sort of fulfillment.

McEwan remarked that in these stories he experimented with finding his own voice as an author, try different things and discover himself as a writer. It shows. Most of the stories are pretty outlandish in terms of their depravity and grotesqueness, but nonetheless remain confined within the realm of the real and warp neither time or space. All aside from one story, Solid Geometry, which is probably my favorite of the bunch and which was made by the Channel 4 into a television film starring Ewan McGregor. This story is the clearest example of McEwan experimenting with different genres and conventions, combining his interest in personal dynamics with elements of horror and speculative fiction. It's a frame story, and the story contained within is as good as the main narrative; its bizarre and eccentric and to say more would be to spoil it.

First Love, Last Rites is a debut which must have certainly raised many eyebrows when it was first published, even in the more liberal audience. Age might have lessened the shock one felt when reading these stories, but they have remained dark and disturbing, dark tales of perversion and depravity. The horror is well staged and masterly unraveled; well worth reading if you've got the stomach for it.

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

McEwan's writing has been praised for its ability to create vivid imagery and disturbing fascination. However, some more recent reviews have pointed out that despite its technical brilliance, this work offers no personal satisfaction, suggesting a possible disconnect with readers less experienced in McEwan's literature.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and disturbing. One of my all-time favorite writers. Don’t know why it took me so long to get to these stories.

[Brandon Baker · Rating 1 out of 5]

Edit: thought about it, and yeah, I kind of hated it. This was recommended to me because people have told me it’s disturbing and depraved, and it was at times, but I never connected to the writing style (I thought it was frustrating) and was left with a feeling of like -is that it?- after every story. But yeah, mostly the bad taste remains even a few days later. I will probably read more of his stuff, but I just did not like this.

Gonna need to think about this one for a bit. I didn’t particularly like it and it left a really bad taste in my mouth.

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

An early collection of short stories, all but one told in the first person, many of them teenagers or young men, yet their voices invariably ring true. Some events are shocking and depraved, but even in those stories, you get an uncomfortable but plausible and powerful insight into the mind of the perpetrator.

Although you could easily read the book in one sitting, it’s probably best to read one story at a time, interspersed with other things, as many will leave a nasty taste in your metaphorical mouth.

NB McEwan was only 27 when this was published, and three years later, there was the equally shocking "Cement Garden" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). He still writes about appalling acts, but he's matured and developed some subtlety.

[cypt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blemba, ką aš čia perskaičiau???????

Knygos trigger warning: labai daug smurto ir labai slegiančios prievartos, patyrusieji ir patyrusios, neskaitykit.

Iš McEwano debiuto nieko pernelyg nesitikėjau: mačiau, kad apsakymai apdovanoti premija, bet man jo premijuotieji Amsterdam, Saturday nepasirodė superiniai, tai galvojau, kad ir čia kažkas tokio nelabai suprantamo bus. O buvo - įspūdinga proza, bet žiauriai disturbing turinys. Kiekvienam apsakyme mums pasakojama tai iš prievartautojo, tai iš žudiko perspektyvos, prievartą ir smurtą čia patiria vaikai, bejėgiai žmonės - iš kaimynų, tėvų, giminaičių, brolių... Labai baisus efektas. Ypač baisu, kad, kaip Haneke's "Funny Games", mes priverstos ir priversti tapatintis su smurtautoju - matyti jo ar jos perspektyvą, "logiką", aukos bejėgiškumą, pajusti savo galią. Ir kažkokiu būdu McEwanas nepadaro tos perspektyvos atstumiančios, jis priverčia ją išgyventi, pamatyti - ir tas ir yra baisiausia, tas nesmerkimas to, kas turėtų būti smerkiama, ko nesmerkt yra kažkaip labai neteisinga. Bet literatūrine prasme - visiškai įspūdinga. Kaip nei nepasmerkti, nei neišaukštinti, nei nenuslysti į pigius ašarų spaudimo (A Little Life, i still hate you) triukus?? Kaip iš viso to padaryti savo literatūrinį debiutą?? Ne dabar - 1975 metais, po visokių seksualinių revoliucijų, po bitlų... Man galva neišneša.

Ir dar, kas buvo matyti tiek iš The Comfort of Strangers ar Enduring Love, tiek netgi iš On Chesil Beach, - jis neįtikėtinai kuria įtampą. Du paskutiniai, ilgieji, apsakymai - "First Love, Last Rites" ir "Disguises" - skaitai ir net kvapą sulaikai, o jei kas pertraukia - rėki ir siunti. Ir visa ta įtampa nebūtinai net išvirsta į kokį nors smurto aktą..nors ką aš čia, viskas pas jį smurtas. Labai įspūdinga ir labai šiurpu, ir iš tiesų matai, ką galima padaryti su kalba ir siužetu, kaip galima nuvesti juos prie išvis neaišku kokių ribų. Jau sutariau, kam padovanosiu, nes net žiūrėt į tą knygą baugu :E

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve never understood the squeamish responses to Ian McEwan’s short stories. I read the combined edition - the hardback Cape put out in 1995 - while in Stafford hospital, and found it far more absorbing than my surroundings. In that edition the stories from First Love, Last Rites were printed in a different order than the earlier Picador edition and used a larger, more gothic-looking typeface.

While two stories date back to McEwan’s days as the only student on UEA’s then-brand-new writing course, most were composed in an attic flat in Stockwell where the rent was £3 a week. Many first ran in The New Review, edited by Ian Hamilton - the hard-drinking, womanising chain-smoker infamous for paying his contributors with rubber cheques. (Julian Barnes still has a cheque from those days stamped ‘return to payer’ so many times it looks like a spider’s web.) Canny readers may spot how many of McEwan’s blurbs - from Julian Barnes, Craig Raine, Douglas Dunn, Anthony Thwaite, and John Carey - were penned by fellow contributors to that magazine.

Other stories in the collection first appeared abroad. The longest story, ‘Disguises’, was printed in the American Review, and netted the author a $600 cheque just in time for Christmas 1972. This was the only story I disliked (still do). This is not because of what happens in it or even the fact it’s 20 pages too long. It’s because the point of view is wobbly: a child’s perspective one second, someone else’s in another, and sometimes in the same sentence. It’s often hard to follow what’s happening and I seem far from alone in that judgement. After getting the cheque McEwan wrote three more of the collection’s stories one after the other, buoyed by a wave of confidence. (They were ‘Last Day of Summer’, ‘Butterflies’, and ‘Solid Geometry.’)

The other stories are less cluttered, more direct, and more powerful. ‘A Conversation With A Cupboard Man’ was first written at UEA and initially started as a parody. McEwan was a fan of John Fowles’ novel The Collector, and had set about composing a similarly monstrous, self-pitying voice. It seems that the tale changed with the telling - many find this the most moving story in the collection, perhaps because it’s told as a confessional monologue. Whether or not the reader is meant to, it’s hard not to feel sympathy for its warped narrator and how he got to be that way - which I will not spoil here.

‘Home-made’ also began life as a parody, this time of the braggart voice perfected by Norman Mailer and Henry Miller. The last line, like the mirage of sexual triumph in the narrator’s brain, is ironical. The first part goes on for too long though: paragraphs rather than pages would have said just as clearly, ‘this speaker is a prat.’

‘Solid Geometry’ arose out of other books. McEwan had been reading Bertrand Russell’s diaries, and wanted to write a story comparing the pithy selectivity of diaries and fiction. It also had its roots, obliquely, in real life. Like his hero in The Child in Time, McEwan took a van packed full of hippy friends to Afghanistan, where much of the talk focused on Alan Watts, Tim Leary, the I Ching, and doing copious amounts of LSD. Not for the last time in his fiction, McEwan pits a desiccated, logical male against a loving, mystic female - the irony being that the she is sent packing using the system he has derided (‘the mathematics of the absolute’). It also has three of the collection’s more powerful images - the ‘glaring’ enamel, the ‘slug like’ disintegrating penis, and the field of babies the female has nightmares about landing a plane on.

‘Cocker at the Theatre’ is amusing filler and the collection’s shortest piece. The title story and ‘Last Day of Summer’ are displaced matricidal fantasies, told with steely precision and without loss of nerve. ‘First Love, Last Rites’ recalls, for me, Graham Swift’s story ‘Tunnel’, also about young love amid wilful squalor. ‘Butterflies’ is the best-executed story in the collection, assuredly carried out. I often wonder if the title and narrator were also inspired by Fowles’ The Collector.

It’s interesting to note how the stories’ themes link and amplify each other, despite the years separating their composition. Many are about the cost of living up to a received idea of manhood - deep-freezing the emotions, shunning all things feminine and maternal, rejecting empathy. You may note that McEwan’s first novel The Cement Garden takes many of the threads from this collection and braids them into a whole. The collection’s pervading themes - men and women, science and mysticism, family, innocence and depravity - will later bloom into McEwan’s first five novels. Not many debuts are so fertile or so powerful.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yeuch. These are, in the main, frightful stories which leave a really horrible taste in the mouth. Thakfully I have read enough of his other stuff to know that I quite like some of it. When he wrote these he was one weird man. There is murder, incestuous rape, child abuse by a neighbour in one story, an aunt in another and a mother in another. These are foul stories with, to my mind, no real value other than showing how shocking McEwan thought he could be. They do not address issues, they simply create monstrous stages on which the writer can let rip with lots of adolescent swearing and skewed sexual encounters.

There is one story called 'Last Day of Summer' whih is genuinely poignant and seems to have something of significance to say about different ways of loving and relating and manages to express itself in some lovely phrases. It is the only story which does not have some form of sexual depravity or, in the case of 'Cocker at the Theatre', just some pointless account of sex and offensive gay stereotyping.

I recall reading a quotation from McEwan after the 9/11 attrocity when he said that imagination is the beginning of compassion because had the terrorists been able to imagine themselves into the hearts or minds of the victims they would have been unable to continue. Is this his intention here?All the stories apart from 'Cocker' and 'Disguises' are written in the first person, presumably an attempt to 'enable us to be inside the mind of a murderer/fiend/tosser'; To make us more sympathetic or understanding of the struggles of people sexually sick in mind? It doesn't really work. If that is his intention then he needs to do more than simply relate the behaviour. There is no value to this collection, it is a man scratching his groin very brazenly in public and unzipping his flies and waving it about.

Thank God I came to these stories having read some of his later work otherwise I would not have bothered to pick up another of his books ever again.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Under Ian McEwan's manipulation, depravity may take on the guise of innocence and butterflies can become sinister. With equal power, he can show a child's life become fouled by the macabre, or distil the awakening sensations of first love, tracing its ritual initiations and infusing them with luxuriant sensual imagery."
From the back cover of the 1983 Picador paperback edition (a much better description of the book's content then the one on Goodreads).

Some praise for this book at its publication in 1975:

"A brilliant debut..." A. Alvarez, Observer (London)

"The most devastating debut I have seen for a long time..." Peter Lewis, Daily Mail (London)

"A brilliant performance, showing an originality astonishing for a writer in his mid-twenties." Anthony Thwaite

"Ian McEwan writes to shock and succeeds...All his stories have a feeling of impending evil...It is a tour de force of concision, and fun, too, in a deadpan manner." Gabriele Annan, Times Literary Supplement

I don't often quote the original synopsis for a book nor excerpts from original reviews but I can recall reading these stories when I was in my twenties and being blown away by them - I thought they were powerful, extraordinary and nothing like anything I had read up to that point. Rereading them now I have no reason to reverse my enormous impression of writing that was something fine, exceptional and bordering on the unique. I must admit that when, many years later I read other works by McEwan I did not believe that they were by the same author as these stories. If you have only read his later work then I would not say that you will like these stories but they are stories well worth reading. I am very pleased to have bought a copy of this collection and I will reread them again.

[Laysee · Rating 2 out of 5]

First Love, Last Rites is the first published work of Ian McEwan and the first collection of his short stories to win the Somerset Maugham award. I must say I prefer the work of the more mature McEwan. This collection of stories is extremely disturbing and I had to take a break after the third story (a first for me for a McEwan book). Why can't his characters be permitted to enjoy a perfect summer? I could barely stifle a scream of revulsion at the close of many of the stories. In them you find a steady supply of the grotesque, dysfunctional, perverse, depraved. There is, however, the unmistakable touch of a compelling story teller. In "The Last Day of Summer" and "Butterflies", the unexpected and startling unravelling of horror was superbly staged. I kept reading even though I wanted so much to discontinue. Another book I can read only once.

[Kristopher Jansma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I've been a McEwan fan since I first read Enduring Love, I've long avoided reading his debut collection of short stories. They've turned out to be everything I'd heard about them: perverse, disgusting, creepy, twisted, dark... and undeniably amazing.

I don't want to dwell on any individual story, or give all of the surprises away, but I'll try to explain why I liked them regardless of the content.

The very first story, Homemade, I really still don't like. It begins as a story of two adolescents who hatch a plan to pay a girl in thier class to flash them - simple enough - and somehow winds up being about the narrator's attempt to rape his sister. Not only was the latter half difficult to enjoy, but I kept wondering why it followed the first half at all.

But, making up for that, the next story Solid Geometry, made me laugh perhaps harder than I ever have laughed before. The twist is too good to give away, but let it suffice to say that it involves a mathematician, his annoying wife, a penis preserved in formaldahyde, and hidden spatial dimensions.

From there, the stories went up and down. Some, like Cocker at the Theatre or Disguises, seem light (and short) and not worthwhile. Others, like Last Days of Summer and Butterflies, are bizarre and dark, but wonderful. Butterflies, like the following story, Conversation with a Cupboard Man, actually do the most difficult thing of all - making you sympathize with a narrator who is a child molester, and another who is raised as a small child well into adulthood. These achieve the trancendancy of something like Lolita, where a skillful narrator can guide you into the dexterous and deviant mind of a sociopath, and better, make you nearly love them.

The title story - First Love, Last Rites - was well worth getting to. In it, two young lovers waste a summer away together, catching crabs (non-venereally) and hunting the rat that lives in their walls. It's the rare sort of story where nearly nothing seems to happen, and yet everything feels poignant. The final scene - again, can't give it away - took my breath away.

All in all, I'm glad I finally sucked it up and read it. It proves to me what I've always hoped - that, in the right hands, any material can find its way into beauty. I'm glad that Ian McEwan found other subjects - widely varied in his later career (which spans literary genres with ease) because it really is that incredible range that makes him such an incredible writer. Thinking on it now, even many of the great literary giants often seemed stuck in a particular mode or subject matter, be it hunting and fishing, the lives of the well-t0-do, or the sagas of mythical Southern counties... but I get the feeling McEwan could dive in and out of any of these arenas with mastery. And just as easily he could write about cross-dressers and street thugs and people from Mongolia. Sooner or later I'll make my way through the remaining McEwan novels (only a handful left) but now that I've gone all the way to the start, I feel more confident than ever that he is our greatest living writer.

[Vonia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate to admit that I liked this one, because it was so. fucked. up. Completely. Debut collection here from the preeminent Ian McEwan. Had this been my first read of his, I will be honest, I may never have tried another one, because it is so dark. But the writing, as always, exquisite. Simple paragraphs that are, well, not simple. Vignettes that seemingly highlight, lifting themselves off the page. Anecdotes that are mere tangents in the short story somehow enlighten a reader with the fascinating ways we operate in a way very few writers can.

The eight elegaic stories in this collection:

"Homemade"
"Solid Geometry"
"Last Day of Summer"
"Cocker at the Theatre"
"Butterflies"
"Conversation with a Cupboard Man"
"First Love, Last Rites"
"Disguises"

In order of preference? So... Well... Saving the best for last....

"First Love, Last Rites"

First Love have sex on a mattress that they move onto an oak table every afternoon. Detailed discussions about sperm. Added discussions about narrator trying a get rich scheme that involving eel trapping. A pregnancy is no surprise.


"Butterflies"

Lonely man is riveted by a young girl who lives in the neighborhood whom follows him one day. Having no friends, very little social contact, he decides he wants this girl to love him, to want him, to be his only friend. This leads to him having this maybe seven year old girl touch him as he strips near some abandoned area by the canal. He is able to lead her here by convincing here there will be butterflies there. Afterwards, the girl tries to runaway, but trips near the water. All she needs is a little push...

"Solid Geometry"
Man has a preserved penis, given to him by his Grandfather. Is already having problems in marriage, but the last straw is when she takes this away from him. In his Grandfather's diaries, at about the same time, he has discovered a secret arithmetic equation and/or formula that seems to be able to make things disappear when folded, measured, calculated ever precisely... like origami. Except he uses it a la The Kama Sutra... No more wife.

"Cocker at the Theatre"

Short but sweet, @ A Cabaret Sexual Theater Performance Rehearsal, two performers are seemingly a little out of sync in their back-forth movements. It is discovered that they are not acting.

"Homemade"

Coming-Of-Age story of a virgin. This story is unremarkable on its own, but somehow I was floored by the writing. Mid story... as the protagonist is playing hide & seek with his little sister, walking upstairs, calling her name, "... It was then that I decided to rape my sister." Say what?

"Disguises"

Another newly orphaned protagonist is handed to his Aunt, whom was in theater, therefore now has a thing for dress-up. Everyday when he returns from school he has tea with her, then finds a costume he is to wear to dinner. Things change when he finds a little girl's attire one evening. He tries to refuse but his Aunt sees to it that this is not so. Scene follows where Aunt essentially tries to "date rape" him after giving him wine. He is somewhere in his early teens. Things are a little better for him when he meets his first love interest at school. Meanwhile, a masquerade party of sorts is planned, except instead of simple, uniform disguises, it is more of a dark fucked up costume party, where our protagonist is drunk, confused, messed up, lost...

"Conversation with a Cupboard Man"

Monologue by someone who wishes to regress to childhood (A Child in Time, anyone?) The Child in Time Well-written explanations of the feeling of wanting to be trapped, enclosed spaces, taken care of by others, held in, etcetera, for the comfort, safety, security. Mother had tried to keep him from becoming an adult, literally. Did not learn how to tie his shoes, speak properly, do anything else himself until seventeen when she transferred her love to a new man. Still cannot read and/or write. He still feels safest in enclosed spaces, in the darkness, with childhood things like baby blankets... Like in his cupboard.


"Last Day of Summer"

Cute story about befriending a fat girl who moves in with protagonist/brother in their cabin by the water, who are newly orphaned. Story develops as the platonic relationship possibly moves into more, but this is siphoned indefinitely when the two of them, along with another roommates' daughter, take the boat out for the last ride of the summer on the last day of the summer. Reminiscing on their magical summer together, they are laughing thoughtlessly when her weight tips it over. Picturesque prose describes the loneliness, desperation, emptiness as our protagonist watches his last day of the summer become, well, his last day.

[David Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

After hearing Ian McEwan's first book of short stories described as being "taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric," I think I got a somewhat skewed vision of what these stories would be. I was expecting tales set in London that oozed a gothic atmosphere. Instead, while the stories contain quite serious and deathly situations, they are written in a more light-hearted tone that is closer to Nabokov than Poe. Passages of nasty violence and tawdry encounters are dealt with in such a casual manner they almost escape their outlandish nature to seem quotidian and expected.

This isn't to say these stories are bad; it's quite the opposite. The dark yet comical events are embedded with a swirling mixture of emotions. They are simultaneously beautiful, sad, depraved, hilarious, and sanguine. The worlds McEwan builds are constructed around the idiosyncrasies of their characters, making each world unique and bizarre. For example, every situation becomes about feeling safe and secure for the overly sheltered narrator of "Conversation with a Cupboard Man." He even partially enjoys being trapped in an oven while he's cleaning it because it reminds him of his youthful confinement.

While the stories are diverse, many of them are linked by their salacious content. Just about all of the tales involve some kind of sexual encounter—usually an awkward one. There is really no conventional sex here either. Even when it's consensual, it might occur on stage, in a cupboard, or one of the partners might need to imagine monsters to get off.

The first one—and likely most controversial—is "Homemade," which involves a teenage boy who is continually persuaded by a friend of his to steal, do drugs, and discover various sexual pleasures. To unearth these pleasures and find out about the opposite sex, he is willing to go to extreme measures that most wouldn't even consider. I have never found myself laughing so much at such an extraordinarily uncomfortable situation.

This is followed by "Solid Geometry," a comical tale in which a husband makes use of geometry to make his wife disappear. The somewhat mundane "Last Day of Summer" plays out more like a standard story of a childhood summer; although, it does take a sudden dark turn at the end. "Cocker at the Theatre" is a brief and amusing interlude. The more disturbing "Butterflies" recounts the death of a young girl by a reclusive and deranged man. "Disguises" tells the story of an acting-obsessed aunt who forces her young nephew to dress up for in-home performances.

The best one, though, is the title story, "First Love, Last Rites." It follows a young couple who live in an old nondescript apartment four stories up from a quay. They mostly want to avoid interactions or feelings about the world, but even in their isolated and quasi-romantic abode, they begin to sense the inevitability of the conventional routines of life. The settling conformity they feel seeps into the environment around them. When the male character is out eel fishing, he notes the following: "I was amazed at how soon the clean white rope from the chandlers had become like all other rope near the river, brown and hung about with fine strands of green weed."

And, if there is one story here that suggests there are monsters or evil things lurking just beneath the surface of reality, it is this one. All throughout its duration, the characters seem to fear some unknown scratching and clawing noises that emanate from a presumed monster, which may or may not be imagined. Eventually, the fear of this creature seems to represent a fear of pregnancy, of bringing another life into this world they are desperately trying to avoid. Still, even with all its menacing qualities and cynicism, the story ends on an ambiguously hopeful note. Leave it to McEwan to embed scraps of hope in an otherwise dismal world.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dark, strange, sometimes sick, odd, original, mesmerising eight short stories collection. This book was published in 1975 and was Ian McEwan’s first published book. It won the 1976 Somerset Maugham Award. It is 125 pages (Picador edition).

A strong short story collection and a very worthwhile read. For Ian McEwan fans this book should be a satisfying read.

[Stela · Rating 4 out of 5]

First Love Last Rites – seven stories written by a very young but the same amazing Ian McEwan who made John Fowles say that ‘No one interested in the state and mood of contemporary Britain can afford not to read him’.

Therefore, instead of a review, I leave you with some quotes in support of this statement 😊and with a link towards a very interesting interview about the book, Ian McEwan: when I was a monster, published by The Guardian in 2015:

I’m sitting on the bed behind her looking at how immense her back is, and under her chair I can see her thick pink legs, how they taper away and squeeze into tiny shoes at the bottom. Everywhere she’s pink. The smell of her sweat fills the room. It smells like the new cut grass outside, and I get this idea that I mustn’t breathe it in too deeply or I’ll get fat too.
*
Out of the dark came the choreographer. She had a stylish trenchcoat on, tied in the middle with a wide belt. She had a small waist, sunglasses and a sticky-bun hairdo. She walked like a pair of scissors.
*
I looked at her closely for the first time. She had a long delicate face and large mournful eyes. Her fine brown hair was tied in bunches in red ribbon to match her red cotton dress. She was beautiful in a strange almost sinister way, like a girl in a Modigliani painting.

[Claire Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know why I've waited 30 years to read this, when it's been sitting on my shelves and I know I love Ian McEwan's early writing, and I did love this. It's very dark and often gruesome, but that's what I like - that many of the stories we see from the evil-character's mind. Not that even the evil-character is only one-dimensional, McEwan's writing is too clever for that.
I had some favourites: Solid geometry, Last day of summer, and First love, last rites. My least favourite was the last (which was a shame), Disguises.
I'd recommend it as long as you like bad things happening and sick people in your stories.

[Tarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ian McEwan has a way of making each sentence feel more real to you than your own lived experience. More tangible than the couch you sit on, more emotionally meaningful than your last interaction. To me, this is what makes his books both affecting and important--the best of what art can do--but also, at times, deeply problematic. Because you are intertwined with his stories, woven into the fabric of not just the sensibility, but the plot itself, you are also complicit in them. And this works extremely well in books like "Saturday" and "Atonement," for example, where your life is complicated and convicted by the deep internal debates and tragedies, the national and personal heartbreaks, that plague everyday life.

But in his collection "First Love, Last Rites," you are wrapped in(to) a series of vignettes in which you are no longer a complicit participant, but a compromised voyeur. It may be, in part, the brevity of these stories that makes it harder to find the moral center (by which I do not mean some certain shared morality), but it's also the subject matter--more male-focused, for one, and suggesting that (male) sexuality is shameful, dangerous, and, frankly, creepy. The stories largely focus on men/boys who can only express themselves and/or their sexual/personal awakenings (and these are coupled in these stories) in a variety of unhealthy ways--the most troubling of which are through rape, incest, and violence against women. The stories haunt you in part part because of McEwan's ever-haunting prose, but also in part because the stories they are telling are somewhat shock-value stories, stories that seem morally empty, or, in a way, surprisingly incomplete.

It matters to me, too, that the stories in which boys/men rape, assault, or kills girls/women don't seem to be problematized at all--and the girls/women themselves are largely symbolically (and in one case, literally) erased from the narrative.

***vague spoilers below***

A different story serves as a good counter-explanation of what I mean: in one story, an older, charmingly eccentric (possibly bi-polar) Aunt creates a world of silly decorum for her nephew (the point-of-view), who suffers the idiosyncrasies of his Aunt and her world, but dare not share them with his friends. But one day, when he goes to "dress" for dinner as he always must, the outfit is that of a girl, and the Aunt's outfit that of a boy/man. The nephew is confused, ashamed, angry, but compliant, and when the Aunt asks him to sit on her knee, the narrative fully expresses his discomfort and reluctance, painting a scene of an-almost-sexual-assault that does not happen (she doesn't actually cross any lines here), but that DOES happen on the emotional level. It does this while never fully victimizing the nephew or demonizing the Aunt. It's a delicate balance, and a powerful stroke of storytelling.

The stories where a girl is raped by her brother, or where a girl is first assaulted and then (sort of accidentally) murdered by a neighbor boy, or where a nagging wife is folded into non-existence by her theorizing husband, these, on the other hand, lack the nuance in which both characters get to be real, or in which there is moral complication about what is being done TO women and girls, or that they are anything more than the canvasses on which sexual shame and make fantasy get played.

Like all his work I have read, his prose are masterful. Over what they have mastery, however, is the central issue here for me and what that ethical obligation is to the characters the author draws into life, or, in the case of the women/girls, into half-life. One must not paint morality tales to address issues of sex, violence, rape, and incest, but when the complications of these actions are only seen as they affect (or don't) the male psyche, the stories themselves (as opposed to the plot) become complicit in a culture of the general erasure of women, an erasure that, of course, leads to violence, rape, and incest against women. We're all complicit in that culture in our lived lives; I look to fiction, particularly that of someone as effective as McEwen, to consider that, complicate it, question it, reveal something about it, say *something* about it... not just to participate in it.

[Faiza Sattar · Rating 4 out of 5]

★★★★☆ (4/5)

A collection of disturbing albeit interesting stories. We traverse through the minds of a pedophile, a murderer, a child whose sense of identity has convoluted, a couple experiencing alienation, a disgruntled husband and many more. The stories are unsettling, but the beautifully vivid and emphatic prose keeps the reader's curiosity elevated.

Solid Geometry
• Your sentimental Buddhism, this junk-shop mysticism, joss-stick therapy, magazine astrology … none of it is yours, you’ve worked none of it out for yourself. You fell into it, you fell into a swamp of respectable intuitions. You haven’t the originality or passion to intuit anything yourself beyond your own unhappiness
• I brought my hands together and there was nothing between them, but even when I opened them again and saw nothing I could not be sure the paper flower had completely gone. An impression remained, an after-image not on the retina but on the mind itself
• ‘Dimensionality is a function of consciousness,’ I thought

Last Day of Summer
• She carries out an old table, and when it’s out everyone realizes that it was always in the way.
• Our hooting and cackling gets louder and louder because the still air doesn’t carry it across the water and the noise of it stays with us in the boat

Butterflies
• My chin and my neck are the same thing, and it breeds distrust

First Love, Last Rites
• It was new to me, all this, and I worried, I tried to talk to Sissel about it for reassurance. She had nothing to say, she did not make abstractions or discuss situations, she lived inside them
• she never made general remarks about people because she never made general remarks. Sometimes when we heard Adrian on his way up the stairs she glanced across at me and seemed to betray herself by a slight pursing of her beautiful lips.
• Then Sissel found a job and it made me see we were different from no one, they all had rooms, houses, jobs, careers, that’s what they all did, they had cleaner rooms, better jobs, we were anywhere’s striving couple

[John Meddick · Rating 5 out of 5]

First Love, Last Rites is powerful. The reader experiences a lifetime of personal trauma through a variety of characters which are remarkably real and decisively original. Permeating through each story is a clammy, understated fear - seen, for example, in the sentimental end to Summer and, more obviously, in the advantages taken by adults over those less able or aware of the norm. This strikes in the reader, who endures some heart-rending scenes of depravity, a terror that is difficult to shake, simply because there is too much truth in what are actually quite surreal stories. Here is a writer well aware of what makes a human human - describing perfectly our inner demons, the precariousness of our individuality, and the often imperceptible shift from right to wrong.

[Sebastián Ch. P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pervertido. Hilarante puñado de cuentos cargados de oscura picardía, como la risa pilla de un viejo anglosajón. Mi favorito es 'Geometría de sólidos'. 'Fabricación casera' me pareció demasiado. 'Mariposas' te deja un escalofrío y en 'Disfraces' terminas embriagado y confundido. Imagina comenzar tu carrera literaria con estos títulos... Qué pensarían tus lectores..?

[Mizuki · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you can handle shocking, twisted plots about the dark side of human nature and ordinary people's daily life. If you don't mind reading at-times offensive stories and characters, you have to read this one!

[Deea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely not a favourite of mine. Some of these stories are really disturbing, one can even call them sick, but they are so well written that I cannot rate this book with less than 4 stars.

[ThatBookish_deviant · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25⭐️

“She was beautiful in an almost sinister kind of way, like a girl in a Modigliani painting.”

First Love, Last Rites is an essential read for fans of literary horror. The eight short stories within are stark and lurid in their gruesome detail. Ian McEwan is a masterful storyteller who evokes a foreboding sense of impending doom in very few pages.

“Love is like a fire. Whether it will warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell.”

Expect an atmosphere that’s taut and rife with sinister intention. These stories explore the depths of human depravity and how cruelty can sometimes emerge from seemingly innocent conditions like boredom, curiosity, and loneliness.

Of the eight stories, my favorites are, in no particular order: Homemade, Solid Geometry, and Butterflies. Each story is told from the first-person narrative. In the fortieth anniversary edition McEwan wrote an introspective saying, “My amoral first-person narrators especially were supposed to be condemning themselves out of their own mouths. I thought it more interesting for the author not to intervene.” I must say I think he made a wise choice! So very well done.