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What Members Thought
A brilliant and capitivating opening. After Part One, however, the book becomes a bit disjointed and comes to an abrupt ending. Nevertheless, McEwan does an excellent job of setting a scene and is amazing at getting into the minds of his characters. He provides a vivid and necessarily disturbing portrait of the effects of warfare, both in the field and at home.
Ian McEwan has the singular talent of getting me to like stories about war. And war was not incidental here unlike in The Innocent. I listened to this after Pride and Prejudice and Joe Wright made movies based on both books so I had the actors in my mind. I'm long overdue in watching his Cyrano, which features my favorite Lannister, Tyrion.
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I really liked the the first and last sections of this book a lot. The writing in those sections was engaging and seemed to perfectly portray all the thoughts that can go through one's head in a few seconds. However, I found the middle section of the book to be really dull, and all the descriptions of the war just didn't hold my interest.
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Aug 20, 2009
Vesra (When She Reads)
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Apr 09, 2014
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