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Amsterdam

Ian McEwan

Start date: July 15, 2016

Finish date: August 15, 2016

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What Members Thought

Feb 13, 2014 Ginger rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction-literature

Some writers have one good story in them. Not McEwan. Every story he tells is compelling and the writing is masterful besides.

No matter the subject, McEwan writes chilling, smart, haunting prose, always about the nature of brokenness and humanness and sin (though he would likely loathe me calling it that). His theme seems to be moral allusions for the sake of art. If you haven't read any McEwan, begin with Atonement, though I think Amsterdam is his next best.

He is a beautiful noticer, which I gu Some writers have one good story in them. Not McEwan. Every story he tells is compelling and the writing is masterful besides.

No matter the subject, McEwan writes chilling, smart, haunting prose, always about the nature of brokenness and humanness and sin (though he would likely loathe me calling it that). His theme seems to be moral allusions for the sake of art. If you haven't read any McEwan, begin with Atonement, though I think Amsterdam is his next best.

He is a beautiful noticer, which I guess is really what a good writer is at heart.

Download a bit of classical music -- some Bach, Stravinsky, Mozart, Britten, Schubert, Bergman, Ravel, Beethoven -- to listen to while you read. There is so much gorgeous writing about the nature of genius and music, I wonder that he isn't a composer instead of a novelist.

A few favorite sentences from Amsterdam:

"The old guard of modernism had imprisoned music in the academy, where it was jealously professionalized, isolated, and rendered sterile, its vital covenant with a general public arrogantly broken."

"In his corner of West London, and in his self-preoccupied daily round, it was easy for Clive to think of civilization as the sum of all the arts, along with design, cuisine, good wine, and the like."

"He knew this feeling well because he often hiked alone. There was always reluctance to be overcome. It was an act of will, a tussle with instinct, to keep walking away from the nearest people, from shelter, warmth, and help. A sense of scale habituated to the daily perspectives of rooms and streets was suddenly affronted by a colossal emptiness."

"There was a rustle of sheets in the receiver while Clive rearranged himself in his bed. Why did we so often lie about sleep on the phone? Was it our vulnerability we defended?"

"He knew from long experience that a letter sent in fury merely put a weapon into the hands of your enemy. Poison, in preserved form, to be used against you long into the future."

"Practically every member of the public who came in, voluntarily or not, was down-at-heel, and it seemed to Clive that the main business of the police was to deal with the numerous and unpredictable consequences of poverty."

"Now the textures were multiplying as more instruments were drawn into the trombone's conspiracy, and dissonance was spreading like contagion, and little hard splinters, like variations that would lead nowhere, were tossed up like sparks..."

"Sometimes Clive worked so hard on a piece that he could lose sight of his ultimate purpose - to create this pleasure at once so sensual and abstract, to translate into vibrating air this nonlanguage whose meanings were forever just beyond reach, suspended tantalizingly at a point where emotion and intellect fused." ...more

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Aug 18, 2008 MichelleCH rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, 1001, own, contemporary-fic, pike-s-peak

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

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Mar 13, 2017 Karen rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001

This is the second book I have read by McEwan and I am not 100% sure that I liked it. Maybe it's because I didn't really like any of the characters (and for me that's a criteria). ...more

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Apr 14, 2013 Johanne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013-books, bookerwinners

I am such a fan of Ian McEwan, and Amsterdam just continued my love affair with his writing. I don't know what it is - his stories always just seem to sneak up and grab me. They don't seem to be all that interesting and then suddenly I'm totally drawn in and then the story is over and I feel a little bereft.

Amsterdam follows two old friends, Clive and Vernon, as they find themselves at odds over some serious ethical issues. They become obsessed with getting revenge against the other for imagined ...more

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