In the end I only listened to the last couple of CDs because I wanted to see how McEwan could write his characters out of the mess they were in, and so I was very disappointed to learn from the appendix that he had more or less lifted the plot from a real case study. I was also bored by the clichéd depiction of the police as incompetent, disinterested and patronising Mr Plod might have worked for Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie in the days before the professionalisation of the police force but for me the stereotype had no credibility in this novel. I recognise that McEwan was portraying the repetitious nature of an obsessive’s behaviour, but in the end I was sick of it. On top of this there were equally long and even more painful stretches where we were treated to Jed’s obsessive letters to Joe, professing love and promising eternal salvation and happiness if only Joe would accept the lord and admit to their mutual love. There were times when I felt as I were eavesdropping on an argument that McEwan had had with his wife it felt as if points were being scored. Joe is such a pompous know-it-all, rationalizing and analysing everything, I wanted to burst his over-inflated ego with something long and sharp! There were long stretches where I felt as if (like Clarissa) I were being lectured equally irritating were the sections where he pontificated at length about this and that, but did not condescend to reveal these pearls of wisdom to Clarissa because (he thinks) she is too emotional. The problem is that I became very tired of the narrative voice. So far so good, a plot with a dubious narrator can be fun, and the ingredients are there in this novel for the makings of an absorbing thriller. One of the other men develops a very strange obsessive love for Joe and this unwanted experience transforms his life.īecause this obsession is so bizarre, nobody believes Joe, not even Clarissa, and she and others express their doubts so cogently that I began to doubt him myself. One of the men dies, but that’s not the worst of it. He and some other men grasp the ropes and are lifted up into the air as the balloon soars into the sky.

It begins with a compelling drama: Joe, having a picnic with his lady-love Clarissa, dashes over to help when a runaway balloon threatens the life of a boy trapped inside the basket. Enduring Love has had rave reviews, but I found it taxed my patience.

Enduring love book review