Staff Pick
This excellent novel explores the lengths to which children may go to preserve their family when both parents die. McEwan has a way of making any situation absolutely hum with tension. Here, he is amazing, as always. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
In this tour de force of psychological unease--now a major motion picture starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Sinead Cusack--McEwan excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting--or denying. "Possesses the suspense and chilling impact of Lord of the Flies."--Washington Post Book World.
Review
"Possesses the suspense and chilling impact of Lord of the Flies." Washington Post Book World
Review
"Marvellously creates the atmosphere of youngsters given that instant adulthood they all crave, where the ordinary takes on a mysterious glow and the extraordinary seems rather commonplace. It is difficult to fault the writing or the construction of this eerie fable." Sunday Times (London)
Review
"A superb achievement: his prose has instant, lucid beauty and his narrative voice has a perfect poise and certainty. His account of deprivation and survival is marvellously sure, and the imaginative alignment of his story is exactly right." Tom Paulin
Synopsis
In this tour de force of psychological unease now a major motion picture starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Sinead Cusack McEwan excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting or denying.
Synopsis
In this irresistibly readable (
New York Review of Books) tour de force of psychological unease, McEwan excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting
--or denying.
In the arid summer heat, four children--Jack, Julie, Sue and Tom--find themselves abruptly orphaned. All the routines of childhood are cast aside as the children adapt to a now parentless world. Alone in the house together, the children's lives twist into something unrecognizable as the outside begins to bear down on them.
Don't miss Ian McEwan's new novel, Lessons, coming in September
Synopsis
In this irresistibly readable (
New York Review of Books) tour de force of psychological unease, the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting
--or denying.
In the arid summer heat, four children--Jack, Julie, Sue and Tom--find themselves abruptly orphaned. All the routines of childhood are cast aside as the children adapt to a now parentless world. Alone in the house together, the children's lives twist into something unrecognizable as the outside begins to bear down on them.
Don't miss Ian McEwan's new novel, Lessons, coming in September
Synopsis
After concealing the death of their mother, a group of children experience a bizarre but temporary liberation from the programmed course into adulthood.
About the Author
Ian McEwan is the bestselling author of more than ten books, including the novels The Comfort of Strangers and Black Dogs, both shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Amsterdam, winner of the Booker Prize; and The Child in Time, winner of the Whitbread Award; as well as the story collections First Love, Last Rites, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and In Between the Sheets. He has also written screenplays, plays, television scripts, a children's book, and the libretto for an oratorio. He lives in London.