Enduring Love [Poster]

This novel has a fantastic opening - the protagonist Joe Rose, a journalist, has brought his girlfriend/lover Clarissa, to the countryside to celebrate her return from the US. While they are there, enjoying their picnic, they witness a tragedy, as a man falls dead to the ground from a helium balloon. Jed Parry, one of the other witnesses to the tragic accident, becomes obsessed with Joe. Jed starts to stalk Joe, believing that they share some extraordinary link and that the two of them are bound by love.

So, what started out as a tragic accident is soon turned into familiar McEwan style, with relationships, science, religion and psychological obsession as some of the elements he touches upon. Unfortunately, this novel doesn't keep up with the expectations brought upon us from its amazing opening. Fair enough, I found "Enduring Love" at times unbearable in its suspense and hard to put down, but I was never completely captured by the characters.

More strongly recommended are the other McEwan novels "The innocent" and the Booker Prize winning "Amsterdam".

Freelance writer Joe Rose and his wife Clarissa are in the wrong place at the wrong time. While enjoying a romantic picnic in the English countryside, they witness a tragic accident, a ballooning trip that goes horribly wrong. Joe and other passersby rush to the rescue, but the men bungle the operation and one of them, John Logan, dies as a result.

This would already be a lot of action in most books but in Ian McEwan's dark and surprising world it's just the starting point. One of the other rescuers, an intensely religious young man named Jed Parry, has in an instant become obsessed with Joe. At first it seems unwelcome but harmless, and no one takes it too seriously. Not the police, and not Clarissa. Parry follows Joe around, waits outside his house, writes him lengthy love letters: the situation becomes more and more disruptive of Joe's everyday life, yet Clarissa reacts unsympathetically, seeming to feel that Joe has blown the inconvenience out of proportion. Joe contacts the police again, but the Inspectors find nothing threatening in someone obsessively promising to love you. Eventually, however, the latent atheism in Joe's published writings seems to push Parry over the brink - and what happens after that brings to mind the well-worn phrase "I love you to death".

McEwan has written a book that is superb on several levels. One of its central themes has to do with the standard for determining when one person's behavior is threatening to another. Joe's life is being disrupted, he feels dread every time he looks out the window or checks his mail: Parry's unwelcome actions are clearly causing him anxiety. Yet though he seeks help from the proper authorities, he receives none and so must ultimately take matters into his own hands.

Most disquieting of all, though, is the story's plausibility. Just as consumers can be tricked into buying a defective product by its pretty packaging, the mere façade of sanity is easily bought into. All too often dangerous individuals are left loose in society by those too apathetic to stop them. Jed Parry, a slight young man who speaks of love and conversion... Who'd have believed he could be so dangerous? Subtle psychopaths abound in our society, walk among us every day undetected, and that's precisely what makes them so dangerous. The obviously deranged are more easily guarded against; it's the quietly psychotic we need to worry about. This is a book about which one can truly say "It could happen to you."

ENDURING LOVE, the author's nineth novel, is the story of Joe Rose, disciple of scientific rationalism ("You're so rational sometimes you're like a child"), who becomes an object of desire (devotion according to the New York Times, 25.01.98) of a mad, "Jesus freak", Jed Parry.

Parry's personal belief that there's something between them- an unspoken love "as strong as steel cable"- is so powerful, so convincing that it is threatening the stability of Rose's relationship with his partner, Clarissa.

The fruits of Parry's obsession is so terrifying that sometimes I, as the reader, wonders whether such an expression of desire is possible. Could it be that Rose is just imagining things?

(Apparently not, and Rose gave us a name for this kind of obsession, de Clerambault's syndrome. NOTE: I suggest that you finish the book first before investigating the nature of this mental illness)

There are times when you need to be patient with this book. Discussions ranging from Einstein to Keats to the Shroud of Turin will surely turn off some readers. Furthermore, don't expect shocking, melo-dramatic scenes in this novel. The intensity of McEwan's narration is so controlled and subtle that one might find it frustrating.

Nevertheless, ENDURING LOVE is an intelligent, compelling thriller. A fine novel that deserves to be read. McEwan should be congratulated for creating this novel.