Which Ian McEwan novel next?

[MamaHobgoblin]

I've only just started reading him - I don't know why I held back so long, but I do remember trying to get into Atonement a few years back and it not clicking. Anyway, I just finished that, and loved it, and have now got stuck into Enduring Love, which is a page-turner! (both of them extremely and rather cynically manipulative, I wonder if I'll find that a turn-off as I work my way through his books?)

So which next? I have to have one lined up for when I finish Enduring Love!

Go back to his early ones - The Cement Garden and the short stories are brilliant.

Amsterdam? Saturday? Cement garden if you want a short one!!

I second the short stories. Enduring Love is soooooo good isn't it? I could not put it down and had to keep reading until I finished it. Have you read any Patrick McGrath? His books are very good too and all feature some sort of mental illness/drs.

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I agree Cement Garden is good, but dark. I liked Black Dogs too. Which is the one with a couple on holiday in Italy (Venice?)?

Chesil Beach (Is it On Chesil Beach?). Very short sad book. Agree about opening chapter of Enduring Love being horrifying

Think I'll go for Amsterdam next, as so many people seem to rate it.

I'm haunted by the images from the first chapter of Enduring Love, with the shattered man sitting on the ground with his bones all collapsed around him.

Is it bad of me that, several chapters in, I'm still thinking back to the lovely ball of fresh mozarella from Carluccio's, that was bought for the picnic, and wondering if they had the heart to eat it?

I hated Amsterdam & Enduring Love, although liked Atonement

my favourites are The Black Dogs & The Cement Garden

Anything but Saturday which is unbearably smug.

Glad it's not just me who loves McEwan but hates Saturday; 'smug' is definitely the right word for it. Don't forget The Innocent - different from most of his other stuff, but very good. RamblingRosa, the one you're thinking of is The Comfort of Strangers - really horrible, creepy book (but very good).

I liked Atonement, loved Child in Time and Cement Garden.

Hated Enduring Love and Amsterdam.

I also think Child in Time and Black Dogs are the best, though both are seriously upsetting.

Saturday is very interesting - I kind of really didn't like it, but read it to the end. I culdn't decide if it was smug or really radical - whether you were supposed to have sympathy for the main character or think he was a self-satisfied pompous arse. It is manipulative - that's a good word for it! If you like Enduring Love though you might like that.

I much prefer his earlier stuff.

Saturday is without doubt the worst book I have ever read in my entire life.

I absolutely hated Enduring Love and Attonement. The Cement Garden is good-ish but not great imho. I won't bother reading anymore of his as he irritates the hell out of me I'm afraid.

Having finished Enduring Love, I've changed my feelings about it. It was an entirely different book from the one I thought I'd started, which was disorientating. I thought there were so many other ways in which to explore this random, terrible event - the balloon accident - and how it brought a group of disparate people together and changed them. And then it didn't really do that, and the book felt incomplete somehow.

The Comfort of Strangers - is really good in a very dark way...quite brutal compared to later ones, but same themes.