"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
In itself, the accident would change the survivors' lives, filling them with an uneasy combination of shame, happiness, and endless self-reproach. (In one of the novel's many ironies, the balloon eventually lands safely, the boy unscathed.) But fate has far more unpleasant things in store for Joe. Meeting the eye of fellow rescuer Jed Parry, for example, turns out to be a very bad move. For Jed is instantly obsessed, making the first of many calls to Joe and Clarissa's London flat that very night. Soon he's openly shadowing Joe and writing him endless letters. (One insane epistle begins, "I feel happiness running through me like an electrical current. I close my eyes and see you as you were last night in the rain, across the road from me, with the unspoken love between us as strong as steel cable.") Worst of all, Jed's version of love comes to seem a distortion of Joe's feelings for Clarissa.
Apart from the incessant stalking, it is the conditionals--the contingencies--that most frustrate Joe, a scientific journalist. If only he and Clarissa had gone straight home from the airport... If only the wind hadn't picked up... If only he had saved Jed's 29 messages in a single day... Ian McEwan has long been a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others' fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and--worst of all--becoming strangers to those who love them. Even his prose itself is a masterful and methodical exercise in defamiliarization. But Enduring Love and its underrated predecessor, Black Dogs, are also meditations on knowledge and perception as well as brilliant manipulations of our own expectations. By the novel's end, you will be surprisingly unafraid of hot-air balloons, but you won't be too keen on looking a stranger in the eye.
"Brilliant...a marvellous fiction...an imaginative reconstruction of a superior kind."--Anita Brookner
"McEwan has fashioned a remarkable novel, haunting and original and written in prose that anyone who writes can only envy."--The Washington Post
"Cleverly imagined, beautifully executed...a pleasure to read...[McEwan] has few peers."--The Wall Street Journal
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
US$ 2.64
Within U.S.A.
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 2549712-n
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. One windy spring day in the Chilterns Joe Rose's calm, organized life is shattered by a ballooning accident. The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in mere tragedy, but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry. Unknown to Rose, something passes between them - something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose's beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the brink of murder and madness. Unknown to Rose, something passes between them - something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose's beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the brink of murder and madness. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780099481249
Book Description Condition: New. pp. 256. Seller Inventory # 6430675
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9780099481249
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. Unknown to Rose, something passes between them - something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose's beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the brink of murder and madness. Seller Inventory # B9780099481249
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. BRAND NEW ** SUPER FAST SHIPPING FROM UK WAREHOUSE ** 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. Seller Inventory # 9780099481249-GDR
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Brand New Copy. Seller Inventory # BBB_new0099481243
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 256 pages. 7.76x5.12x0.67 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0099481243
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780099481249
Book Description Condition: New. In. Seller Inventory # ria9780099481249_new