More than any other author
who I have read more than five books of, Ian McEwan has the most amount of
misses in his overall oeuvre. With the exception of Atonement and Enduring Love
(which I consider to be his best work overall), his books have either been
pretty good or pretty mediocre, and I think I have read all of his prose
fiction, except Sweet Tooth, which comes out in America in early November. No
stinkers in there, which may say something about him and his talent for
writing. Make no mistake about it, he is an excellent writer, and can describe
appalling violence and unlovable scoundrels with great prose talent. At his
worst, he is only tedious, and this book I just read, The Innocent, is very,
very tedious. No wonder the 1001 people did not include this book on their
initial list, despite listing almost his entire bibliography from his debut
with 1978’s The Cement Garden to 2005’s Saturday; it really is not very good.
It tries to be a spy novel, maybe in the vein of John le Carre’, although I
have not read any le’ Carre’, and if it is anything like this, I am in for a
world of hurt. It centers on a young spy who gets a job under the streets of
East Germany, who forms a romance with a girl he should not have. Plain stuff
we have seen before. We get a few moments in this story of forbidden love
during The Cold War that work, such as a gruesome aftermath to a murder that
borders on hilarious and a flash forward sequence that shows some real emotion.
Like I said, McEwan is tedious at his worst, so this is not a bad book, but not
something I would suggest.
Rating 2/5
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