Here's a book, which is very modern in its outlook towards life. A few people, mostly friends, who have known each other all their life, and at least one who has had very close relationships with most of the them, make the core of these novel. All of them have successful careers and at least one comes close to a genius. By the end of the first half of the book, I was quite awed, and looking forward to a concise novel, which tackles modern morality as well modern life's challenges. Although publish 21 years back, most of the issues could be thought of as current, with some balance for the development of modern thought over that period. So much so, I started speaking highly of it, to few of the fellow book worms community. Speaking of the characters, I was really impressed with how the composer worked, and the lengths he went to have an undisturbed environment to do his life's work. It cannot be denied that a certain degree of selfishness is implicit in the natural thought pattern of a genius. Then we have the news paper editor, who is ruthless and doesn't hesitate to take hard and unpopular decisions, even having the gall of presenting morality as incontestable as well as possibly, a little bit of self deception for his raison d'être. The character of the legislator too is presented flawlessly. This fascinated me, for in essence it projects how deep rooted to modern life one's calling was, and I was thinking "oh! here at last is a book, of modern times, with its day to day battles of morality and work ethics."
Even when I passed the 70% mark of the book, I was still thrilled and so optimistic of a nail biting finish, which probably would leave me in dilemma as to which side I was on. But, that was not to be! The book ends in some haste, with a far fetched plot, that doesn't sound convincing. I was shattered! I had to withdraw my subtle recommendations for the book, while still having a regretful feel that there was still so much of quality literature in the book. But with that ending, I could in no way recommend it to my friends. So what went wrong ? A little bit of "googling" showed that Ian Mc Ewan has suffered himself, for this won the Booker award, and one review went to the extent of stating that the author is hard done by, for his worst book won the prestigious Booker, and those who start reading him with this book ( assuming it to be his best, obviously), would never return to the author ( One reviewer goes on to say that this book had done lasting damage to the reputation of one of the best contemporary authors ).
On the subject of Euthanasia: The Netherlands was the first European country to have Euthanasia legalised as far back as 1982. Assisted suicide became Law in 2001. This reader feels that the author had the impending law in his mind, it possibly troubled him, as to how those with vested interests could make use of this for criminal offenses and monetary gain. If that was so, this book was written with political intent in mind. But worse still, the Booker panel of judges found it acceptable! As I've said a number of times the book was very contemporary and there is also mention, almost in passing of how a legislator - one of the main characters in the novel- aspires the UK to leave the EU - this was before the Monetary Union was established. To return to more relevant politics for this novel, how McEwan has presented his argument here, is rather simplistic, and clearly botched. He sounds it far too simple, that even those who had doubts about the impending law, mayn't have taken him seriously. Maybe it is challenging to write about a subject which wasn't quite law yet ( note that this book came out four years prior to that law), but am sure the political discussion would've been quite prevalent.
And worse, looks like it was only the Booker panel of judges who actually believed in McEwan's botched political message - and also the literature garb that was dressed in.
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