Amsterdam (CA) PDF
Preview Amsterdam (CA)
Praise for Amsterdam Winner of the 1998 Booker Prize for fiction Chosen as one of the Top 100 Books of 1998 by The Globe and Mail A Maclean’s 1998 “Between the Covers” pick “This year’s Booker Prize winner is a winsome little black comedy of English vanity … a very good evening’s entertainment. As in all good comic novels, the ill consequences follow quickly and dramatically— tight plotting, essential in comedy, is something of a McEwan forte. The ending is as neat as the finish of a well made stage farce.” The Toronto Star “A supremely well crafted novel. Good satires are rare … Amsterdam, however is a small masterpiece of the genre. McEwan has a remarkable facility for making the unpleasant sides of humanity funny.” National Post “A savage, funny satire on contemporary British manners and morals … Prickly … Delicious … A savage black comedy about the decline of … morality in modern Britain. Amsterdam grapples with big issues, but in a lowdown-and-dirty manner. It’s a hugely entertaining and funny book … as nasty, fast and satisfying as Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies or The Loved One. Amsterdam is a dark little prize in itself.” The Globe and Mail “A clever, biting and thoroughly enjoyable examination of the vanity that feeds egos and flouts ambitions in the late 20th century.” The Montreal Gazette “Persistent and perversely entertaining … chilling.” Times magazine “McEwan is a writer of compelling gifts … (he) spins plot developments with smooth alacrity and with acidulous wit. A mordantly clever exploration of ethical issues.” Publishers Weekly “I was happy to see the Booker Prize won by Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam; a sustained, pitch-perfect flight of writing, almost impossible not to read at one sitting.” Choice for International Book of the Year, Times Literary Supplement “McEwan is a fine novelist, with a rare and subtle command of language hidden beneath a veneer of austerity. … A truly original voice.” The Times “Sardonic and well plotted. … A wry, clever and at times spinetingling satire on morals and institutions, set in the last days of the Major government. The dumbing-down of The Judge, a dead ringer for The Times, is plotted hilariously. … And in Clive Linely, McEwan has sketched a wonderfully shrewd portrait of the modern artist. … McEwan’s prose, like Clive Linley’s music, has perfect pitch … Amsterdam is a short, funny novel, but it carries the heft of a much longer book and tells us more about morality and public life in Britain than any other contemporary work of fiction or non-fiction.” London Financial Times “[Amsterdam] is short and sharp, an immoral morality told with gleeful detachment, a well-plotted story of plots which displays its own elegant structure as one of the pleasures offered to the reader. It reminds me of Huxley and Chesterton — also of aspects of Henry James. … It is full of gusto, straightforward, and delivers blows to the gut.” Literary Review “… implausibly elegant black comedy. … Amsterdam is a consummately well-orchestrated performance …” Times Literary Supplement “A marvellous satire. … McEwan has left no stone unturned in his quest to root out our darkest desires. … His greatest skill lies in the subtle nuances of characterization — how friendship is fuelled by power and competition, how the meaningless victories and defeats of office politics take place in an atmosphere of cheerful hypocrisy and how love affairs, friendships and marriages, never really come to an end.” The Guardian By the same author FIRST LOVE, LAST RITES IN BETWEEN THE SHEETS THE CEMENT GARDEN THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS THE CHILD IN TIME THE INNOCENT BLACK DOGS THE DAYDREAMER ENDURING LOVE THE IMITATION GAME (plays for television) OR SHALL WE DIE? (libretto for oratorio by Michael Berkeley) THE PLOUGHMAN’S LUNCH (film script) SOUR SWEET (film script) to Jaco and Elisabeth Groot The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistakes; W.H. Auden, ‘The Crossroads’ I i Two former lovers of Molly Lane stood waiting outside the crematorium chapel with their backs to the February chill. It had all been said before, but they said it again. ‘She never knew what hit her.’ ‘When she did it was too late.’ ‘Rapid onset.’ ‘Poor Molly.’ ‘Mmm.’ Poor Molly. It began with a tingling in her arm as she raised it outside the Dorchester Grill to stop a cab; a sensation that never went away. Within weeks she was fumbling for the names of things. Parliament, chemistry, propeller she could forgive herself, but less so bed, cream, mirror. It was after the temporary disappearance of acanthus and bresaiola that she sought medical advice, expecting reassurance. Instead, she was sent for tests and, in a sense, never returned. How quickly feisty Molly became the sick-room prisoner of her morose, possessive husband, George. Molly, restaurant critic, gorgeous wit and photographer, the daring gardener who had been loved by the Foreign Secretary and could still turn a perfect cartwheel at the age of forty-six. The speed of her descent into madness and pain became a matter of common gossip: the loss of control of bodily function and with it all sense of humour, and then the tailing off into vagueness interspersed with episodes of ineffectual violence and muffled shrieking. It was the sight now of George emerging from the chapel that caused Molly’s lovers to move off further up the weedy gravel path. They wandered into an arrangement of oval rose beds, marked by a sign, ‘The Garden of Remembrance’. Each plant had been savagely cut back to within a few inches of the frozen ground, a practice Molly used to deplore. The patch of lawn was strewn with flattened cigarette butts, for this was a place where people came to stand about and wait for the funeral party ahead of theirs to clear the building. As they strolled up and down, the two old friends resumed the conversation they had had in
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