Anyone started this/planning on getting it?

What does Yea Forums think of McEwan in general? Best/Shittiest novel, etc.

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I liked The Cement Garden and The Innocent
I thought In Between the Sheets had a few good stories but some schlock as well.
This new one looks like about 8 million other SciFi pulps.

Atonement was really good but the descriptions of this and the story both make it seem not worth reading or at least hilariously fucking generic.
I can't imagine it being comparable to his other works in terms of literary value

>Ian MC Ewan

filth, appall, disgust, shock, horror

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liked him in trainspotting

genuinely reprobate

yeah Cement Garden was great, read it in one sitting which I never do lol. In general I've found his stuff at least passable, Chesil Beach was excellent, crystal clear prose. By far the worst thing I've read of his was Saturday, that book was dogshit

Hadn't heard about this new one though, shame it looks bad, oh well

Atonement is tight af but this cover sucks.
I may read it though who knows

I should really read Atonement sometime

Can anyone explain the deal with Ian McEwan vs Gene Wolfe? It seems to come up a lot. The best I can gather is that McEwan talked some shit on Wolfe but I can’t seem to find a quote

Apparently the MC gets cucked by his android and watches it

How forward looking, maybe I'll read it after all.

Probably good practise for everyone on this board in preparation for the next decade or two to get used to the idea of being cucked by robots

great book, great movie as well

the film adaptations are better than his books, chiefly atonement & cement garden

I've read Saturday and Chesil Beach. His prose is great, and he is a really vivid and intelligent writer. The problem for me is his characters don't behave the way any human in history has ever behaved
>one bad shag and an argument? We were utterly in love, but let's never see each other again as long as we live
>I was going to rob you, but now your daughter has recited a poem, I've seen the error of my ways

I have't read them all but reckon he's now fairly clearly on a decade-plus roll of churning out paychecks in whatever genre he feels like dabbling in. No great interest in this one, although I like how ugly the cover is.

His 90s material is all pretty solid. A Child in Time was the most memorable, Black Dogs and Enduring Love also good. He would probably be top-tier for moderns if he didn't feel the need to publish every two years.

Re Chesil Beach, I didn't consider it unrealistic (or at least didn't mind suspending my disbelief) at the behaviour you describe cos he'd set it up with the repressive time period and other stuff like class differences between the couple - plus I think it was meant to be slightly ridiculous lol - pretty well imo. i think he's pretty strong at writing individual scenes like the kidnapping in Child in Time (I think it was in that one?) or the home-entry in Saturday, but his overall plotting varies wildly between great passable and shit.

>that fucking cover

Also, fuck no. McEwan should stick to writing about rich people fucking in the 1940s, or whatever it is that he usually writes about.

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>he'd set it up with the repressive time period
I felt the opposite, like in that period they would have stayed together out of shame and awkwardness rather than split up on their wedding night.
Does he do short stories? His individual scenes can be very well done. The initial road rage confrontation between the doc and Baxter in Saturday is superbly done I felt, but when he tries to spin it to novel length it collapses.

>McEwan's last book was about a fetus

Yeah good point lol, I suppose the class difference (i.e Florence's family being somewhat opposed to the wedding) and the isolated setting was enough for me to buy it, but I can see why you'd take issue

An user further up was recommending In Between the Sheets for short stories, though he said the quality again vaired wildly from one to the next. Probably worth grabbing for the good stuff tho

I read his short story My Purple Scented Novel last year and thought it was fun

He had two early story collections which helped make his reputation. First Love, Last Rites has a better hit rate, but neither is solid gold. One of the stories has a giant penis pickled in a jar.