A reread of the book that first introduced me to McEwan. I still find this short novel an engaging read. Essentially a novel of ideas but well-integrated into the lives of the characters in the book. Nothing dry about it. He sets two different approaches to evil and social good against each other within the confines of a failed marriage, and then explores the accomplishments and pitfalls of both these approaches through the lives of the two main characters. His book remains a reflection, a rumination, rather than a resolution of this dichotomy. The fall of the Berlin Wall is part of the action in this book, and somehow this seems a part of the issue he is exploring - is evil fought and good enacted through the social and political field, or through the work of an individual life.
I will have to go back and look at some of his other books. I wonder if a central idea like this sits at the centre of some of his other novels.
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