amsterdam
Amsterdam : A Novel by Ian McEwan
There are good reasons for Ian McEwan’s popularity: his writing is crisp and smart; sentences and paragraphs are models of precision - he’s the BMW of writers. The speeches given by characters ring true in tone and are full of personality and wit. In Amsterdam, the successful composer Clive Linley finds himself at the funeral of a former lover, Molly Lane, listening to an American poet telling tales of his sexual adventures with Molly. Clive won’t stand for it and whispers in the poet’s ear: ‘You never fucked her, you lying reptile. She wouldn`t have stooped to it.’
Given that Clive is at the funeral with another lover of Molly’s, his friend Vernon Halliday, the anger comes as a surprise. Clive and Vernon are aware of their shared history with Molly – indeed, they see it as a sign of her excellent taste. It seems that, by dying, Molly Lane has become more than an affair remembered. As her name suggests, she’s a place, a time, perhaps even a meaning; she’s their youth when pleasure fuelled their ambitions. Now they are successful but left with more doubts than desire, and dogged by worries: first, will they suffer the same kind of cruel disease that took “poor Mollyâ€; and second, given their success, shouldn’t the damn world be in better shape?
To take care of the first concern, they agree that, if they should ever require it, each man would step in and terminate his friend. The second, larger problem of society drifting to the right is more difficult; it is handy therefore to have the retrograde world personified in Julian Garmony, the unpleasant Foreign Secretary. Both Clive and Vernon agree he is ‘the enemy’. Unfortunately for them, Molly didn’t see it that way. And when pictures of Julian turn up – sexy snaps taken by Molly! – Clive and Vernon cannot agree what should be done. For Vernon, the editor of a newspaper suffering declining readership, the photos belong on the front page where they will kill the conservative’s career prospects, make Vernon feel valuable again and boost circulation. For Clive, the pictures belong in the garbage where they will leave the memory of Molly untainted.
Don’t forget: they have agreed to kill each other if things ever go wrong…
In Amsterdam, McEwen gives us lively characters tangled in a moral quandary twisted by fears of growing old. That’s a recipe for a popular book among the class and age of folks who read books. But the climax of the book can’t carry readers to a satisfying conclusion. It won’t spoil the plot to reveal that both characters scheme to have each other murdered! ‘Witty!’ many reviewers have said. Maybe ‘Tidy!’ and definitely “Unlikely!â€
And worse: in a novel rich in sharp perceptions of modern ambitions and the souring of those ambitions, McEwen seems only able to mock his characters, in the same way he trivialized the concerns of anti-war protesters in Saturday. In Amsterdam, when the crunch comes, McEwen’s rich talent for precise realism morphs into a Monty Python sketch.