Product Description
On a windy spring day in the Chilterns, the calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he witnesses a tragic accident: a hot-air balloon with a boy trapped in its basket is being tossed by the wind, and in the attempt to save the child, a man is killed. A stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety. But unknown to Rose, something passes between Parry and himself on that day--something that gives birth to an obsession in Parry so powerful that it will test the limits of Rose's beloved rationalism, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to the brink of murder and madness. Brilliant and compassionate, this is a novel of love, faith, and suspense, and of how life can change in an instant.
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Amazon.com Review
Joe Rose has planned a postcard-perfect afternoon in the English countryside to celebrate his lover's return after six weeks in the States. To complete the picture, there's even a "helium balloon drifting dreamily across the wooded valley." But as Joe and Clarissa watch the balloon touch down, their idyll comes to an abrupt end. The pilot catches his leg in the anchor rope, while the only passenger, a boy, is too scared to jump down. As the wind whips into action, Joe and four other men rush to secure the basket. Mother Nature, however, isn't feeling very maternal. "A mighty fist socked the balloon in two rapid blows, one-two, the second more vicious than the first," and at once the rescuers are airborne. Joe manages to drop to the ground, as do most of his companions, but one man is lifted sky-high, only to fall to his death. In itself, the accident would change the survivors' lives, filling them with an uneasy combination of shame, happiness, and endless self-reproach. (In one of the novel's many ironies, the balloon eventually lands safely, the boy unscathed.) But fate has far more unpleasant things in store for Joe. Meeting the eye of fellow rescuer Jed Parry, for example, turns out to be a very bad move. For Jed is instantly obsessed, making the first of many calls to Joe and Clarissa's London flat that very night. Soon he's openly shadowing Joe and writing him endless letters. (One insane epistle begins, "I feel happiness running through me like an electrical current. I close my eyes and see you as you were last night in the rain, across the road from me, with the unspoken love between us as strong as steel cable.") Worst of all, Jed's version of love comes to seem a distortion of Joe's feelings for Clarissa. Apart from the incessant stalking, it is the conditionals--the contingencies--that most frustrate Joe, a scientific journalist. If only he and Clarissa had gone straight home from the airport... If only the wind hadn't picked up... If only he had saved Jed's 29 messages in a single day... Ian McEwan has long been a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others' fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and--worst of all--becoming strangers to those who love them. Even his prose itself is a masterful and methodical exercise in defamiliarization. But Enduring Love and its underrated predecessor, Black Dogs, are also meditations on knowledge and perception as well as brilliant manipulations of our own expectations. By the novel's end, you will be surprisingly unafraid of hot-air balloons, but you won't be too keen on looking a stranger in the eye.
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 Are you serious? ( folkyboy2 )
It becomes unclear very early on in "Enduring Love" where Ian McEwan is churning the plot. The actual length of the novel mixed with the story description not only had me confused, it almost left me feeling jilted. I had to stop myself numerous times and search intently for the hidden meanings behind data and emotion. Were the letters written by Jed meant to reveal some hidden truth underneath this scientific shell that the protagonist, Joe Rose, was creating? Was the main character's wife, Clarissa, really seeing something we all weren't and going to spring it on us come novel's end?
A story of this caliber with this much wit and thought put into it, can clearly not be as cut-and-dry as it was molding itself out to be. I can not already see the ending when finishing chapter one. This author is a prized laurite. There has to be something else here. They don't make novels of this precision so predictable, do they? I searched and searched and tried and re-read several of the chapters numerous times. Nothing was revealed come novel's end.
"Enduring Love" proves to be an amalgamation of Ian McEwan's essays on scientific theory mixed with a plot point so blatantly obvious that you feel as if it's purposely being muddled to not appear as convincing as it is. In fact, the emotional maze I was being sent on chapter after chapter was so frustrating, I wanted to personally write the author a letter and ask him to share his thoughts with Popular Science instead! Don't pretend to be writing a suspense novel when you're really just running off at the mouth!
An ego splurge disguised as a novel of homoerotic obsession. (It WAS a novel of homoerotic obsession, true. They just failed to notify me that it was Mr. McEwan's obsession with himself.)
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 Wonderful work by the great McEwan ( hankszabo )
You simply can't go wrong with any fiction by the supreme English writer of the day, Ian McEwan. Though not quite as good as "Atonement", this one was terrific and is short enough that it can be read in two or three sittings, as most of his works can be. I made it a point not to read the jacket beforehand, so the plot was a surprise. McEwan in all his books uses "love, faith, and suspense" to weave a wonderful tapestry. Thanks to him.
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 One of the worst books I ever read ( allisonathome )
If you liked Camus' The Stranger you'll like this book. Otherwise, avoid it. Boring and pointless.
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 A Terse Literary Masterpiece on Obsessive Love from Ian McEwan ( jkwok60 )
Ian McEwan's slender novel, "Enduring Love", moves along at such an episodic fast clip that it might remind readers more of an Ian Fleming James Bond tale, than as a sophisticated literary confection from one of Great Britain's - and truly the English language's - foremost writers of fiction. McEwan opens quite literally with an explosive opening of such emotional and descriptive power, and one destined to be remembered as among the most memorable literary entrances in recent years. An explosive opening which truly sets the stage for a gripping, often thrilling, fictional exploration into obsessive love. It is such an intense exploration that readers may ponder whether the book's title ought to be "Obsessive Love". In the aftermath of a freak, tragic hot-air balloon accident, science writer Joe Rose finds his life turned unexpectedly by the compulsive acts of a someone he encountered briefly at the scene of the accident; a total stranger named Jed Parry. A stranger who professes enduring love for Rose, before it transforms itself into a twisted, tormented expression of love which threatens not only Rose's own intense love for his wife Clarissa, but also, eventually, his life. Rich in descriptively terse, almost poetic, prose, "Enduring Love" is unquestionably yet another literary triumph from the author of "Atonement" and "Amsterdam".
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Forever changed ( kns_ )
The year this novel came out, I was living in London, going to university and working part-time at a book store. Stocking fiction paperbacks every week, I noticed how many of McEwan's books we always had coming in, but the title Enduring Love caught my attention. There was absolutely no description of the plot, only a few quotes of praise. Of course my curiousity meant I had to buy and read it. Perhaps b/c I read this novel w/ no expectations of any kind, reading this novel has been the single most pleasurable and altering reading experience of my life. While the ignorance that I approached this novel with may account for some of this experience, I do not think that another author could have had such a profound effect on my literary career. I began devouring all of his other writings, but this is still my favorite, and I believe his best work, with Amsterdam a close second. I recommend picking up any of his novels, carefully avoiding any specific reviews, synopsis, etc and just lose yourself in the carefully chosen words, for McEwan never wastes even one, and the poetry that is the sometimes enduring, sometime frightening genius of McEwan's explorations of the human psyche.
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