Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Thriller
Review: This book may not cover a whole lot of action, but it moves along very quickly. The writing of McEwan describes the scenes to such an extent that the reader feels the intensity experienced by Colin and Mary. Throughout the novel, this intensity builds, making for one of the most exciting and well written books I have ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: Dark, dangerous, twisted
Review: This is probably the most effective horror novel I've ever read. Not that there are demons, monsers, or flying body bits, but in that it lays bare some truly horrifying facets of human nature, and what they can cause people to do. It's haunting and not for the timid. Or the weak of stomach.Colin and Mary are lovers on vacation in Italy, increasingly bored and uninterested in one another. They amble around hotels and tourist streets without any genuine interest. Then they accidently bump into Robert, a seemingly friendly man with an unhappy family history and an initially harmless attachment to the couple. From there, Colin and Mary stay with Robert and his crippled wife Caroline, who seems friendly but oddly insistent that they stay for awhile. Colin and Mary rediscover their physical attraction to one another, but they also are increasingly uneasy with the forceful friendship of Robert and Carllin. And soon that friendship is revealed as terrible, erotic, and violent. Ian McEwan's books remind me of those movies where the skies are cloudy, the alleys are dank, and everybody is hiding secret motives. There is a sort of dark aura from the beginning on the book onward, as if tragedy is creeping up from page one onward. Despite this gradual buildup, and the increasingly horrific life stories that Robert and Caroline tell, the climax is a horrible shock. McEwan's writing swings freely between oddly dreamlike and shockingly vivid -- if anything, the vividity of his writing is more so because the weird stuff is written in such poetic prose. His dialogue is mostly good, except when the characters launch into philosophical ramblings about women and men and whether women want to be dominated. He is extremely talented in portraying the few characters -- Colin and Mary are bland but essentially harmless, while Caroline and Robert crackle with energy, but, they are extremely frightening. This book is not one for kids, it has a lot of sexual content, including some really twisted, frightening stuff. Heck, some adults may not like it. It's a quick read, took me only half an hour to read it. But it's dark and haunting, and not for thw weak of heart.
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