Black Dogs : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: The best Ian McEwan book
Review: "Ever since I lost mine in a road accident when I was eight, I have had my eye on other people's parents." With that intriguing first line, McEwan begins this story of what could be distilled as faith versus reason or how two people who, though they never stop loving each other, because they could not overcome their differing beliefs, separate and ultimately are tragic characters. Jeremy, the narrator, in his thirties met and married the daughter of June Tremaine and Bernard Tremaine after they had long been separated. The story line is simple. June and Bernard had been been members of the Communist Party. Because of an unfortunate event, their lives are irrevocably changed. "June came to God in 1946 through an encounter with evil in the form of two dogs. (Bernard found this construction of the event almost too embarrassing to discuss.)" The narrator sets about to write a memoir of these two individuals and looks into his own heart as well. "In this memoir I have included certain incidents from my own life. . . that are open equally to Bernard's and to June's kind of interpretation. . . Rationalist and mystic, commissar and yogi, joiner and abstainer, scientist and intuitionist, Bernard and June are the extremities, the twin poles along whoses slippery axis my own unbelief slithers and never comes to rest."

All the earmarks of a McEwan novel are here. The writer appeals equally to the reader's intellect and emotions, and the story is filled with suspense. For example, we read constantly about the horrible event concerning the black dogs but do not find out what actually happened to June that fateful day in 1946 until late in the novel. Then there is the usual ambiguity with the two conflicting versions of what the dogs may or may not have done previously. As always, the writer's descriptive prose in impeccable. We have the narrator's description of June: "How did a round face become so long? Could it really have been the life, rather than the genes, that caused that little crease above the eyebrows pushed up by her smile to take root and produce the wrinkle tree that reached right to the hairline?" Finally, McEwan, while telling a good story, writes perceptive paragraph after paragraph about the nature of people. "It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative lend to its subjects an apparent unawareness that they will change or die. It is the future they are innocent of. Fifty years on we look at them with the godly knowledge of how they turned out after all--who they married, the date of their death--with no thought for who will one day be holding photographs of us." That passage alone is more than enough to justify reading this book, as if one needed justification.

Ian McEwan is one of the great contemporary writers of fiction. One of the joys of living now is to read a new book by him--or to reread an old one.

Rating:
Summary: McEwan at his menacing best : a hidden classic
Review: Black Dogs is way too schematic for me. Bernard and June are Yin and Yang, material one and spiritual the other, but because they are both so unidimensional, not only can they not live with each other in marriage, they aren't all that interesting either, though if you've got to pick one, take June. Not much better is son-in-law Jeremy, their memoirist who faithfully transcribes their stories spanning five decades. And the dogs of the title, and the harrowing incident to which the short book points throughout, do not work except on the most obvious level as a symbol of unspeakable evil always loose somewhere in the world. Much better than the main story lines and characters are the sidebars, often mere glimpses, of other places and people. Jeremy's niece is elusive, sad, and always remotely present in his mind. The command of two girls who come to Bernard's rescue as he is about to be beaten by young thugs in a celebrating is deftly sketched as is the woman who commands Jeremy "Ca suffit" in the book's closing scenes. Berlin as the wall comes down is exciting and suffocating at once. Best of all, however, are McEwan's descriptions of the remote and ancient rural France where he retraces the pivotal day in Bernard and June's marriage. If you have not read any McEwan, Black Dogs is not the place to start. Those familiar with his work will also find this less memorable than much else he has written.

Rating:
Summary: brilliant prose rescues overcooked story...
Review: Ian McEwan certainly writes wonderful prose. When matched with a fine story, as with Atonement, one can easily say he is one of the best novelists around. Unfortunately in Black Dogs the author chose to stretch what should have been a short story into a short novel, leading to barely passable results.

Black Dogs is based on the confrontation between a pair of wild dogs and a young woman, and its aftermath, shortly after WW II. Beyond this rather frightening episode, with the fear factor captured beautifully by McEwan, we are led into a rather silly mish-mash of mysticism - eg, were these dogs some supernatural entities meant to represent something other than nasty canines? Not being a particularly mystical person myself, I found all this to be a bunch of nonsense stretched to tedious proportions by the author.

Bottom line: generally a pleasurable read but McEwan has written much, much better.

Rating:
Summary: Another tour de force from McEwan
Review: Ian McEwan, one of my favorite novelists, has an uncanny way of creating a sense of forboding and fear from everyday events, and this book is no exception. In this case, we follow the story of June and Bernard, who marry in the wake of WWII, and are deeply in love. As young people they are idealistic and out to save the world, but quickly realize they are really going down two separate paths--Bernard is rational and political, June deeply intuitive and convinced of the reality of god and the spiritual in everyday life, as the result of a frightening incident that occurs at the very beginning of their marriage. These two sadly cannot live without--or with--each other. McEwan explores these two diametrically points of view, but betrays his own feelings too. McEwan clearly believes in the existence of evil--in everyday life, as portrayed in a terribly cruel incident between a parent and child in a restaurant, and in a mystical way, in the incident of the black dogs. But he also believes in healing and redemption--as June finds peace in her home, as Bernard suddenly realizes and is changed by his realization of the personal pain of war. We do not really know the truth of the incident of the dogs--an exagerration of a real incident, or the reality of overwhelming evil in the world. It doesn't matter--this is a beautifully written, thought-provoking work.

Rating:
Summary: Black Dogs and White Nights
Review: McEwan makes the story of Bernard and June sing with graceful lyric prose. They love each other, but cannot live together; he the rationalist, she the spiritualist. Son Jeremy is the narrator and swings between love and resentment of his exasperating parents.

Bernard and June meet at the end of WWII and fall instantly and passionately in love with each other and their ideals. They are both communists while their contemporaries are falling away after Stalinism has blasted ideals. While on their wedding trip, June is attacked by two wild dogs. The experience affects them both profoundly. June sees the attack and its aftermath in a spiritual light, Bernard in a cold rational manner.

McEwan takes the reader by the hand and spins his magic of story telling around Bernard and June. There is a climactic incident between Jeremy and Bernard when they are in Berlin when the wall comes down. McEwan makes this so vivid, I could see the crumbling wall, feel the tensions of the variegated citizenry, smell the fear as neonazi hoodlums confront them. (Bernard's black dogs?)

"Black Dogs" is a superlative, enchanting read. Highly recommended.
-sweetmolly-Amazon.com Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: Black Dogs and White Nights
Review: McEwan makes the story of Bernard and June sing with graceful lyric prose. They love each other, but cannot live together; he the rationalist, she the spiritualist. Son Jeremy is the narrator and swings between love and resentment of his exasperating parents.

Bernard and June meet at the end of WWII and fall instantly and passionately in love with each other and their ideals. They are both communists while their contemporaries are falling away after Stalinism has blasted ideals. While on their wedding trip, June is attacked by two wild dogs. The experience affects them both profoundly. June sees the attack and its aftermath in a spiritual light, Bernard in a cold rational manner.

McEwan takes the reader by the hand and spins his magic of story telling around Bernard and June. There is a climactic incident between Jeremy and Bernard when they are in Berlin when the wall comes down. McEwan makes this so vivid, I could see the crumbling wall, feel the tensions of the variegated citizenry, smell the fear as neonazi hoodlums confront them. (Bernard's black dogs?)

"Black Dogs" is a superlative, enchanting read. Highly recommended.
-sweetmolly-Amazon.com Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: Love, Logic, Life, the "spriitual" thing.
Review: McEwan tells a tale of a couple that met at the end of WW II. They are pretty, passionate, and intelligent people. They love each other, but cannot live together. He seeks "progression" through life as a scientist, author, politician while she sees life as a "transformation". She is searching for that spiritual thing in her that she 1st noted at a moment when she thought she would die. The author tells a story, but he also paints with his words. This tale, the phrasing, and the rhythm show the difference between just a story teller, and an artist. This a short (140 pages) and thoughtful book that should be read slowly (not in one sitting), and it will stay inside for a long time.

Rating:
Summary: "It's all in your mind," said the ghost.
Review: Rarely does it seem that a great writer is recognized in his time, but Ian McEwan is an exception. Using the trope of two black mastiffs left behind by the Gestapo but still menacing the beautiful French countryside, McEwan tells the tale of an older couple June and Bernard Tremaine, living in different countries but still in love. The clever narrator, their son in law whose own parents died when he was eight, pieces together the interlacing of the private lives and world events of his adoptive parents from deathbed interviews with once-stunningly beautiful June and her big-chinned rational Marxist politician husband. The action toggles in space and time between 1946, the end of WWII, and 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall. The metaphysical dilemma posed is reminiscent of the yin-yang symbol: though they finally fit together hand-in-glove, Bernard is a skeptic, scientific and rational, concerned with the welfare of the masses and worldly problems; June, originally a communist like her husband, undergoes a spiritual revelation in which she confronts evil, a mysterious light, and intuitive knowledge of God beyond material (and Marxist) strivings. This, for her husband, is a turn toward bourgeois blarney, while his idealistic faith in a better world to her ultimately seems unreasonable. At the book's end the wild dogs, killers of sheep and would-be killers of June, are left alive, metaphorically representing the potential return of spiritual and material menace to the mending but still wary continent of Europe. Apart from his brilliant details and locution (the narrator, an intellectual, early on acknowledges Proust's beautiful convolutions), and the highly readable plot, McEwan demonstrates a complete mastery of the depiction of nuanced human emotions as well as air-tight plotting. At one point, at the Wall's fall, after June's death and Bernard's confession to narrator Jeremy that he checks out young women's faces for traces of the former beauty of his departed wife, Bernard, old and infirm yet tall of stature and gifted with "senatorial calm" confronts some hoodlum neo-Nazis who are harassing a Turk with a red flag. The Turk gets away but when the street fascists come after intrepid Benard they are cowed into dispersal by a young German beauty who Bernard mentioned earlier was one that reminded him of June. When Jeremy intimates the metaphysical significance that the one he was looking for was the one who saved him despite the material absence of his wife, his comment is, "Yes. Quite a coincidence, I suppose. Now for goodness' sake Jeremy, get me home!" (p. 77) As go-between balancing his two subjects Jeremy is the site of a world-historical fight between rationality and religion made personal by its incarnation in June and Bernard. In a humorous scene (pp. 94-98) Jeremy in the French second home of his beloved mother-in-law, senses June warning him of scorpions in the cupboard, thereby avoiding a bite but provoking a vivid, if imaginary, discussion between spiritual avatars of his pseudo parents. "Rationalism is blind faith," says June's quasi-ghost; "'June's presence'" replies Benard's quasi-ghost, "was in your mind, and projected by you onto the surroundings. Given our fear of the dead, it's understandable that you were wary as you stumbled through the house in the darkness...Scorpions," the entomological hobbyist adds, "are common enough in this part of France." Later (in the narrative, earlier in the history it narrates) Benard will be captivated with the alien face of a caterpillar in his pregnant newlyweds hour of canine need: "As he had knelt down, his cheek grazing the path, to stare up close at the head of the leading caterpillar, at a hinged face of inscrutable parts, he had though how we share the planet with creatures as weird and as alien to us as any that could be imagined from outer space. But we give them names and stop seeing them, or their size prevents us from looking. He reminded himself to pass this thought on to June, who even now would be walking back up the path to find him, possibly a little cross." (pp. 124-125) She is more than cross, though, she is potentially dead herself at the slavering black jaws of bleeding dogs supposedly trained by the SS to violate interrogated females. All is resolved, and not resolved, by the end of this compact wonder of observation and articulation.

Rating:
Summary: What is yet to be said.
Review: There is a critical element missing from all the prior reviews: the Albigensian Crusades. ... But first a recap: The central love story is about a man (a rationalist) and his wife (a spiritualist), who have been separated for some time. (They themselves formerly subscribed to communist ideology, itself structured on dualism: the proletariat/bourgeois.) In fact, the title gets its name from two almost metaphorical dogs that attack June, the wife, while on their 1945 honeymoon in the French countryside. The underlying motif is the European tendency to self-destruct despite the trappings of a seemingly high civilization--leaving one to ponder if 'civilization' is the root of social decay.

But in which French countryside? Answeer: Languedoc. The region where the Cathars lived until eradicated by Papal armies in the Albigensian Crusades. These persons are central to dog-and-pony heretical-fiction such as 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' and 'The Da Vinci Code'. Their gnostic tendencies are shared by June, whose spiritual transformation roots her in Languedoc for the remainder of her life. Furthermore, the town priest is the sole character living in 1990 who knows the story behind the black dogs, ostensibly trained by SS to 'violate' the women of the Resistace.

McEwan has absorbed and molded a number of trends from the fictional Grail writings to the booming real estate business helping Brits purchase property in, of course, Languedoc.

Rating:
Summary: Another profound McEwan work
Review: This is a very real exploration of some deep themes, namely rational vs. irrational thought, good vs. evil, rigid ideology vs. free-thinking, salvation through works or redemption through a lifetime journey of faith and seeking. It is also about love for a more "innocent" time, but also the continuum of darkness and latent evil that exists and has existed in mankind since our beginnings.

All these sound like heady, heavy themes, but they are given humanity in the two main characters, British husband and wife Bernard and June Tremaine, and through the books narrator, and the chronicler of their lives, son-in-law Jeremy. Both June and Bernard start their relationship in the time of the turbulent WWII backlash against fascism, and once they feel it is safe to do so, declare their identities as socialists. June quickly turns her back on these beliefs after a real but symbolic encounter with two vicious black dogs, the actual recounting of which is at the very end of the story; the episode unleashes in her a knowledge of evil and darkness in the human soul (they were Nazi-trained attack dogs) and a concomitant belief in good, God, goodness in humanity, emotion and feeling. She does not become, in a conventional sense, a Christian, but senses a higher power and some type of order in the universe. This serves to draw her apart from her husband Bernard, a rationalist who has no need for God, and believes that mankind can be corrected or improved by a social ideology (as he states near the end, having an inner life does not put bread on the table, or make life any more palatable for seven people who sleep on the same floor).

The narrator Jeremy, seems to have sympathy for both points of view, although drawn more to June's type of philosophy - this serves to bring both spheres of thought into fascinating counterpoint, and it is the fleshing out of these themes, with the beautifully written descriptions that I love about McEwan's books, together with the human dramas, and a sense of the beauty in human frailty and fallibility that truly make this a work to savour. This is a story certainly up to McEwan's very high standards.