?A brilliant performance?'

'A talented and genuine imaginative writer? the ironies, throughout this impressive collection, are tellingly weighted'

?A writer of uncanny power'

Taut, brooding and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness.

Taut, brooding and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness.

A brilliant performance. There's an assured and terribly macabre depravity about Ian McEwan's short stories - as if some of the characters from early Angus Wilson had been painted by Francis Bacon - Observer

Ian McEwan:
Ian McEwan has written two collections of stories, as well as many novels and screenplays. He won the 1998 Booker Prize for Amsterdam, and was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize for Atonement.

2008-08-10 Unbearably depressing

I can't fault Ian McEwan's writing. It's largely because of the brilliance of his execution that I find myself, surprisingly, giving this a single star review. That's because I have to stick to my own star-rating system and reserve single stars for those books that I cannot finish. But while that dishonour is usually reserved for poorly written books, I couldn't finish this one as it was just too depressing, disturbing and altogether horrible.

The meticulously plotted rape of a child and a child sex murder are amongst the grim acts told in usually first person narratives - drowned babies, tortured cats and animal foetusses provide the casually violent backdrop. I read most of this book. But when I got to the last story, I just couldn't face any more. This is not to say that I haven't read much more graphically violent or explicit work and thoroughly enjoyed it - so this isn't a prudish problem. It's just that the relentlessly macabre, oppressive themes of these stories stuck in my brain and made me see the world as a gloomier place. So by the time I got to the final story, I decided enough was enough.

Of other works by the brilliant Mr McEwan, these stories most closely resemble, in my opinion, The Cement Garden. That claustrophobic, disturbing and dysfunctional tale seems almost to have `grown out of' this collection.

A victim of its own mercilessly dark prose, I can't recommend this book to anyone I'm afraid.