McEwan - Amsterdam

Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan, is an entertaining novel.  And maybe that's all that novels are supposed to be. But for some reason, I kept expecting it to be something more than simply entertaining. I had just reread McEwan's Atonement and was reminded of how brilliant and moving and serious that book is. I enjoyed reading Amsterdam, but it suffered by comparison to Atonement, and I don't think that any of it really lingered.

Was it Graham Greene who separated his novels into "entertainments" and more serious works? Why don't more writers do that? It would at least help adjust people's expectations when they begin one of your books.

The publisher's write-up describes Amsterdam as "a contemporary morality tale that is as profound as it is witty." I think that I was sometimes confused about when it was being profound and when it was being witty. This is likely because I am a terrible, distracted reader.

The story revolves around the death of Molly Lane and how the three men in her life cope with the loss. Those three men are the Foreign Secretary Julian Garmony, the newspaper editor Vernon Halliday, and the composer Clive Linley. Hilarity ensues.

This book left me with lots of questions about the life of a writer. McEwan's description of Molly's funeral and the impact that her death has on those around her seems uncannily accurate. I assume that the author has suffered this kind of a loss. But was he taking notes during it? While he was mourning, was he thinking "this is what it is like to mourn the loss of someone close to you. Remember this feeling for a future novel." Isn't that a bit unseemly? (Although I suppose it could also be therapeutic and honest. I wasn't bothered by C. S. Lewis' brilliant A Grief Observed or Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, was I?)

For some reason the witty and cutting sketches of people in this book also disturbed me. Can people really be summed up so neatly in words? At least in John Singer Sargent's portraits there is a layer of ambiguity and enigma in all of the images. Personality can only be hinted at. In literature, everything can be laid on the table unambiguously. As a result, novels must be a great way to eviscerate people in your life. Ex lovers, old bosses, ungrateful children. You can expose and ridicule them all in your clever Booker prize-winning novel.

Amsterdam also made me think that simulating peoples internal voice and inner life must be incredibly hard work. Can you really write about the ongoing internal dialogue that occurs as you compose a complex symphony without having done it yourself? Wouldn't you be crippled by fear that a composer would one day read your book and laugh out loud, rolling her eyes as she turns each page? Do writers live with this kind of anxiety?

I'm sure that a lot of work went into this novel. It just didn't impress me for some reason. Maybe I simply wasn't in the right mood. After all, Amsterdam did win the 1998 Booker Prize. And Nigella Lawson was on the jury that year. Nigella Lawson, as you may know, is not capable of error. Like the Pope, she is perfect and infallible. So I may need to reread this book sometime later with a more open and focused mind, and try harder to understand it.