Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You can hate the heroine; don’t hate the novel

Atonement by Ian McEwan

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CBR11bingo: History/Schmistory (historical fiction) BINGO: Two Heads Are Better Than One, Back to School, Own Voices, Classics, History/Schmistory While having lunch with a friend recently, we started talking about books and he mentioned that he doesn’t have any use for novels that are “about writing.” On reflection, I realized I am often quite taken with novels that could be classified as metafiction (The Magpie Murders, The Word is Murder/The Sentence is Death, and, going all the way back to CBR V, The Tragedy of Arthur). So […]

She loved him, though not at this particular moment.

The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan

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This is Ian McEwan’s second novel, published in 1981. In it, a youngish married couple who have clearly been together long enough to drift apart a little find themselves in Venice on a kind of extended holiday. They spend their days mostly in silence, drifting through the city together or apart, smoke weed on the balcony, drink at sunset, and barely talk or touch. But then they meet Robert, an eager and willing tour guide to the city’s hidden features. He takes them to dinners, […]

eeeugh. gross in so many ways.

The Innocent by Ian McEwan

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TRIGGER WARNING: sexual violence- and other terrible things What started out as a fairly mild story of a man who is a:not good at his job and b: not a terribly interesting person lurched suddenly downhill into a dirge of rape fantasy, sexual violence, murder, and dismemberment. “Eeeugh” was putting it lightly. I’m not one to tell you, dear reader, what to do- but I strongly suggest avoiding this garbage fire. I am normally drawn to post-war drama- especially involving espionage and intrigue- but I […]

Murder from the perspective of a fetus

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I am a huge fan of Ian McEwan, and I’ve read a number of books by him. So when I saw that he had another one out, I went and picked it up. I’m not sure what to say about Nutshell (2016). It held my attention, but I couldn’t buy into the entire conceit, so I was left with the feeling that it was odd. The protagonist of this story is a fetus in its mother’s womb (I assumed it was a boy because it sounded like […]

We’ll always be troubled by how things are—that’s how it stands with the difficult gift of consciousness.

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By the time this came off the wait-list at the library, I had completely forgotten why my friend had recommended it to me, other than the obvious, which is that I love me some Ian McEwan. And what’s interesting to report now that I’ve read Nutshell is that I may have grown out of my McEwan faze, because this checked a LOT of my boxes but ultimately didn’t blow me out of the water. Which is not to say that this isn’t a beautiful book, […]

Pretty writing hides a lot…

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Oh, do I wish some other authors could write like McEwan; I’ve read so many books with poorly executed plots or glimmers of a good idea rendered inert by flat prose. I often joke of my favorite authors that I’d read the phone book if it had their name on the cover, but I didn’t expect to be taken up on it the way McEwan does with Saturday. So, that’s perhaps unfair; things DO happen in the book. It outlines the beginning of the weekend […]



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