Black Dogs (1992)

“The black dogs that give Ian McEwan’s new novel its evocative title come from the name that Winston Churchill once bestowed on his depressions. As used by Mr. McEwan’s heroine, however, they signify something larger and more menacing: evil, darkness, irrationality, civilization’s worst moods. They give Mr. McEwan a metaphor by which he can turn a fictional family memoir into an elliptical meditation on Europe’s past and future.”

Read our review.

Image

Enduring Love (1997)

“The novel begins with what its narrator, Joe Rose, calls a ‘pinprick on the time map.’ Joe and his longtime lover, Clarissa, a Keats scholar just back from an extended research trip, are setting up a picnic under a turkey oak in the Chiltern Hills, an hour outside Heathrow. As Joe reaches for the wine bottle, they hear an alarmed shout. He hurries toward the sound, as do others in the vicinity. What they see in the center of an open field is a grounded hot-air balloon threatening to take off with a young boy trapped in the basket. ‘We were running toward a catastrophe,’ Joe notes retrospectively, ‘which itself was a kind of furnace in whose heat identities and fates would buckle into new shapes.’”

Read our review.

Image

Amsterdam (1998)

In this “morality fable disguised as a psychological thriller,” two old friends — “one a famous composer named Clive, the other a mercenary newspaper editor named Vernon — enter into a strange euthanasia pact that will determine both their fates and send shock waves through their privileged world.”

Read our review.