Read this on Charmaine's recommendation and what a recommendation it turned out to be. My favourite McEwan that I've read so far. The type of book that will raise in you the question if writers plan each scene, with foreknowledge of the full implications that they will weave into their works a hundred pages on, from those foundational circumstances.
McEwan deals sensitively with his his themes of childhood and perception of time with great clarity, and in many surprising ways, invoking quantum physics and Einstein's relativity, the idiosyncracies and absurdities of the British government (along with the intelligence service), the moral and functional difficulties of legalised begging, to give some idea of McEwan's scope and vision. He ties this all in with the core of his novel, the proliferation of despair and chaos from monumental loss.
Yet even in the bleakest moments of Stephen's mourning, where at times he borders on insanity, and in portraying the utter absurdity of Charles' realisation of his 'inner life', McEwan's voice is compassionate, yet precise and unsentimental. The most melodramatic scenes in the book, of Stephen's desperation in clinging on to the vestigial phantoms of Kate's presence, are approached with a significant sense of detachment by the narrator, allowing pathos to reverberate as in a soundless vacuum.
I take from this book valuable perspective on how our impression of time is just that - an impression. Its passage can heal and give us space (obviously not meant to be a physicist) to find truth or acceptance, but it can also accelerate our sense of deficiency, promoting anxiety in its unstoppability (a word McEwan uses early on, he is my authority on this). Being entirely unsure as to the mechanics of time - whether it is an entity for entirely separate consideration from matter/space, whether it moves only forwards like we perceive or sometimes also backwards or completely at random - I can only admit to the unending possibilities of truth being more than can stand to present reason. Also I find that fascinating.
As to the relationship between child and parents, McEwan has this to say,
"perhaps only when you have children yourself, do you fully understand that your own parents had a full and intricate existence before you were born... It is difficult to step outside the moment on any given days and ask the unnecessary, essential question, or to realise that however familiar, parents are also strangers to their children."
I wish I knew my parents as people other than my mother and father, it seems right that as a legacy to their entire lives, their children should be able to remember them as complete human beings, capable of feeling and doing the exact same things that we do. That they had dreams of becoming people other than who they turned out to be, had other convictions than those they now harbour and struggled with all the same problems of a teenager phasing into adulthood, albeit in a different age.
But what moved me most was McEwan's loving take on the bond established between newborns and their parents. I've never been a big fan of the idea of having kids before, but McEwan managed to make me go 'aww' here, so, fair play to him.
"He fastened her woolen shirt, helped her into a thick sweater, and fastened her dungarees. She began a vague, abstracted chant which meandered between improvisation , nursery rhymes , and snatches of Christmas carols. He sat her in her chair, put her socks on, and laced her boots. When he knelt in front of her she striked his hair. Like many little girls she was quaintly protective toward her father. Before they left the flat she would make certain he buttoned his coat to the top."
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