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Ingrid Law talks about the inspiration for Savvy
S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
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In a letter to his readers, John Hart talks about becoming a writer and the challenges he faced in writing The Last Child.
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A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
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   Summary and Book Reviews

Amsterdam: Summary and book reviews of Amsterdam by Ian McEwan, plus links to an excerpt from Amsterdam and a biography of Ian McEwan.

Amsterdam Amsterdam
by Ian McEwan
Hardcover: Dec 1998,
193 pages.
Paperback: Nov 1999,
193 pages.

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Critics' Opinion:   very good
Readers' Rating:  Three Stars
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Book Summary

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence. Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer; Vernon is editor of the quality broadsheet The Judge. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, foreign secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister.

In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences neither has foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life.

In Amsterdam, a contemporary morality tale that is as profound as it is witty, we have Ian McEwan at his wisest and most wickedly disarming. And why Amsterdam? What happens there to Clive and Vernon is the most delicious climax of a novel brimming with surprises.

Winner of the 1998 Booker Prize.

Book Reviews


Good  Publishers Weekly
As swift as a lethal bullet and as timely as current headlines, McEwan's Booker Prize-winning novel is a mordantly clever but ultimately too clever for its own good....That said, however, it will undoubtedly hit the bestseller charts, for McEwan, even when not quite at the top of his form, is a writer of compelling gifts

Very Good  The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
[In Amsterdam] are the simple pleasures of reading a writer in complete command of his craft, a writer who has managed to toss off this minor entertainment with such authority and aplomb that it has won him the recognition he has so long deserved.

Very Good  The Washington Post Book World - Michael Dirda
Though McEwan addresses several serious themes--in particular, the conflict between personal desire and public responsibility--his ingenious conte cruel possesses the lightness of touch and split-second plotting of an operetta.... There is no huffing and puffing, no waste, no mess. Every sentence carries the fugue-like plot forward to the final catastrophe.

Author Blurb  The Independent on Sunday - Alain de Botton
Amsterdam is a pitiless study of the darker aspects of male psychology, of male paranoia, emotional frigidity, sexual jealousy, professional rivalry and performance anxiety....Despite the darkness of the themes, or perhaps because of them, Amsterdam is extremely funny in a black sort of way....Ghoulishly compelling.

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