After reading Enduring Love last month I felt I needed to put a few weeks between me and my next meeting with Ian McEwan. This book is part of my Personal Challenge which is simmering along nicely and a feeling of quite unwarranted pride came upon me when I realised was actually reading a Booker Prize winner when I embarked on Amsterdam. Yes, I know it is daft but there you go.
There was a scene in Enduring Love which I had to force myself to read as I just knew something horrible was about to happen. I could not explain why this feeling of menace crept upon me or how McEwan created it, but it was there and I had exactly the same feeling about two-thirds of the way through Amsterdam, this creeping reluctance to carry on reading. I did and, once again, finished the book thinking O My Gawd.
The book starts with a funeral. Molly Lane is being cremated after suffering a cruel debilitating illness during which her husband, George, cut her off from her friends and ex-lovers, three of which were attending at the crematorium. Clive Linley, a composer in the throes of composing the Millennial 
Symphony, Vernon Halliday the editor of an up market broadsheet and Julian Garmon, Foreign Secretary, heavily tipped to be the next Prime Minister.
One thing to remember at this stage if you come to the book new and fresh as I did (and only realised with hindsight) is that George, the widower, is an insignificant man jealous of Molly's ex-lovers. After I had finished reading Amsterdam, it seemed to me that all the unfolding events after Molly's death began and ended with George and for a man dismissed by all, his influence was pervasive. I cannot really say more about this without giving away the plot and the eventual outcome but will say I was left with mouth open when I read the final page and closed up the book. I was on the train home last week and was totally oblivious to all the usual disturbances around me as I read the last twenty pages (I had actually run over my lunch break that day as I lost track of time so absorbed was I) so could not express my feelings in any way.
McEwan's writing is so concise and economic. There is not a dot or comma wasted, every word counts and the narrative is lean and free from any embroidery or fancy flourishes. On the blurb we have a quote from the Daily Telegraph '....McEwan writes here with unobtrusive panache' which just about sums it up.
Amsterdam is only 178 pages long. Needs no more. Stunning.
