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Details Containing Books The Comfort of Strangers

Title	:	The Comfort of Strangers
Author	:	Ian McEwan
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 128 pages
Published	:	November 1st 1994 by Anchor (first published 1981)
Categories	:	Fiction. Thriller. Contemporary. European Literature. British Literature

The Comfort of Strangers

Ian McEwan

Paperback | Pages: 128 pages

Rating: 3.41 | 14143 Users | 1194 Reviews

Description Conducive To Books The Comfort of Strangers

This was exactly the novel I didn’t want to read, but at least it’s official now – NO MORE IAN MCEWAN BOOKS FOR ME, EVER. I would like to tell you how stupid this novel is, but Maciek beat me to it – see his great review here

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

So let me tell you about the boring sentences you have to accept into your life if you read this book. Here’s one:

Now, in the late afternoon, although the sun was still high, the eastern sky had lost its vivid purple and, fading by degrees through nursery blue to diluted milk, effected, across the precise line of the horizon, the most delicate of transactions with the pale grey of the sea.

This is, I take it, what people mean when they harp on about the Ian McEwan prose style. It looks, to me, as if, Mr McEwan, has broken in to James Ellroy’s office, and, stolen all James’ commas. Never have, I seen, so many clauses, and commas, in one short, novel. For me the effect is akin to reading through a stocking mask, the kind that robbers used before they all switched to balaclavas. Especially when our prose stylist is continually, dementedly, describing the weather, the streets of Venice, or the furniture in the rooms. Ah how he loves furniture. Cutlery too.

You can tell this is pretentious I mean literary because although it’s set in Venice the V word is never mentioned.

By now I have realised what Ian McEwan’s USP is. What he does is he describes in tedious detail a couple of ordinary novocained middle class English types in an ordinary situation and just when you’re dozing off he has a page of lurid violence. Sometimes the lurid violence comes at the beginning, sometimes in the middle, and here at the end.

Here’s another McEwanbite for you. I think this is the way dead people would write, if they could :

In the evening they decided they were suffering from lack of exercise and made plans to catch the boat across the lagoon the next day to the popular strip of land whose beaches faced the open sea. This led them to talk at length and euphorically, for they had just smoked another joint, about swimming, their preferred strokes, the relative merits of rivers, lakes, swimming-pools and seas, and the precise nature of the attraction water had for people : was it the buried memory of ancient sea ancestors? Talk of memory caused Mary to frown again. The conversation became desultory after that, and they went to bed earlier than usual, a little before midnight.

Notice “the popular strip of land whose beaches faced the open sea” – he can’t give it its name, which would be the natural thing to do, because for some reason of high literature, he has decided not to say that the city with its canals and no traffic is Venice. So he has to use this forced circumlocution.

This novel means nothing. It portentously gestures towards some kind of statement critical of men who think that women really like to be beaten up and by extension how feminism is destroying life as we know it but the denouement capsizes any attempt to make sense of the plot.

This novel promotes yet another version of the concept that (some) victims actively participate in their own destruction. Why do they do this? Well, who knows, not Ian McEwan, that’s for sure. They just do. Too much novocaine maybe.

I am promoting the idea that readers can do without Ian McEwan.

Describe Books To The Comfort of Strangers

Original Title:	The Comfort of Strangers
ISBN:	0679749845 (ISBN13: 9780679749844)
Edition Language:	English
Setting:	Venice(Italy)
Literary Awards:	Booker Prize Nominee (1981)

Rating Containing Books The Comfort of Strangers

Ratings: 3.41 From 14143 Users | 1194 Reviews

Commentary Containing Books The Comfort of Strangers

In base a cosa si danno le stellette ?I criteri cambiano nel tempo con ripensamenti anche radicali. Ed il fattore - tempo ha un'incidenza determinante.Per questo libro (del 1981) il fattore - tempo è impietoso: è datato ed invecchiatissimo.I due protagonisti sono due "giovani adulti" radical - chic: si capisce che fanno gli artisti, lei è attrice in un "collettivo teatrale femminile" ed ha un paio di uscite tipicamente vetero - femministe, ma non è che abbiano granché da fare. Tuttavia

Dio mio.Allora, con calma: un romanzo che divide, che ad alcuni è piaciuto e ad altri ha fatto schifo, senza tante vie di mezzo.A me ha fatto effetto, diciamo. Piacere è un'altra cosa, ma poche altre letture mi hanno turbata e affascinata e contemporaneamente creato repulsione quanto questa opera "giovanile" di McEwan.Da quando si capisce che dietro alle cortesie da parte della coppia autoctona verso i due turisti c'è qualcosa di losco e torbido ho fatto fatica a proseguire. Le ultime pagine non



I seem to be in the minority based on the ratings, but something about this story grabbed me right from the start.  There is irony in the title as the story brings anything but comfort, which may actually be why I liked it.  The characters are rather strange and unlikable, their relationships are strained, and the story reaffirms everything you were taught as a child about not talking to strangers.  An English couples holiday takes on an eerie twist when they find themselves lured in by a

This is the earliest McEwan work Ive read (1981). I could see the seeds of his classic themes: obsession, sexual and otherwise; and the slow building of suspense and awareness until an inevitable short burst of violence. Mary and Colin are a vacationing couple in Venice. One evening theyve spent so long in bed that by the time they get out all the local restaurants have shut, but a bar-owner takes pity and gives them sustenance, then a place to rest and wash when they get lost and fail to locate

"The Comfort of Strangers" is the unfortunate combination of two of McEwan's worst books (which were published decades later, obviously): "Saturday" & "On Chesil Beach." It has that PVoAA (Powerful Voice of Authentic Authority), or that I've-published-stuff-now-I-will-see-places-with-the-eyes-of-a-wealthy-man tone. Ya know, the rich who think they're above even common violence (made, obviously, more "horrific" by their occurrence to a man of abundant means, gag). It also has that

Colin e Mary sono una coppia di turisti in vacanza. Sono indolenti, vivono le loro giornate fra le lenzuola fresche di un hotel, uscendo la sera a cena, bevendo e fumando qualcosa. Non sappiamo dove sono. Una città che dalla descrizione sembrerebbe Venezia. E ci trascinano nelle loro giornate senza senso, in discussioni silenziose in un tempo immobile, in unabitudine ai loro corpi che è normalità, piacere, delicatezza e conforto. Ognuno si prende cura dellaltro come sa. La certezza dellesserci