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rachelevolve's review against another edition
1.0
Ok, that's it. I'm done with Ian McEwan. This book was total bullshit.
This was my third book by the author, and this is why I don't like reading too much by the same writer, especially popular "NYT best-seller" authors. I purchased this book because I thought it was going to be about a three year old girl (Kate) who gets kidnapped at a supermarket while out with her dad. True, McEwan wastes no time in describing the kidnapping in the very first chapter of the book, but after that the rest is about inane shit that has little or nothing to do with the kidnapping, guilt, loss and anguish that would normally occur after such a tragic event. I despised the main character of the book. In true McEwan fashion Stephen Lewis (Kate's father) is a pretentious self-centered snob.
There was not an ounce of angst, despair, madness, or desperation you'd expect in a book about a child who has been kidnapped and whose parents are suppose to be in mourning. The story is about Stephen, who often visits his friends in the county. Who btw never bring up his daughter. He also saved a man from a car-wreck, and he's often in a meeting in which child welfare is the topic of discussion. It was a very flat, boring drawn-out story. The chapters were so long... so tedious. It's infuriating to be strung along so many chapters without so much of a mention of what these parents were supposedly going through! It didn't compel me to feel any sympathy for him or his wife. This was one of the worst novels I've ever read.
This was my third book by the author, and this is why I don't like reading too much by the same writer, especially popular "NYT best-seller" authors. I purchased this book because I thought it was going to be about a three year old girl (Kate) who gets kidnapped at a supermarket while out with her dad. True, McEwan wastes no time in describing the kidnapping in the very first chapter of the book, but after that the rest is about inane shit that has little or nothing to do with the kidnapping, guilt, loss and anguish that would normally occur after such a tragic event. I despised the main character of the book. In true McEwan fashion Stephen Lewis (Kate's father) is a pretentious self-centered snob.
There was not an ounce of angst, despair, madness, or desperation you'd expect in a book about a child who has been kidnapped and whose parents are suppose to be in mourning. The story is about Stephen, who often visits his friends in the county. Who btw never bring up his daughter. He also saved a man from a car-wreck, and he's often in a meeting in which child welfare is the topic of discussion. It was a very flat, boring drawn-out story. The chapters were so long... so tedious. It's infuriating to be strung along so many chapters without so much of a mention of what these parents were supposedly going through! It didn't compel me to feel any sympathy for him or his wife. This was one of the worst novels I've ever read.
camilleisreading24's review against another edition
4.0
A short novel about the passage of time and the essence of childhood. Stephen and Julie's 3-year-old daughter is abducted and this horrific tragedy sets the two on divergent paths. The book explores grief and doesn't pander to the audience by bringing the child back. Yes it was incredibly frustrating not to learn what became of the young girl, but that is the point -- Stephen and Julie are never relieved of their grief and neither does the reader get the satisfaction of a solved mystery. In another storyline that explores childhood, Stephen's good friend Charles succumbs to madness and believes himself to be a schoolboy again. I liked the calm and simple tone to the story. It was exceedingly sad at times, as one might expect. Not so incredible that I'd read it again, but definitely not a waste of time either. Uplifting at the end.
ida_s's review against another edition
5.0
I really enjoyed this. The voice is very similar to that of the narrator of Nutshell by the same author, but it suits this story and narrator well.
erika_is_reading's review against another edition
4.0
I was reluctant to read a book that starts with a child snatching. But I needn't have been. It's essential to the character and the novel, but it's not gut-wrenching, nor does McEwan lean in or manipulate the reader. To me, this is a book about time, the passage of time, and more important perceptions of time and of the passage of time. And about perceptions of time in childhood and at the precipice of adolescence. It's malleable. It goes slowly, it goes quickly, and who's to say it isn't, actually, variable? Indeed, surely this is why one character is a physicist who studies time and loses our protagonist when she wanders into a very personal monologue about relativity. I sympathized most, oddly enough, with his friend Charles, who retreats from London politics to the country; the jacket says "a descent into madness that is a result of a childhood never known," but that's to avoid spoiling, surely, as I don't think it was really a descent into madness. Here we are, retreating from the world a bit, cultivating our own garden, during the pandemic, and trying to keep the rest of the world and its politics and nonsense at bay. Who's to say Charles isn't onto something? (You'll have to read to see what you think.)
McEwan has an amazing ability to dig into a range of emotional and mental states and lay them bare -- utterly unvarnished and real. Stephen's mental state through the book -- it's several years after Kate's disappearance, this is not the period of immediate anguish -- is so very real and true and hard to read (not heartbreaking, just hard to read because it's so real and honest). How? Is McEwan a master empath? He was, what, 40 when he wrote this? I'm reminded of a recently published interview with the actress Emma Thompson, who says she never studied acting and is simply really good at empathy. She can feel the feelings. Perhaps that is McEwan's skill, but then how do you stay alive and sane through a career of not only writing it but feeling it all? And if that's not his skill, then how does he do this?
McEwan has an amazing ability to dig into a range of emotional and mental states and lay them bare -- utterly unvarnished and real. Stephen's mental state through the book -- it's several years after Kate's disappearance, this is not the period of immediate anguish -- is so very real and true and hard to read (not heartbreaking, just hard to read because it's so real and honest). How? Is McEwan a master empath? He was, what, 40 when he wrote this? I'm reminded of a recently published interview with the actress Emma Thompson, who says she never studied acting and is simply really good at empathy. She can feel the feelings. Perhaps that is McEwan's skill, but then how do you stay alive and sane through a career of not only writing it but feeling it all? And if that's not his skill, then how does he do this?
brew_and_books's review against another edition
3.0
After having lost count of the number of times I have read raving reviews of McEwan's books and absolutely loving Atonement for its story and adaptation (I'm not sure how far it is from the book), I picked up my first ever Ian McEwan book: and oh I so very much loved it! For me, the fulfilling experience of reading 'The Child in Time was more due to the enjoyment of language than the story, plot, or development. McEwan is so terrific a writer that I often read and re-read only a couple of sentences to soak in the warmth of his words.
The Child in Time follows the life of a father, Stephen Lewis, who loses his three y/o daughter to abduction while he is at the billing counter of a supermarket. In a matter of seconds and his daughter, Kate, goes missing. With the striking incident transpiring within the first few pages, one might expect the story to be wound around grief, loss, and lament until it's not; it's so much more multi-dimensional. As a government committee member on child care, Stephen examines his wearied relationship with his parents and now-distant wife in a series of delusional episodes during the committee meetings and mundane activities. And he probes his relationships with different people as a 'child in time' in such illusory occurrences.
The narrative is interspersed with multiple timelines where Stephen digs through his dynamics with different people back and forth in time, so it gets a little demanding. The way McEwan explores such a multi-tiered complex theme is brilliant. He lays bare the heart of a grieving man who has almost lost every meaningful relationship. He peels it layer by layer, with detailings adorned heavily by beautiful prose and poetic writing. If you are okay with a well-written but heavy narrative that demands your time and attention, give this one a go. Also it’s Ian McEwan, so why not!
The Child in Time follows the life of a father, Stephen Lewis, who loses his three y/o daughter to abduction while he is at the billing counter of a supermarket. In a matter of seconds and his daughter, Kate, goes missing. With the striking incident transpiring within the first few pages, one might expect the story to be wound around grief, loss, and lament until it's not; it's so much more multi-dimensional. As a government committee member on child care, Stephen examines his wearied relationship with his parents and now-distant wife in a series of delusional episodes during the committee meetings and mundane activities. And he probes his relationships with different people as a 'child in time' in such illusory occurrences.
The narrative is interspersed with multiple timelines where Stephen digs through his dynamics with different people back and forth in time, so it gets a little demanding. The way McEwan explores such a multi-tiered complex theme is brilliant. He lays bare the heart of a grieving man who has almost lost every meaningful relationship. He peels it layer by layer, with detailings adorned heavily by beautiful prose and poetic writing. If you are okay with a well-written but heavy narrative that demands your time and attention, give this one a go. Also it’s Ian McEwan, so why not!
jenleah's review against another edition
1.0
Made it over halfway and I'm giving myself permission to stop reading. It's terrible. Fairly disappointed since it was my first book from a supposedly personalized book subscription service I joined.
sby's review against another edition
2.0
McEwan's novels all seem to resolve in the last few pages. This one was no exception, but, even with the resolution, the story itself remained disjointed. Perhaps that was intentional, as grief is often disjointed, but it still didn't quite work for me.
bbboeken's review against another edition
4.0
Niet zijn beste, maar steekt nog steeds boven de schrijfsels van vele anderen uit. Fantastisch einde --hoewel ge het een beetje ziet aankomen, blijft de manier waarop McEwan beschrijft bijna ongeëvenaard.
khyland's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75