Ian McEwan's tale is as economical as a shudder. It never itself shudders, which is one reason why it makes you do so. By staying cool in the face of the murderous madness which it contemplates, it precipitates an icy sweat. What it does even with equanimity is not to display it. A characteristic McEwan sentence is one of which it might be said (here in Venice revisited) that the law allows it and the court awards it. 'She loved him, though not at this particular moment.' This means what it says, exactly. It is not a warrant for sarcasm's burliness, for inferring that she didn't really love him at other moments, or that she really disliked him at this particular moment. Grim, laconic and humorous, it is a bracing sentence, a short, sharp shock.

LRB 21 January 1982 | PDF Download