Literary Review, a British monthly publication, does its best to alleviate the pains caused by all the cringe-inducing, overwrought, or just plain gross sex scenes that appear in the pages of the world’s most acclaimed novels. Each year it hands out a Bad Sex Award to a novelist who rendered that sacred sensual act laughably Read More
There are many reasons why one’s book might bomb, and many places for a sore author to potentially spread the blame. Ian McEwan has elected to fault “American apathy” for his latest book’s underwhelming performance, reports The Telegraph. We as a nation were unready to embrace a satire about Read More
Michael Beard, the physicist at the center of Ian McEwan’s latest novel, is a flabby, foul, oft-divorced husband and unforgiving cheat. He has a “curtain-swag of fat” that hangs below his armpits and “human blubber” where his abs once were.
Although his Nobel Prize still, inexplicably, succeeds in getting him laid, he is intellectually spent. Read More
Amazon seems to think it’s a children’s book (“Reading level: Ages 9–12”); the publishers’ classification over the bar code mentions African-American Studies—but I’d say that Elizabeth Spires’ I Heard God Talking to Me (FSG, $17.95) is a stunningly handsome art book, a fine tribute in poems and photographs to the sculpture of William Edmondson, the Read More
Among the many tributes to John Updike, perhaps the most expansive and detailed is Ian McEwan’s fine essay in The Guardian. Mr. McEwan has been publicly praising Updike—the “reticent, kindly man with the ferocious work ethic and superhuman facility”—for decades. Here he trains his craftsman’s eye on the mechanics of Updike’s method:
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We channeled the spirit of Edgar Allen Poe alongside Josh Lucas, David Schwimmer, Arden Wohl, and Mary-Kate Olsen at the Accompanied Literary Society Halloween party.
The art world remembered Robert Rauschenberg at a Coalition for the Homeless benefit.
We spent an anxious Election Eve with Graydon Carter, Tina Brown, Salman Read More
On Wednesday evening, a small and somewhat exhausted crowd gathered at the newly refurbished Oak Room to celebrate a screening of After the Party, Australian filmmakers Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley‘s documentary about the life of the novelist, crime reporter, and Vanity Fair columnist Dominick Dunne. Mr. Dunne, who is currently battling cancer, was Read More
Robert McCrum, literary editor of the UK Sunday paper The Observer, stepped down this month after a decade on the job. Yesterday he deployed a parting shot both wistful and sober-minded. "When I joined The Observer in 1996, the world of books was in limbo between hot metal and cool word processing, " he writes, Read More
We once had the pleasure of meeting Ian McEwan, the ever-more popular author of Atonement. (For the record, we will always favor his creepy classic, Enduring Love. A hot air balloon was never so memorable!) Mr. McEwan struck us as outrageously smart and outspoken (he’s been a staunch critic of the war on terror); he Read More
ATONEMENT
Running time 123 minutes
Directed by Joe Wright
Written by Christopher Hampton
Starring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy
Joe Wright’s Atonement, from a screenplay by Christopher Hampton, based on the novel by Ian McEwan, transforms a misguided adolescent error of judgment with tragic consequences into an ironic epic of a heroic period Read More
