Paperback Castles

"Amsterdam" by Ian McEwan is an intricate tale of a complex friendship based on a shared love, which spins fatally out of control. The novel explores the malicious and bittersweet irony of life - and the morale seems to be that nothing ever goes as planned.

I was not surprised at how dark, and even morbid, the tightly woven plot turned out. Even from the first sentence I knew McEwan was leading the story into a maelstrom of despair, and as I continued to read the tingling sensation of a nearby disaster only grew stronger. I do not know exactly how McEwan manages it, but he is always able to hint an inevitable failure waiting ahead. The hard part is not to figure out what will happen - it is to figure out how it will happen, which is why "Amsterdam" sometimes felt like an emotional thriller.