Word: mcewan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
WRITER: IAN McEWAN...
...does in his bleak, spare novels, screenwriter Ian McEwan uses very simple means to establish an air of menace. The death of a neighborhood dog, a spectacular multivehicle auto accident, the near death of Henry's little sister in an ice-skating incident -- Henry's role in all these can be explained away by people with a vested interest in maintaining their tranquillity. Ultimately, cousin Mark awakens Henry's mother (a very believable Wendy Crewson) to long-suppressed suspicions, which leads to a stark and indescribable climax -- literally a cliffhanger, but one so nervy and straightforward that it puts...
...McEwan goes beyond Conrad in his exploration of human psychology. He notes that bestial hatred and spiritual ecstasy are flip sides of the same coin: one begets the other. Sex best illustrates this paradox--in the tender, familiar love-making of the two couples and the vile bestial encounter with the dogs we are presented with the two ends of the scale. Even more frightening than the darkness is the idea that all good is dependent upon...
...reader feels empathy for the narrator, and is struck by McEwan's psychological insight. But McEwan is incisive because he addresses the issue which lurks at the back of every mind. Black Dogs challenges us to confront the tension we all feel in the meeting of science and religion, the rational and the irrational. McEwan crafts the work subtly, weaving the same uncertainty through prose and plot. But he does not resolve that uncertainty. In the end he has no answer to his own question...
...McEwan closes with a description of June watching the black dogs, "receding from her, black stains in the gray of the dawn, fading as they move into the foothills of the mountains from where they will return to haunt us, somewhere in Europe, in another time." And as McEwan's ideas recede on the final page, they will certainly return to haunt the reader...