Word: mcewan
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...calls to mind works like Martin Amis' Time's Arrow, which is written backwards. The form of the novel clearly betrays the influence of Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot, in which a literary scholar hides from the failure of his marriage in his obsession with Flaubert. Amis, Barnes and McEwan are close friends. The three friends inspire and rival one another. The form of Black Dogs echoes the smart, complex, but often self-conscious tone of McEwan's literary circle...
...Although McEwan has drawn on his peers for the structure of Black Dogs, he owes much to Conrad in tone. Black Dogs conjures forth the same malign essence as Heart of Darkness. The two novels generate the same suspense, as the readers churn through the pages to reveal the secret of the one incisive encounter. The black dogs of the title fulfill the function of Kurtz, revealing for an instant the black heart of mankind, the seed of savagery we all contain. Most of all, McEwan's work reflects the powerful, emotive, and yet strangely rambling, subdued prose of Heart...
...McEwan does not let the cerebral construction of the book dominate the intuitive emotional content. The dilemma of the characters infects the style of writing: Black Dogs wavers between Bernard's meticulous, scientific analysis and June's visceral, ethereal visions, between McEwan's contemporary influences and overtones of Conrad...
...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...