Word: novelization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That is one of the questions that animates McEwan's eighth novel, Amsterdam (Doubleday; 193 pages; $21), the 1998 winner of Britain's prestigious Booker Prize. The composer in question is Clive Linley. He and his old friend Vernon Halliday, a newspaper editor, meet outside a London crematorium to say goodbye to Molly Lane, a glamorous and sexually generous woman dead in her late 40s of a painfully wasting disease. Each man had been her lover in earlier days, as had many others, including Julian Garmony, the Foreign Secretary, who is also present at the service. Linley and Halliday, unnerved...
...principal, and eerie, pleasure of McEwan's telegraphically terse novel is how quickly the agreement between Linley and Halliday turns murderous. For the aftermath of Molly Lane's death inexorably destroys an enduring friendship. Halliday is offered photographs that Molly had taken of Foreign Secretary Garmony in transvestite regalia. The editor feels he must publish them, both to keep his failing paper alive and to save Britain from a reactionary politician who may become Prime Minister. Linley disagrees, telling Halliday that publication of Molly's photographs, obviously private and taken in mutual trust, would be a betrayal...
Ackroyd's vividly human More is Arthurian rather than canonical, imperfect yet inspiring. And that is the gloss that Ackroyd develops in what may be called a fantastic sequel to More--even though it was published one year earlier. In the novel Milton in America, Ackroyd has the 17th century Puritan poet and radical escaping to New England after the collapse of the English revolution that he helped foment--itself a catastrophic result of the Protestantism set loose by Henry VIII's divorce. Instead of writing Paradise Lost, the blind and defeated rebel arrives near Plymouth...
Wolfe takes his time with A Man in Full--he waits more than 100 pages to introduce all the main characters. The first two-thirds of the huge novel really just set the stage for the culminating action in the final chapters. Far from being a liability, A Man in Full's length gives Wolfe ample time to showcase the journalistic skills that first launched his writing career. The novel works because it is based on facts and observations gleaned from modern life, a more fertile source of material than the most gifted artist's imagination...
Charlie Croker's quest for money and power belies his desire to be a "a man in full." Images of men and masculinity pervade the novel. Physical strength and presence are a big part of Charlie's aura--he is proud of his huge frame just as Conrad (the Californian worker) is obsessed with his massive hands and arms. Croker is determined to avoid outward signs of weakness, and his pride drives him to ridiculous displays of machismo...