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A great book!
I agree with those who say this is Ian McEwan at his most mature. At first, this can feel like an uneasy book: we keep revisiting the same story and the same events, again and again, but from different perspectives. Yet it’s never boring — quite the opposite. The language is captivating, and the structure becomes part of the pleasure. I read the Italian edition and it was beautifully translated (bravo, Einaudi!). And honestly: it’s time publishers started printing the translators’ names alongside the author’s. It’s only fair — to readers and to the profession. This novel is, at the same time, a love story and a (somehow) dystopian book. We follow the lives of the protagonists — contemporary academics caught in a turbulent emotional and intellectual world — while also learning what happens to the planet. Through the memories and research of academics in 2135, who study the protagonists’ diaries while searching for a lost poem, we see the consequences of climate change unfold. We also re-read key episodes from the point of view of friends and witnesses, discovering how much truth depends on who is telling the story. It’s funny and heartbreaking. A thriller and a deep examination of love — not one love story, but many — revealing the complexity of human life. It also raises unsettling questions about what we call “truth”, and whether truth can ever really exist as a shared value. If I had to use one allegory, I’d say this book is a Matryoshka: a Russian doll where every layer you open reveals another, and then another, and then another — almost without end. And yet, surprisingly, you read it at the speed of light. Compelling, layered, hard to pin down. I loved it. 4 stars only because it didn’t make me vibrate emotionally like other books did
Book Information
Posts
A great book!
I agree with those who say this is Ian McEwan at his most mature. At first, this can feel like an uneasy book: we keep revisiting the same story and the same events, again and again, but from different perspectives. Yet it’s never boring — quite the opposite. The language is captivating, and the structure becomes part of the pleasure. I read the Italian edition and it was beautifully translated (bravo, Einaudi!). And honestly: it’s time publishers started printing the translators’ names alongside the author’s. It’s only fair — to readers and to the profession. This novel is, at the same time, a love story and a (somehow) dystopian book. We follow the lives of the protagonists — contemporary academics caught in a turbulent emotional and intellectual world — while also learning what happens to the planet. Through the memories and research of academics in 2135, who study the protagonists’ diaries while searching for a lost poem, we see the consequences of climate change unfold. We also re-read key episodes from the point of view of friends and witnesses, discovering how much truth depends on who is telling the story. It’s funny and heartbreaking. A thriller and a deep examination of love — not one love story, but many — revealing the complexity of human life. It also raises unsettling questions about what we call “truth”, and whether truth can ever really exist as a shared value. If I had to use one allegory, I’d say this book is a Matryoshka: a Russian doll where every layer you open reveals another, and then another, and then another — almost without end. And yet, surprisingly, you read it at the speed of light. Compelling, layered, hard to pin down. I loved it. 4 stars only because it didn’t make me vibrate emotionally like other books did