Doesn't anybody here play this game? casey stengal
Just finished Amsterdam by Ian McEwan, part of the 1001 project. Perhaps not a great book, but still a very good one. Then I thought I'd just look into Amazon for a bit to see what people had to say about it. Was I surprised! First we had complaints that one of the two major characters was not likable at all, and that this made the book a lesser book. Hmmm....Lolita, anyone? Then there was a lot of chaff about the ending being unrealistic (yes) and that, in writing the crucial incident, McEwan betrayed himself as a serious writer. Apparently these folks didn't look to the very last paragraphs, which put the book in a completely different light. I thought it was a minor masterpiece of social satire. Satire is, I guess, in the eye of the beholder. These folks seemed to take the book as a serious little novel and were offended by the devices used by the author. I thought it was, as I said, a very good book. McEwan puts me in mind, for some reason, of Graham Greene. I'm often shocked at the reactions of folks on Amazon. For example, I've found reviews of books that revile said books as having expicit sex on every other page. Sometimes I'll actually go back and reread those books, since I sure missed it on the first time around...and unless things have changed drastically since my youth, they still don't have all this "excessive" sex. People get uptight about lots and lots of stuff in books....but it's a book, man, it's supposed to make you think.