Customer Reviews: Read 28 more reviews...
 An Engrossing Reflection on the Thrills of Violence and the Redemptive Power of Love October 10, 2008
John Kwok (New York, NY USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
One of his great literary triumphs, Ian McEwan's "Black Dogs" is an engrossing reflection on the thrills of violence and the redemptive power of love, set largely amidst the collapse of the Berlin Wall and a mesmerizing look back at a memorable French summer one year after the end of World War II. McEwan's novel is a most vivid fictional exploration of a marriage torn apart by the diverging political beliefs of husband and wife, Bernard and June Tremaine, as seen by their young son-in-law Jeremy. By mere happenstance Jeremy stumbles upon the rise and fall of the Tremaine's marriage, when he is asked by June to write her memoirs, shortly before her death. A few years later he hears a compelling, quite different, account of that marriage from Bernard himself, as both take a last-minute journey to a jubilant Berlin, its citizenry transfixed by the Berlin Wall's collapse. Always a keen observer of the human condition, McEwan's sparse, descriptive, and quite lyrical, prose presents a compelling portrait of Jeremy, Bernard and June, closing, most memorably, during the bright dawn of the Tremaine's marriage. An idyllic French summer marred by an unexpectedly dark reminder of the recently concluded war's demonic fury.
Two black dogs in Post WW2 Europe impact the future of a young couple July 29, 2008
Linda Linguvic (New York City)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I love Ian McEwan's writing. His words are pure art on the page. In this 1992 novel, the promise of his future success as a novelist is very clear. This is a small book, a mere 160 pages, and yet he captures the very essence of the post-WW2 world in Europe. Told in the first person, though the eyes of a British writer with a wife and four children, this is the story of his mother and father-in-law, who were a young idealist Communist couple in 1946, and a defining incident in their lives that changed them forever. We first meet the mother-in-law as she lay dying in a nursing home; later, we meet the father-in-law who travels with his son-in-law to Germany to take part in the historic removal of the Wall between East and West Berlin. Always, there is the contrast between highly dramatic lives of his in-laws in the past and his more settled and introspective life in the present.
The prose is so good and Mr. McEwan's skill as a writer is so fine that I quickly got caught up in the story and just couldn't put the book down. Central to the plot is the rift between his mother and father-in law which was set so many years before. They are a couple who loved each other deeply but who separated and engaged in bitter fights all of their lives because of their two opposing philosophies of life. During their honeymoon, the wife has an encounter with two black dogs. What they represent and how this changed her is a metaphor for her future choices and the contrast between good and evil that exists in the world.
Sometimes this was an uncomfortable read and I think the author goes a little too far in his descriptions of long walks in the countryside. But the book certainly makes its point and I definitely recommend it.
Black Dogs: A Novel July 23, 2008
jan dash
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
An extremely sophisticated look at two married people whose mental paths diverged at the very onset of their marriage many years in the past. The story is told by their son-in-law who clearly loves both people and seems to bring out the best of each. Historical vignettes are used to illustrate personality traits and thought processes of both the mother and the father-in-law; the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall was one of these. It was like being there.
It was an extremely cleverly constructed book which did not seem unreadably "clever" as I turned the pages. I only marveled at how wonderfully it was put together and how everything "worked" in the days and weeks after I read it.
McEwan's descriptions, which have occasionally felt overdone to me(in his other books), worked extremely well here and I was not irritated by verbosity as I sometimes am. In fact the grammar, the construction, the tenses and the choice of words were so perfect that they disappeared completely from my observation while I was reading and only became apparent later when I stopped to think carefully about this book. A real gem. It's on my Xmas list for just about everyone I know!
 Black Dogs May 9, 2008
Thayer
Black Dogs is a terse novel about the paradoxical path some people have to go through in order to live the life he thinks he is meant to live, that ultimately would lead to an insidious life of quiet destruction. Ian McEwan tells the story of two people who love each other but cannot reconcile their ideological differences. That ideological polarity manifested in the story through the crumbling of their marriage and how it molded the kind of life they would live separately yet linked together at the same time.
The author has the tendency to be repetitive and he consciously aggrandizes the build up towards the big "revelation" about the oft-mentioned life changing moment of June, the female protagonist, regarding the black dogs. I'm not sure if it's worth the build-up, but what it did was to delineate how June's epiphany shaped her view of life and existence. In a way, her insight of the "black dogs" brought her own demise. Not because it served as a catalyst for her mystical ideology, but because it consumed her so much she lost sight of what's really important in her life. The same thing with her husband Bernard, he was so adamant about his rational beliefs, he missed the most obvious, observable human phenomenon happening in front of him. Nobody was willing to budge. They spent most of their lives estranged from each others. They ended up as paragons of big ideas.
A meditation on Faith... January 20, 2008
JR Pinto (New Jersey)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I'm always amazed when someone criticizes an Ian McEwan novel for lack of action. McEwan could write about a trip to the dentist's office and still make it more exciting than a Tom Clancy novel. Like Atonement, the theme of this book is "perception." Bernard and June Tremaine are addicted to each other, but they perceive the world differently. They can never really separate, nor can they stay together.
The story is told (after the fact) by their son-in-law, Jeremy. The reader knows that something bad happened to June, somehow involving black dogs, but he doesn't find out what that it until the end. Highly recommended.
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