Black Dogs

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!

Set in post second world war Europe (mostly France) and extending to the late eighties, Ian McEwan's Black Dogs is the memoir of protagonist Jeremy, who diligently sets about to chronicle the lives of his in-laws, Bernard and June Tremaine. Jeremy was an orphan with a proclivity for insinuating himself into the families of his friends and, lately, his wife. As we see in McEwan's Atonement, Black Dogs is also about the writing of a novel. Jeremy attempts to set the record straight about his in-laws, intellectuals on opposing surfaces of the same coin. June is a romantic, a mystic, who sees life as a journey through the inner space of reflective meditation and personal awareness. Her husband is an organizer, a thinker who feels the world can be set right only through the right application of right ideas. Since both June and Bernard would rather be right than happy, and since neither could see the conceit and limitations of their own viewpoints, they wasted a lifetime of love in separate but parallel existences. The black dogs, the central allegorical feature of the novel, are either a fact, a historical event that evolved out of the depravity of humankind (dogs tend to be rather like their handlers), or they are more symbolic features, a mythological construction representing evil, manifest as personal depression and cultural depravity. Could they be both? Could Bernard, the arcane intellectual who would rather spend hours talking about the plight of the poor than a half our in their company, could he be a courageous, understanding man after all? Where does love go, after it has filtered through a thousand grand but irrelevant arguments? How do we stumble upon who we are and how we got here? McEwan is a delight to read. He has exceptional insight into human frailty and how it plays out in personal and national tragedy. His prose is razor sharp and his palette is rich and warm. The voices he gives his characters will remain with us.

Ian McEwan proves once again in BLACK DOGS to be a master of literary understatement, a writer whose power (like that of fellow Brit Kazuo Ishiguro) derives from an ability to thread hints of mindless evil through even the most well-heeled, socially-ordered circumstances. In McEwan's modern world, newlyweds, happy families, and prosperous businessmen and professionals live, often blissfully unaware, on a cliff edge, always just a short step from a precipitous drop into loss or chaos. Even the most comfortable lives are far more fragile and more easily disrupted than those who live them ever imagine. In BLACK DOGS, McEwan has trained his sights on the world-shattering events of the mid-20th Century, from World War II and the rise of fascism and communism to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He chooses as his narrator a young man named Jeremy, orphaned at an early age by an auto accident, raised by his older sister (herself trapped in a dysfunctional marriage), and bookishly educated in an English prep school. Inordinately attached to the parents of his school friends, Jeremy meets and marries Jenny Tremaine and becomes equally, if not more attached, to Jenny's free-spirited, socially and politically liberal parents, Bernard and June. It is Bernard and June who provide the core of this novel, their story unfolding on dual tracks through Jeremy and Bernard's attendance at the fall of the Berlin Wall and Jeremy's interviews with June as background for publication of her memoirs. Throughout the novel, McEwan hints at a transformational event in June's life, something that occurred when she and Bernard were newlyweds hiking through south France. Because of this mysterious event, which took place near a dolmen, an ancient tomb or burial ground, June had abandoned communism for a form of religious mysticism, she and Bernard separated (but never divorced) for nearly their entire adult lives, and they bought a country home near the site of the life-changing incident. McEwan alludes repeatedly to black dogs and the story of the local village mayor, but it is not until the end that we learn the nature of the event itself. More significant, we learn the source of these ominous black dogs and their historical and metaphorical meanings. Only in the last third of the book does the true horror of those amorphous dogs come to light, and even then, McEwan leaves their meaning ambiguous - perhaps real, perhaps the lewd imaginings of a few country farmers. Similarly, June's transformation can be seen as realization of life's fragility or as a religious epiphany with echoes of the lightning that struck Saul in the New Testament and converted him to Paul the Apostle. McEwan's message is inescapable. Whether we view life through a rational, scientific lens or a religious, mystical one, we must be on guard against the emergence of evil, whether modestly benign or umimaginably malevolent. The human potential for evil rests within everyone, and it lurks at the fringes of s

Ian McEwan's "Black Dogs (BD)", though quite different, is every bit as awesome as "Enduring Love" and "Atonement". In less than 150 pages, McEwan gives meaning to the concept of "evil", the indescribable and unutterable sense of horror we recognise but often cannot articulate. Here, June Tremain's shattering encounter with evil while taking a walk in the French countryside one day drives a permanent wedge between her and her newly wed husband Bernard and radically alters her world view of life. Quite inexplicably, she abandons her life's work with Bernard, renounces her membership of the British Communist Party, and withdraws into a life of solitude, quiet reflection and contemplative mysticism. Her betrayal of the cause on which they built their marriage baffles and embitters Bernard. He came close but because he never shared his wife's experience, he is left stranded across the philosophical divide. Was it chance or fate that chose June (and not Bernard) ? Perhaps it was June's more gentle nature that made her vulnerable. We may never know but their contrasting reaction to the butterfly that visited them at the railway station leaves a clue. It is left to Jeremy, the Tremains' son-in-law, to uncover the truth. The preface explains Jeremy's parent fixation and his undertaking to write June's memoirs. But Jeremy is also the perfect literary devise to peel away the layers that shroud the mystery and tell the story backwards. Again, McEwan shows why he is the reigning Master of the Sinister genre. I could feel the hairs at the back of my neck grow erect as the brooding menace intensified with each chapter. Every human encounter, whether with Jeremy and Bernard as they jostle with the crowds to watch the Wall come down in Berlin, or Jeremy alone with strangers in a countryside motel, is stalked by a latent violence just waiting to erupt. Jeremy's close shave with the king spider one night in an empty cottage hauntingly foreshadows the revelation of June's frightening encounter with the "black dogs", which McEwan adroitly leaves to the last while leaving the reader with a last gasp of horror when the truth behind the canine predators are revealed.In its depiction of evil, "Black Dogs" recalls "The Comfort Of Strangers (COS)" but it is a superior work in conception and execution. It is a hidden gem and a McEwan classic that deserves wider recognition and is destined for a long shelf life. Spread the word around. Go read it !

Take the time to search for this book in the library or used book store. It's one you'll want to loan to friends or read again yourself. There is so much in just 160 pages. A relationship, a memoire, a narrator's connection to the people he is writing about... Plus, the countryside of France and top notch writing. What more could you want?