- Hardcover: 149 pages
- Publisher: Doubleday; 1st Edition edition (Nov 1992)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0385425414
- ISBN-13: 978-0385425414
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 16 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,916,458 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Black Dogs
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘I judge it his best yet, which I should make clear is saying a great deal’
Observer
‘Superbly evocative prose…The novel’s vision of Europe is acute and alive, vivid in its moral complexities’
New York Times Book Review
‘Compassionate without resorting to sentimentality, clever without ever losing its honesty…Ian McEwan’s most human work’
Times Literary Supplement
New York Times Book Review
‘Superbly evocative prose…The novel’s vision of Europe is acute and alive, vivid in its moral complexities’
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is less of a gripping page turner than some of McEwan's later books, and may suffer in comparison as a result. However, it rewards on other levels. As always in McEwan the characterisation is totally convincing, but it is the book's engagement with history that really compels. McEwan takes in war, revolution and the nature of evil, and the image of the black dogs haunted my imagination as it did the characters in the book. The scenes in Berlin as the wall comes down were also memorable, but more than anything I enjoyed this book because it made me think, and because it showed that the author himself had really grappled with the themes of the book without ever losing sight of the every day reality of being human.
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This time McEwan holds the tension between the opposites though his characters cannot (he doesn't kill them off as in Amsterdam). Brilliant insights into what keeps us apart, the wall that doesn't come down between a man and wife, even when there is love. The dogs are terrifying. I was held throughout. It gave me hope, and energy. A wonderful book.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Mid-period McEwan: competent but unexciting
'Black Dogs' is one of the group of books that McEwan published between 1987 and 1997. Appearing in 1992, it represents the period in which the author had ceased to be a novelty -... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Paul Bowes
So-so Book
Perhaps I didn't get the hidden meanings in this Ian McEwan story . I found that I had to be patient with it, which surprised me. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Bamba
One of my favourite books of all time
I love the way Ian McEwan splits people. He is one of my favourite writers but at times I could strangle him. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Dicksonshire
McEwan the existentialist
McEwan gets into the Reasoning brains of 21st C. Britons better than most - his desire might be to construct weak spiritual figures whose feebleness is worthy of our contempt, when... Read more
Published on 20 Feb 2010 by S. Gibbs
Facile and unpleasant
As ever, in "Black Dogs" McEwan turns out readable prose, a balance of description and plot points which draw the reader in. Read more
Published on 22 Oct 2009 by Catherine Murphy
six of one, half a dozen of the other...
This is the first novel by Ian McEwan I am undecided about. Most of his novels I like a lot, especially Atonement, and there is one I find too construed (Saturday), but this one... Read more
Published on 15 Jan 2009 by Markus Isch
not yet fully developed, but good.
an early taste of the mcewan style, albeit not as full blown as some of the later works, but definitely one worth reading. Read more
Published on 10 July 2008 by R. Altman
Disappointing
Having read Enduring Love, Atonement and Saturday I was expecting to be blown away once again by Ian McEwan.
I was glad when I had finished the book. Read more
I was glad when I had finished the book. Read more
Published on 9 May 2008 by Bookaholic
Unsatisfying and overly wordy
I usually like McEwan, even though he often enjoys using 250 words where 10 would have done. The fact that Black Dogs took forever and a day to get going didn't surprise me either... Read more
Published on 13 Dec 2007 by daisyrock
Were the critics reading the same book?
I was intrigued by the premise of exploring binary opposite views of the world and hoped this book would cleverly dissect them and the reasons behind these views, depolarising... Read more
Published on 5 July 2006 by Babe In Toyland
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