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 English
Novelist
Benaroya Hall, 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday,
March 31, 2004
Biography
Excerpt
Selected Works
Links
Underwritten by Hoffman Construction Company of Washington
Biography
Ian McEwan is one of Britain’s most celebrated writers. The author
of novels including The Cement Garden (1978), the Booker Prize—winning
Amsterdam (1998), and most recently, Atonement (2002), McEwan
began writing in 1970. When his first book, First Love, Last Rites
(1975), received the Somerset Maugham Award, it was lauded as "brilliantly
perverse." Such a description may be applied to the subject matter
in nearly all of McEwan’s books: a young girl’s imagination
leads her to accuse a childhood friend of a hideous crime he did not commit;
a man finds himself being stalked by a religious follower after attempting
to save the victim of a tragic air-balloon accident; a group of children
lapse into filth and apathy after concealing the deaths of their parents.
McEwan may craft horrific tales, but he also has an uncanny ability to
guide his readers through these haunting fictional worlds of moral ambiguity
and doubt toward a land of sharpness and clarity.
Born in 1948, McEwan is a self-described "army brat" who spent
his childhood living in North Africa and Singapore before returning to
England for schooling. He received his M.A. from the University of Sussex
in Brighton, where he studied under writer Malcolm Bradbury. In addition
to his fiction, McEwan is a frequent contributor of nonfiction to publications
including The Guardian, The Independent, and The Financial Times.
He lives in London.
Excerpt
from Atonement (2001)
She eased herself onto an elbow and brought the glass of water to her
lips. It was beginning to fade, the presence of her animal tormentor,
and now she was able to arrange two pillows against the headboard in order
to sit up. This was a slow and awkward maneuver because she was fearful
of sudden movement, and thus the creaking of the bedsprings was prolonged,
and half obscured the sound of a man's voice. Propped on her side, she
froze, with the corner of a pillow clenched in one hand, and beamed her
raw attention into every recess of the house. There was nothing, and then,
like a lamp turned on and off in total darkness, there was a little squeal
of laughter abruptly smothered. Lola then, in the nursery with Marshall.
She continued to settle herself, and lay back at last, and sipped her
lukewarm water. This wealthy young entrepreneur might not be such a bad
sort, if he was prepared to pass the time of day entertaining children.
Soon she would be able to risk turning on the bedside lamp, and within
twenty minutes she might be able to rejoin the household and pursue the
various lines of her anxiety. Most urgent was a sortie into the kitchen
to discover whether it was not too late to convert the roast into cold
cuts and salads, and then she must greet her son and appraise his friend
and make him welcome. As soon as this was accomplished, she was satisfy
herself that the twins were properly taken care of, and perhaps allow
them some sort of compensating treat. Then it would be a good time to
make the telephone call to Jack who would have forgotten to tell her he
was not coming home. She would talk herself past the terse woman on the
switchboard, and the pompous young fellow in the outer office, and she
would reassure her husband that there was no need to feel guilt. She would
track down Cecilia and make sure that she had arranged the flowers as
instructed, and that she should jolly well make an effort for the evening
by taking on some of the responsibilities of a hostess and that she wore
something pretty and didn't smoke in every room. And then, most important
of all, she should set off in search of Briony because the collapse of
the play was a terrible blow and the child would need all the comfort
a mother could give. Finding her would mean exposure to unadulterated
sunlight, and even the diminishing rays of early evening could provoke
an attack. The sunglasses could have to be found then, and this, rather
than the kitchen, would have to be the priority, because they were somewhere
in this room, in a drawer, between a book, in a pockeet, and it would
be a bother to come upstairs again for them. She should also put on some
flat-soled shoes in case Briony had gone all the way to the river . .
.
And so Emily
lay back against the pillows for another several minutes, her creature
having slunk away, and patiently planned, and revised her plans, and refined
an order for them. She would soothe the household, which seemed to her,
from the sickly dimness of the bedroom, like a troubled and sparsely populated
continent from whose forested vastness competing elements made claims
and counter claims upon her restless attention. She had no illusions:
old plans, if one could ever remember them, the plans that time had overtaken,
tended to have a febrile and overoptimistic grip on events. She could
send her tendrils into every room of the house, but she could not send
them into the future. She also knew that, ultimately, it was her own peace
of mind she strove for; self-interest and kindness were best not separated.
Gently, she pushed herself upright and swung her feet to the floor and
wriggled them into her slippers. Rather than risking drawing the curtains
just yet, she turned on the reading light, and tentatively began the hunt
for her dark glasses. She had already decided where to look first.
Selected
Works
First Love, Last Rites (1975)
The Cement Garden (1978)
In Between the Sheets and Other Stories (1978)
The Comfort of Strangers (1981)
The Child in Time (1987)
The Innocent (1990)
Black Dogs (1992)
The Daydreamer (1994)
Enduring Love (1997)
Amsterdam (1998)
Atonement (2001)
Web
Site Links
Ian McEwan's official web
site
Ian McEwan resources in the Guardian
Interview excerpt from The
Paris Review
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