The Transatlantic Book Club discussion

Thought I'd better put something before I forget it all. I thought Joe and Clarissa were nicely written, believably human in their judgement and actions. I liked the way Jed sort of disappeared from view for a while later in the story, I started to wonder if everything was going to end in some kind of mess because Joe was overreacting or deluded or something, I thought this added to the tension.
What did you think?

I am a dreadful group leader; I don't know where this month has gone. Too much hunting for poems, I suppose.

I enjoyed this novel, but it isn't my favourite of McEwan's works; it's better than the average literary work, but not one of his best. It might be that I warped my perspective and ruined the tension by seeing the film first, even though it was years ago. It is quite different from the book in many ways, but I was certain that Joe was right, and felt that Clarissa was rather petty about everything, curiously unable to empathize with someone she's supposed to be so devoted to. It annoyed me that she pointed to the handwriting in Jed's letters being similar to Joe's handwriting as evidence for her suspicion that Joe was going crazy rather than being stalked, as though no two people's handwriting ever happened to be similar. Perhaps there wasn't enough in the story about his behavior at home; it seemed like she went from understandably tired and frustrated after a bad day at work to completely alienated from the love of her life in what felt like a matter of days. McEwan excels at creating complicated, intensely believable characters and at plots that never end up where you think they will, and this work is well worth reading--probably more than once--but I felt this was less accomplished than his more recent novels.

Thanks for posting all the poems though, it's been interesting to read them. Which of McEwan's novels do you really rate?

Atonement is my favourite, I think; I loved Amsterdam, but I read it so long ago I can hardly remember what it was about--it was before I was ill, and the dehydration messed with my memory a bit. I also loved Saturday and Sweet Tooth, but only when I got to the very end; the main character, Serena, is flawlessly written but rather maddening. On Chesil Beach is good, very short, and really quite depressing. Enduring Love reminded me a lot of Saturday at times, so perhaps try that one first, but Atonement is his best work yet, I think at any rate. They're all fairly quick reads.

Out of curiosity, Andrew, were there any poems that you particularly liked? Not many people were interested in the poems I posted on FB, but those that were were very interested, so I was considering opening a general thread about poems here for general interest rather than focused on a particular collection or poet.

Aye, that would be good. I particularly liked the Larkin, the Ted Hughes, the Levertov and the Audre Lorde poems that you posted. I have a couple of books of poetry here that I've been meaning to look at, maybe if there was a thread on here it would push me to pick them up.