Enduring Love - Ian McEwan

I couldn't actually put this down and read the remaining entire second half of it today - even missing the first game of the Six Nations to do so! Very intriguing and thought-provoking with lots and lots going on.

God, I am now so behind on my book log I can't actually remember what happened! I know it was good... and that I enjoyed it. This is a book about obsession and the effect that it has on people. I've seen the film a couple of times and really enjoyed that, but that primarily focuses on the obsession that Jed has for Joe. However in the book Joe becomes equally obsessed with the situation but in a very different way and ironically I think is the most prominent factor in his break-up with Clarissa.

McEwan paints Joe as a very intelligent character. In fact you might find yourself skimming over parts of this story as Joe narrates fairly lengthy monologues relating to the topics his character writes about. Sometimes they are interesting, sometimes not. But the impression you do get is that Joe is just as much of an obsessive character as Jed is although about very different things. Jed suffers from De Clerambaults Syndrome which causes the sufferer to believe that someone is in love with then - in this case Jed becomes convinced that Joe is in love with him after they both witness a ballooning accident one afternoon. Jed's obsession with Joe quickly accelerates and begins to encroach on his life, causing rifts with Clarissa as each struggles to understand the situation. Ultimately the story comes to a head when Jed visits Clarissa to tell her that he and Joe are in love...

Ian McEwan writes a very good book here, with an intriguing insight into human nature and explores different areas of emotional reasoning. The night Clarissa and Joe return home after the ballooning accident Jed calls Joe very early in the morning, but when questioned by Clarissa, Joe tells her it was a wrong number. Why does he do this? This is the early turning point for Joe. In lying to Clarissa, albeit for very innocent reasons, he begins down a path where he becomes just as obsessed with Jed's obsession with him. You could call Joe a control-freak in some ways. Joe's whole being is based around logic and rationalism, whereas Jed's character is based on emotion and blind faith. Joe can not understand Jed's obsession when as far as he is concerned he has given him no reason to base it on. Jed on the other hand sees Joe as a kind of wounded-spirit in need of his love in order to feel at peace with himself.

It's a very clever book and McEwan manages to evoke sympathy for both characters. You can't help but feel sorry for Jed, and you can also understand how Joe becomes so obsessed with ridding himself of something his rationalism will not allow him to understand. It's not a very long book but the exploration of human nature and the power of emotion (rational or otherwise) makes for very interesting reading.

Strange Fits of Passion - Anita Shreve

Human nature is a very strange thing isn't it? I was always aware of this; it's by no means a new concept. But I think I only really became aware of it while reading this book. I picked this up off my mother shelf whilst I was visiting at Christmas, read the blurb on the back and obviously thought it would be worth a read because I brought it home with me. Now, that in itself is odd in the first place...

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The blurb on the back quite distinctly says that this story is about a marriage in which the husband has "a tendency towards alcohol and violent abuse". In other words, he's an uncontrollable bully who beats his wife to a pulp. What makes us pick up these kinds of stories and think they're something we'd want to read? Curiosity? Intrigue? To raise awareness? Arrogance that we could work out what was really going on and form the correct judgement on those who are the subject? Or is it simply that, like the towns-people within the story, we want to know what happened? Wanting to see what the story was about with the same sense of morbid fascination we get when passing a car accident on the motorway? It's very odd. We are all very odd. And it kind of makes me feel ashamed that I even picked it up in the first place.

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Obviously, we all want to read this kind of stuff otherwise books like this wouldn't be published. But they are. And not just this one either. Hoards of them. Similar stories from all other the place but all with the same morbid curiosity at the heart of the reason for being read. What do the women who have actually been in this kind of situation feel when they read stories like this? Relief that there are other out there who have suffered too? Vindicated in knowing that these books at the very least get the subject out into the open thus reducing the stigma? Anger at having their pain and suffering mass-marketed for profit? Do they even read them?

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Who knows. Maybe none, or all, of the above. All I know is that reading this book did not sit well with me at all. I read it relatively quickly - not because it was so gripping and I couldn't put it down, but because I wanted to get it over with. Or maybe it was gripping? Shreve does a good job of telling the story and laying it out in the format of a series of interviews, but I can't say that this story brought anything new to the violence in marriage debate. In the end it was the wife who suffered most even after she finally rid herself of her abusive husband after her story is publicly told through the eyes of an ambitious fellow journalist. It was all very depressing although I'm sure, a perfectly accurate description of how things were in the 70's. Are things better for women in today's society where abusive relationships are concerned? I truly hope so. In reality perhaps only the women who have been through this can ever offer a true opinion on that question. Shreve has chosen a very clever setting for the plot - amidst the ambiguity and poetic licence employed by journalists when reporting a story. Maureen and Harrold (the wife and husband) are journalists themselves. This all adds to the indistinct nature of the events and in fact, at the end you are left with the tiniest idea that Maureen herself may not have been as truthful as you thought she was.

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I wouldn't recommend it as a read. It's dark and suffocating and depressive, which I understand is probably the whole point of it. I just can't bring myself to feel comfortable knowing that I'm reading this kind of story for "pleasure" when it's about such a horrifying subject. Knowing that there are women (and men) out there going through this for real while I'm holed up in a comfy armchair in my living room leaves a bad taste in my mouth. At least when I read Alice Sebold's Lucky I felt good for her. It was her own story and she wanted to tell it. She was able to take control and there was hope at the end for her. After reading Strange Fits of Passion all I feel is helpless and powerless to do anything to help any of them. I can't help but wonder if any of the money made from the sale of this story went to any women's refuge centre's? I know it's not my right to pass judgement on whether that was the case or not - I'm just thinking out loud is all. I would like to think that it's what I would have done had I have written or published a story like this.