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Jennifer Turpin jenniferturpin — Though I've been a McEwan fan since I first read Enduring Love, I've long avoided reading his debut collection of short stories. They've turned out to be everything I'd heard about them: perverse, disgusting, creepy, twisted, dark... and undeniably amazing. I don't want to dwell on any individual story, or give all of the surprises away, but I'll try to explain why I liked them regardless of the content. The very first story, Homemade, I really still don't like. It begins as a story of two adolescents who hatch a plan to pay a girl in thier class to flash them - simple enough - and somehow winds up being about the narrator's attempt to rape his sister. Not only was the latter half difficult to enjoy, but I kept wondering why it followed the first half at all. But, making up for that, the next story Solid Geometry, made me laugh perhaps harder than I ever have laughed before. The twist is too good to give away, but let it suffice to say that it involves a mathematician, his annoying wife, a penis preserved in formaldahyde, and hidden spatial dimensions. From there, the stories went up and down. Some, like Cocker at the Theatre or Disguises, seem light (and short) and not worthwhile. Others, like Last Days of Summer and Butterflies, are bizarre and dark, but wonderful. Butterflies, like the following story, Conversation with a Cupboard Man, actually do the most difficult thing of all - making you sympathize with a narrator who is a child molester, and another who is raised as a small child well into adulthood. These achieve the trancendancy of something like Lolita, where a skillful narrator can guide you into the dexterous and deviant mind of a sociopath, and better, make you nearly love them. The title story - First Love, Last Rites - was well worth getting to. In it, two young lovers waste a summer away together, catching crabs (non-venereally) and hunting the rat that lives in their walls. It's the rare sort of story where nearly nothing seems to happen, and yet everything feels poignant. The final scene - again, can't give it away - took my breath away. All in all, I'm glad I finally sucked it up and read it. It proves to me what I've always hoped - that, in the right hands, any material can find its way into beauty. I'm glad that Ian McEwan found other subjects - widely varied in his later career (which spans literary genres with ease) because it really is that incredible range that makes him such an incredible writer. Thinking on it now, even many of the great literary giants often seemed stuck in a particular mode or subject matter, be it hunting and fishing, the lives of the well-t0-do, or the sagas of mythical Southern counties... but I get the feeling McEwan could dive in and out of any of these arenas with mastery. And just as easily he could write about cross-dressers and street thugs and people from Mongolia. Sooner or later I'll make my way through the remaining McEwan novels (only a handful left) but now that I've gone all the way to the start, I feel more confident than ever that he is our greatest living writer.

Daniel Mascena danmascena — #4 Lady Emily historical mystery series