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| Enduring Love - Ian McEwan (1997) |
Enduring Love is a 1997 novel by British author Ian McEwan. The book revolves around the entanglement of the lives of Joe Rose and Jed Parry after they witness a deadly accident. Joe's narration is notably unreliable which creates ambiguities in the text; even the title itself is ambiguous and depending on your reading of it, it can drastically shift the focus of the book. If the title is read as love being something that endures it suggests that Clarissa and Joe's love story is the focus; however, if it is read as love is something to be endured then Joe and Jed's is the pivotal love story.
The nature of Jed and Joe's relationship is also ambiguous. With Joe presenting himself as a rational, scientific man, and Jed as an emotional, religious character, it is impossible not to consider them as two halves of a whole. At certain points in the text it is suggested that Jed is literally part of Joe - a figment of his imagination to distract from his unsatisfying career and to rebel against his own rationalism. At one stage Joe questions "What was I expecting? That he would vanish because I was thinking about something else?"; a turn of phrase that is carefully used by McEwan to perpetuate our suspicions that Jed only exists in Joe's mind. Clarissa, sharing the doubts of the reader, questions similarities between Joe's and Jed's handwriting, only to get excessive defensiveness from Joe. However, the violent confrontation in the finale of the book irrefutably proves Jed's existence as an entity separate from Joe. In light of Jed as a reality, the sexual way that he is described by Joe is notable. Joe describes his obsession with Jed in an almost erotic way, saying "he was on my lips, on my mind" and describes Jed setting off "old emotional sub-routines" which could be interpreted as repressed homosexuality.
Themes and Relevant Quotes
Fate
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Jealousy/ Insecurity
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Types of Love
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Religion/ Guilt/ Forgiveness
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Appearance vs Reality
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"To the buzzard Parry and I were
tiny forms... running towards each other like lovers."
"... my love - which is also God's
love - is your fate."
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"I imagined I was another man, my
own sexual competitor, come to steal her from me."
"Was she beginning to regret her
life with me? Could she have met someone?"
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"her conviction that love that did
not find its expression in a letter was not perfect."
"seven years into a childless
marriage of love."
"'I love you more now I've seen you completely mad,' she [Clarissa]
said"
"... a pang of love that was in
truth inseparable from relief."
"For a second I had become
[Clarissa's] brother."
"'To bring you to God, through love.'"
"I hated you for it, but I never forgot that I loved you too..."
"My love for you is hard and fierce, it won't take no for an answer."
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"I've never seen such a terrible
thing as that falling man."
"I didn't know, nor have I ever
discovered who let go first. I'm not prepared to accept that it was me."
"I felt the sickness of guilt,
something I couldn't yet bear to talk about."
"And who was this first person?
Not me. Not me."
"I'm coming at this from the angle of forgiveness."
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"You say that, then you make that face. What is it you really want me to do?"
"It was as if I had fallen through
a crack in my own existence, down into another life, another set of sexual
preferences..."
"We were loveless, or we had lost
the trick of love,"
"I remembered her beauty like some
schoolbook fact got by heart."
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Critical Responses
- "The couple is the smallest possible viable society; the breakdown between Joe and Clarissa is the subtlest variation yet on the theme. A lovingly maintained fabric that seemed to have no dangling threads unravels thoroughly." - The Guardian: I Think I'm Right, Therefore I Am (Adam Mars-Jones)
- "In many ways Parry's behaviour, his 'love', is indeed a 'dark and distorting mirror', which shows us how similar our normal passions and affections are to psychosis and mental illness." - Ian McEwan's Enduring Love: Seven Types of Unreliability (Sean Matthews)
- "..certainly the words "enduring love" have little bearing on Joe and Clarissa's frayed relationship." - The New York Times: Grand Delusion (Sven Birkerts)
- "Thus the very title alone seemed to destabilize the meaning of love and the narrative that supports it" - Fleeing Clarissa: A Meditation on the Nature of Love, Enduring or Otherwise (Claire Kahane)
