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Liked It “ghost of a rose said: 4 stars |
Didn’t Like It “I feel a bit unfair to The Child in Time. If I had children, I suspect this book would have kept me riveted to its pages. Perhaps since I don’t, I enjoyed McEwan’s competent writing but much of its emotional content passed me by. |
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“I did not immediately appreciate this book, but after finishing the story and pondering it, my appreciation deepened. It may never be one of my favorite Ian McEwan novels, but for his fans it is still well worth the read. The stories construction isn't perfect, but the story begins with a child abduction and ends with a birth- itself an interesting cycle. The book also contains themes such as: manhood, childhood, loss, separation, and depression. The books ending contains hope.
Alex D wrote this review 7 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
”
“Nice but lacks the typical McEwans feeling at the end”
Rohan k wrote this review Sunday, November 1 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“Not so easy to get into as the others, but good meaty, spooky story.”
Judi F wrote this review Monday, June 29 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“ghost of a rose said: 4 stars
Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review Wednesday, June 17 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Time travel is only a small part of this strange book, but it is an important part.
I didn't like this book nearly as much as Atonement. It is totally lacking in the passion and intensity that grips you in Atonement. Which seems odd, since the central story is about what is surely the most extreme thing that could happen to anyone: the kidnapping and permanent disappearance of a child. But The Child in Time is so detached and absent of emotion that it is surreal and dreamy. I believe that this is at least partly intentional. The author wants you to see the story through the lethargic fog of the main character's near-catatonia that is his reaction to the loss of his daughter. But it does make for slow and dreary reading. (Keep in mind that this is from a reviewer who strongly prefers tragedy to comedy, so when I think a book is depressing, that's really saying something!)
Remember that old saying about how fiction requires a suspension of disbelief? That just doesn't happen in this book. There are several scenes that are so unconvincing, they don't just stretch the reader's sense of incredulity, they snap it. For example: one in which the main character wanders into an elementary school classroom in search of his lost daughter, and the teacher appears to think that he is one of her students.
So you are probably wondering why I gave it 4 stars. One reason is for its intelligent use of both language and plot development. It is a book that challenges and stretches the mind.
Another reason is the delightfully clever ways in which McEwan illustrates his theme of the child in time. No title was ever so apt. Over and over, events keep occurring which concern: A, time; and B, a child. Sometimes these are so subtle that only when going over it later in your mind do you realize that a particular scene was one such. Other times they are more obvious, such as the classroom scene described above; or another in which a mature and highly respected, responsible, adult develops a bizarre mental illness in which he goes back to being a child in his mind. Together, they all make for a unique and supremely creative exploration of the child/time theme.
This isn't the easiest book to read, but it is well worth the time for a reader who will enjoy it as an intellectual exercise, rather than as entertainment.
Excerpt from The Child in Time:
"Where once he had believed, or thought he ought to believe, that men and women were, beyond all the obvious physical differences, essentially the same, he now suspected that one of their many distinguishing features was precisely their attitudes toward change. Past a certain age, men froze into place, they tended to believe that, even in adversity, they were somehow at one with their fates. They were who they thought they were. Despite what they said, men believed in what they did and they stuck at it. This was a weakness and a strength. Whether they were scrambling out of trenches to be killed in their thousands, or doing the firing themselves, or putting the final touches to a cycle of symphonies, it only rarely occurred to them, or occurred only to the rare ones among them, that they might just as well be doing something else.
To women this thought was a premise. It was a constant torment or comfort, no matter how successful they were in their own or other people's eyes. It was also a weakness and a strength. Committed motherhood denied professional fulfilment. A professional life on men's terms eroded maternal care. Attempting both was to risk annihilation through fatigue. It was not so easy to persist when you could not believe that you were entirely the things that you did, when you thought you could find yourself, or find another part of yourself, expressed through some other endeavour. Consequently they were not taken in so easily by jobs and hierarchies, uniforms and medals. Against the faith men had in the institutions they and not women had shaped, women upheld some other principle of selfhood in which being surpassed doing. Long ago men had noted something unruly in this. Women simply enclosed the space which men longed to penetrate. The men's hostility was aroused."
”
“Time travel is only a small part of this strange book, but it is an important part.
ghost of a rose wrote this review Monday, June 15 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
I didn't like this book nearly as much as Atonement. It is totally lacking in the passion and intensity that grips you in Atonement. Which seems odd, since the central story is about what is surely the most extreme thing that could happen to anyone: the kidnapping and permanent disappearance of a child. But The Child in Time is so detached and absent of emotion that it is surreal and dreamy. I believe that this is at least partly intentional. The author wants you to see the story through the lethargic fog of the main character's near-catatonia that is his reaction to the loss of his daughter. But it does make for slow and dreary reading. (Keep in mind that this is from a reviewer who strongly prefers tragedy to comedy, so when I think a book is depressing, that's really saying something!)
Remember that old saying about how fiction requires a suspension of disbelief? That just doesn't happen in this book. There are several scenes that are so unconvincing, they don't just stretch the reader's sense of incredulity, they snap it. For example: one in which the main character wanders into an elementary school classroom in search of his lost daughter, and the teacher appears to think that he is one of her students.
So you are probably wondering why I gave it 4 stars. One reason is for its intelligent use of both language and plot development. It is a book that challenges and stretches the mind.
Another reason is the delightfully clever ways in which McEwan illustrates his theme of the child in time. No title was ever so apt. Over and over, events keep occurring which concern: A, time; and B, a child. Sometimes these are so subtle that only when going over it later in your mind do you realize that a particular scene was one such. Other times they are more obvious, such as the classroom scene described above; or another in which a mature and highly respected, responsible, adult develops a bizarre mental illness in which he goes back to being a child in his mind. Together, they all make for a unique and supremely creative exploration of the child/time theme.
This isn't the easiest book to read, but it is well worth the time for a reader who will enjoy it as an intellectual exercise, rather than as entertainment.
(245 pages)
Excerpt from The Child in Time:
"Where once he had believed, or thought he ought to believe, that men and women were, beyond all the obvious physical differences, essentially the same, he now suspected that one of their many distinguishing features was precisely their attitudes toward change. Past a certain age, men froze into place, they tended to believe that, even in adversity, they were somehow at one with their fates. They were who they thought they were. Despite what they said, men believed in what they did and they stuck at it. This was a weakness and a strength. Whether they were scrambling out of trenches to be killed in their thousands, or doing the firing themselves, or putting the final touches to a cycle of symphonies, it only rarely occurred to them, or occurred only to the rare ones among them, that they might just as well be doing something else.
To women this thought was a premise. It was a constant torment or comfort, no matter how successful they were in their own or other people's eyes. It was also a weakness and a strength. Committed motherhood denied professional fulfilment. A professional life on men's terms eroded maternal care. Attempting both was to risk annihilation through fatigue. It was not so easy to persist when you could not believe that you were entirely the things that you did, when you thought you could find yourself, or find another part of yourself, expressed through some other endeavour. Consequently they were not taken in so easily by jobs and hierarchies, uniforms and medals. Against the faith men had in the institutions they and not women had shaped, women upheld some other principle of selfhood in which being surpassed doing. Long ago men had noted something unruly in this. Women simply enclosed the space which men longed to penetrate. The men's hostility was aroused."”
“Finally another Ian McEwan - I'm almost through his complete works now, especially the more famous ones. He only very rarely disappoints me and this one was a definite winner.
Laila wrote this review Sunday, May 24 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
There is something magical about his writing - something that makes it precise and beautiful and gives it a wonderful flow while it is about so many things at the same time. All these different strings and different ideas should make it choppy and hard to follow - but it never is.
The child in time in a way reminded me of Saturday in that way. It is about a man, Stephen, and the way his past and the times and the circumstances around him influence his life and help him grow. Stephen, a successful children's books writer, has lost his little daughter when she was abducted from him in a super-marked, it tore his marriage apart and, of course, he never actually got over it, always wondering where she is. He has been called into a special sub-committee of the government who are trying to come up with new and better ways to educate children, his committee working on child literature. And then there is a fascinating side story about a good friend of his and everything flows together so well.
Stephan is a fascinating character and so are all the others, especially his friend Charles and his wife Julie. There is depth to them and subtlety, he leaves enough unsaid to let him grow alive in your head but says enough to get a good understanding of him, to emphasise with him.
Its a small book, just a little over 200 pages but there is so much in it. It's so full and so well written. It takes longer to read then another book of the size - each page is so full of ideas and interesting structures. I found myself re-reading a lot of passages because I wanted to enjoy then again. I totally loved it, I loved its strangeness and the odd themes and odd people and the odd ideas and it makes me love Ian McEwan all the more.
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“Less ambitious authors would be content to dedicate their novel to the immediate premise of The Child in Time: the loss of a family's innocence and its hopes for recovery after the theft of a child. McEwan works here as he does in later, more widely known novels, with layered presentations of theme and a greater effort to explore the loss of childhood to those stolen into adulthood, and how parents are often stolen from their own lives by childbirth. The decision to have a child becomes significant, and there are suggestions, more optimistic here, of the later novel, On Chesil Beach, where the consequences of action (or inactivity) on later life are explored.
William C. wrote this review Sunday, November 16 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
McEwan writes beautifully of the awe in which children hold their parents, and of adults' recognition of individuality within their children.
If you read this expecting a book of loss and recovery, I think you may miss the point: that life is ultimately defined by action over regret; and that there is no real recovery from loss every moment stolen. The novel is as touching in portraying its adult relationships as it is those between parent and child. A beautiful, complicated book that seeks to broaden its scope beyond the modern thirst for lives full of simply characterized regrets. ”“I feel a bit unfair to The Child in Time. If I had children, I suspect this book would have kept me riveted to its pages. Perhaps since I don’t, I enjoyed McEwan’s competent writing but much of its emotional content passed me by.
Peach wrote this review Wednesday, August 20 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
The Child in Time begins with a simple premise. The main character, Stephen Lewis, looks away from his three-year old daughter in a supermarket one day, and in that moment she is stolen. McEwan begins his story here, after Stephen has lost his daughter, who is glimpsed only in memory. The book becomes a meditation on the nature of time and childhood, loss and the possibility of recovery.
Despite the touching theme, McEwan’s pacing in this book seemed odd. There are numerous diversions and side stories. All of these diversions illustrate the theme, but due to the large number of diversions the book as a whole did not flow quite right for me.”
“I liked this novel - not quite as much as Atonement, but then the main character was a bit older and a father, so further from my own frame of reference. McEwan is a master at capturing emotions, and if I were a parent, I think the lump in my throat would have been even bigger throughout; he did have my eyes welling up a few times. I like how he ventured into physics and metaphysics, with the whole them of time and age playing throughout. ”
Common Calluna wrote this review Friday, June 20 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
