Enduring Love
First Edition hardback cover
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| Author | Ian McEwan |
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| Cover artist | Odilon Redon, "The eye like a strange balloon mounts toward infinity", 1882 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
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Publication date
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1997 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 247 pp |
| ISBN | (first edition) |
| OCLC | 37706997 |
Enduring Love (1997) is a novel by British writer Ian McEwan. The plot concerns two strangers who become perilously entangled after witnessing a deadly accident.
On a beautiful and cloudless day, a middle-aged couple celebrate their union with a picnic. Joe Rose, aged 47, and his long term partner Clarissa Mellon are about to open a bottle of wine when a cry interrupts them. A helium balloon, with a ten-year-old boy in the basket and his grandfather being dragged behind it, has been ripped from its moorings. Joe immediately joins several other men in an effort to bring the balloon to safety. In the rescue attempt one man, John Logan, a doctor, dies.
Another of the would-be rescuers is Jed Parry. Joe and Jed exchange a passing glance, a glance which indelibly burns an obsession into Jed's soul and has devastating consequences, for Jed suffers from de Clerambault's syndrome, a disorder that causes the sufferer to believe that someone is in love with him or her. Delusional and dangerous, Jed gradually wreaks havoc in Joe's life, testing the limits of his beloved rationalism, threatening Clarissa's love for him, and driving him to frustration.
Joe goes to meet Jean Logan (John Logan's wife) at her Oxford home. Jean Logan does not want to hear about how her husband was a hero, but Joe tells her that her husband was a brave man acting out a fatherly instinct to protect a vulnerable child. Mrs Logan hands Joe a bag which holds a picnic, and then hands him a scarf smelling of rose-water, and asks Joe how many doors were open on Logan's car. She accuses her dead husband of having an affair with another woman and asks Joe to phone other people who were present at the accident to ascertain if they had seen anyone with Logan. She says her husband was a cautious man and probably only died because he was showing off to the woman, trying to prove his manliness, and thereby taking unnecessary risks, rather than hanging back and staying safe.
During a lunch with Clarissa and her godfather, Joe witnesses the attempted murder of a man seated at a table next to theirs, resulting in the man being shot in the shoulder. However, Joe realises the bullet was meant for himself and the similar composition of the group of people at the other table misled the two killers into thinking the other man was their target. Before the hit man can deliver the fatal shot Jed Parry intervenes to save the innocent man's life before fleeing the scene. In the subsequent police interview Joe insists that it was Jed Parry who was behind this attack, but the detective does not believe him, possibly because Joe appears to get some of the facts of the incident incorrect. Joe leaves dissatisfied, knowing that Jed is still out there and looking for him. Like the detective, however, Clarissa is sceptical that Jed is stalking Joe and that Joe is in any danger. This, plus the stress Joe suffers at Jed's hands, strains their relationship.
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