Status
Available
Collection
Genres
Publication
Anchor (1998), Edition: 11/29/98, 288 pages
Description
Leonard Marnham is assigned to a British-American surveillance team in Cold War Berlin. His intelligence work--tunneling under a Russian communications center to tap the phone lines to Moscow--offers him a welcome opportunity to begin shedding his own unwanted innocence, even if he is only a bit player in a grim international comedy of errors. Leonard's relationship with Maria Eckdorf, an enigmatic and beautiful West Berliner, likewise promises to loosen the bonds of his ordinary life. But the promise turns to horror in the course of one terrible evening--a night when Leonard Marnham learns just how much of his innocence he's willing to shed.
Media reviews
Ian McEwan has concentrated too much of his artistic energy on the surface of his story, has burnished it to such a high finish that not only the eye but the mind slides over and, ultimately, off the page.
Despite all that, I have to say that The Innocent is marvelously entertaining, filled with
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dark irony, with horror and regret.
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Kirkus Reviews
McEwan's latest—his best shot at a popular novel—is something of a departure from his previous work (The Child in Time, The Comfort of Strangers, etc.), but no less skillful in design or execution. Part romance, part murder mystery, and part spy intrigue, this cool tale of postwar Berlin relies
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on a number of historical and dramatic ironies for its punch.
McEwan's clinical account of dismemberment reminds us of the dark imagination displayed in his other work—it's also bound to turn off the wider audience who would otherwise enjoy this clean and clever fiction. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member RoseCityReader
Ian McEwan may now be the hottest thing going, but his earlier books are hit or miss. The Company of Strangers? Creepy. The Cement Garden? Disturbing. The dexterous elegance of books like Amsterdam and On Chesil Beach were still a long ways off.
His 1990 novel, The Innocent, is a flawed but
Despite the violence, this is a love story. McEwen uses violent tragedy to speed up the natural termination of the romantic, passionate phase of the couple’s relationship. Unfortunately, his gruesomely accurate descriptions distract the reader from McEwan’s astute examination of the male/female dynamic. Still, although moved along by espionage and homicide, it is the bigger themes of romantic love and the nature of intimacy – not the events of the plot – that are the core of the book.
Also posted on Rose City Reader.
His 1990 novel, The Innocent, is a flawed but
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absorbing transition between McEwan’s earlier works and the later novels. The book is set in post-war, pre-wall Berlin, where 25-year-old Leonard Marnham is a British post office technician assigned to a secret spy mission (based on an actual Anglo-American joint spy effort). He falls in love with Maria Eckdorf, a German divorcee, five years older than him. When things go wrong, they go horribly, sickeningly wrong. Yet McEwan deftly shows how each step down the slippery slope was justifiable and even necessary for the two lovers.Despite the violence, this is a love story. McEwen uses violent tragedy to speed up the natural termination of the romantic, passionate phase of the couple’s relationship. Unfortunately, his gruesomely accurate descriptions distract the reader from McEwan’s astute examination of the male/female dynamic. Still, although moved along by espionage and homicide, it is the bigger themes of romantic love and the nature of intimacy – not the events of the plot – that are the core of the book.
Also posted on Rose City Reader.
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LibraryThing member mudslideslim
This story is a journey back in time to a period that most of our parents lived through and are still living with as the impresions of such a vivid experience as a world war do not just simply fade away but become part of your life and continue to influence your life as time goes by, the characters
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in this story were as real to me as anyone I've ever met. Show Less
LibraryThing member varwenea
In the 1990 “The Innocent”, Ian McEwan continued his trend of doling out a surprise wallop in the midst of a standard story – boy meets girl, misconceptions, sh*t hits the fan, boy separates from girl, and then many years later… maybe, finally.
It’s post WWII in Berlin. The Americans,
The writing is very McEwan. The words and pages of the main story (boy-girl relationship) flowed effortlessly. Unfortunately, the technical details of the spy story were meh. They weren’t interesting and read more like time/page fillers until Leonard and Maria are off work and can continue with their story. The ‘wallop’ I mentioned was repulsive and excessive; that’s chapter 18 if you want to skim pass that. The gruesomeness may or may not be necessary to explain the decisions made, particularly by Leonard; personally, I don’t think it’s needed.
As mild mannered as Leonard is supposedly, I became very angry at him for a specific action that frightened Maria. While I understand the sequence of events, his base motivation is unacceptable. What is up with men’s need to dominate?!? I was also disappointed with Maria. It’s her baggage that she has now involved Leonard. In short, I disliked both protagonists! The key secondary character who has been nothing but truthful became my favorite character, Bob Glass.
Though I generally like McEwan’s works, I won’t recommend this one.
One quote:
On Sex – his first time:
“Of what followed he remembered only two things. The first was that it was rather like going to see a film that everybody else had been talk about: difficult to imagine in advance, but once there, installed, partly recognition, partly surprise. The encompassing slippery smoothness, for example, was much as he had hoped – even better, in fact – while nothing in his extensive reading had prepared him for the crinkly sensation of having another’s public hair pressed against his own. The second was awkward. He had read all about premature ejaculation and wondered if he would suffer, and now it seemed he might. It was not movement that threatened to bring him on. It was when he looked at her face. She was lying on her back, for they were what she had taught him to call auf Altdeutsch. Sweat had restyled her hair into snaky coils and her arms were thrown up behind her heads, with the palms spread, like a comic-book representation of surrender. At the same time she was looking up at him in a knowing, kindly way. It was just this combination of abandonment and loving attention that was too good to be looked at, too perfect for him, and he had to avert his eyes, or close them, and think of… of, yes, a circuit diagram, a particularly intricate and lovely one he had committed to memory during the fitting of signal activation units to the Ampex machines.
It’s post WWII in Berlin. The Americans,
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English, Russians, mingle with the Germans in states of distrust, frenemy, multiple security clearance levels, and spying. Leonard Marnham, 25, is the billboard Englishman, outwardly kind, quiet, a certifiable nerd working in Berlin as a technician. His best friend in Berlin is Bob Glass, the loud stereotype American who is a military man and is one of Leonard’s main contact for the ‘secret project’ (which is real – “The Berlin Tunnel”, or Operation Gold from 1955 but most of the events in the story are fictional.). Maria Eckdorf, 30, is the divorced German lady Leonard meets one night in a night club; she’s unusually independent living on her own, but also with the baggage of a violent ex-husband, Otto. The writing is very McEwan. The words and pages of the main story (boy-girl relationship) flowed effortlessly. Unfortunately, the technical details of the spy story were meh. They weren’t interesting and read more like time/page fillers until Leonard and Maria are off work and can continue with their story. The ‘wallop’ I mentioned was repulsive and excessive; that’s chapter 18 if you want to skim pass that. The gruesomeness may or may not be necessary to explain the decisions made, particularly by Leonard; personally, I don’t think it’s needed.
As mild mannered as Leonard is supposedly, I became very angry at him for a specific action that frightened Maria. While I understand the sequence of events, his base motivation is unacceptable. What is up with men’s need to dominate?!? I was also disappointed with Maria. It’s her baggage that she has now involved Leonard. In short, I disliked both protagonists! The key secondary character who has been nothing but truthful became my favorite character, Bob Glass.
Though I generally like McEwan’s works, I won’t recommend this one.
One quote:
On Sex – his first time:
“Of what followed he remembered only two things. The first was that it was rather like going to see a film that everybody else had been talk about: difficult to imagine in advance, but once there, installed, partly recognition, partly surprise. The encompassing slippery smoothness, for example, was much as he had hoped – even better, in fact – while nothing in his extensive reading had prepared him for the crinkly sensation of having another’s public hair pressed against his own. The second was awkward. He had read all about premature ejaculation and wondered if he would suffer, and now it seemed he might. It was not movement that threatened to bring him on. It was when he looked at her face. She was lying on her back, for they were what she had taught him to call auf Altdeutsch. Sweat had restyled her hair into snaky coils and her arms were thrown up behind her heads, with the palms spread, like a comic-book representation of surrender. At the same time she was looking up at him in a knowing, kindly way. It was just this combination of abandonment and loving attention that was too good to be looked at, too perfect for him, and he had to avert his eyes, or close them, and think of… of, yes, a circuit diagram, a particularly intricate and lovely one he had committed to memory during the fitting of signal activation units to the Ampex machines.
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LibraryThing member gbill
McEwan is a good writer and "The Innocent" is a solid book. It has a couple of the themes that McEwan has returned to successfully in his other works: how men and women might misinterpret each other's behavior at critical moments and thus forever change their lives, and the sense of "what might
The characters and their relationships are what held my interest; the backdrop of espionage during the Cold War in Berlin and the technical details did not. I knocked my rating down a half star because of chapter 18. I won't spoil it by providing details; perhaps it was needed to explain the characters actions in subsequent chapters, but it was a bit much for me.
Hard to pick a favorite quote but....
"He was fumbling with the unfamiliar lock and Maria was right at his back. Though it still surprised her, she was to some extent familiar with the delicacy of masculine pride. Despite a surface assurance, men were easily offended. Their moods could swing wildly. Caught in the turbulence of unacknowledged emotions, they tended to mask their uncertainty with aggression. She was thirty; her experience was not vast, and she was thinking mostly of her husband and one or two violent soldiers she had known. The man scrabbling to leave by her front door was less like the men she had known and more like herself. She knew just how it felt. When you felt sorry for yourself, you wanted to make things worse."
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have been".The characters and their relationships are what held my interest; the backdrop of espionage during the Cold War in Berlin and the technical details did not. I knocked my rating down a half star because of chapter 18. I won't spoil it by providing details; perhaps it was needed to explain the characters actions in subsequent chapters, but it was a bit much for me.
Hard to pick a favorite quote but....
"He was fumbling with the unfamiliar lock and Maria was right at his back. Though it still surprised her, she was to some extent familiar with the delicacy of masculine pride. Despite a surface assurance, men were easily offended. Their moods could swing wildly. Caught in the turbulence of unacknowledged emotions, they tended to mask their uncertainty with aggression. She was thirty; her experience was not vast, and she was thinking mostly of her husband and one or two violent soldiers she had known. The man scrabbling to leave by her front door was less like the men she had known and more like herself. She knew just how it felt. When you felt sorry for yourself, you wanted to make things worse."
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LibraryThing member vguy
Not bad as rollicking thrillers go, but not up to MacEwan's best. It's the story of an innocent abroad, in the tradition of HG Wells' suburban nobodies, who gets caught up in a, a surveillance project in Cold War Berlin and b, the backwash of a beautiful woman's collapsed marriage to an alcoholic.
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I felt overburdened with detail: the building of the tunnel replete with geekish details of electronics and drainage; the young man's discovery of sex (ok so he liked it, but i don't really need to know all about their pubic hair); disposal of the body (the killing is well done, makes a fine and credible climax, but dealing with the consequences is a bit like reading a blood-spattered IKEA flatpack instruction in reverse). Overwhelmed by all that I somehow missed how the two themes of spying and murder are brought together: the corpse somehow blows the cover on the tunnel, or perhaps it doesn't, that's already blown by George Blake who happens to live downstairs -eerrr whatever! Show Less
LibraryThing member gypsysmom
It is hard to categorize Ian McEwan’s writing. This is probably the fifth book of his that I have read and each one has been quite a different style. This book is perhaps a historical romance but that is rather simplistic. At heart it is an exploration of how circumstances cause people to do
Leonard Marnham is a twenty-five year old electronics technician who works for the Post Office which in Britain was responsible for the telephone system. So when Britain needs someone to provide technical expertise for a top-secret project in Berlin Leonard is sent. The project is a collaboration with the US and Leonard is seconded to the US group. Bob Glass, a security expert for the project, shows him the ropes. The project entails digging a tunnel over to the Russian sector and tapping into their phone lines which connect East Germany with the USSR headquarters. Bob also takes Leonard on a night out in East and West Berlin. In one of the nightclubs telephones and pneumatic tubes connect the patrons and Leonard receives a letter from a beautiful German woman. Maria is a divorced thirty-year-old and, when she learns that Leonard is a virgin, she takes on the task of initiating him sexually. Soon Leonard and Maria are spending every night together which causes Bob Glass some concern that Maria is a spy. Although she isn’t Maria does get Leonard involved in a situation that results in a security breach.
A word of warning for people with weak stomachs: there are a couple of chapters that will test you. I’m not sure why McEwan had to go into so much graphic detail; perhaps it was meant to underline the dichotomy between Leonard’s innocence and his criminality. Whatever the reason I think those chapters will haunt me for a long time and I won’t be recommending this book to anyone.
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unthinkable things.Leonard Marnham is a twenty-five year old electronics technician who works for the Post Office which in Britain was responsible for the telephone system. So when Britain needs someone to provide technical expertise for a top-secret project in Berlin Leonard is sent. The project is a collaboration with the US and Leonard is seconded to the US group. Bob Glass, a security expert for the project, shows him the ropes. The project entails digging a tunnel over to the Russian sector and tapping into their phone lines which connect East Germany with the USSR headquarters. Bob also takes Leonard on a night out in East and West Berlin. In one of the nightclubs telephones and pneumatic tubes connect the patrons and Leonard receives a letter from a beautiful German woman. Maria is a divorced thirty-year-old and, when she learns that Leonard is a virgin, she takes on the task of initiating him sexually. Soon Leonard and Maria are spending every night together which causes Bob Glass some concern that Maria is a spy. Although she isn’t Maria does get Leonard involved in a situation that results in a security breach.
A word of warning for people with weak stomachs: there are a couple of chapters that will test you. I’m not sure why McEwan had to go into so much graphic detail; perhaps it was meant to underline the dichotomy between Leonard’s innocence and his criminality. Whatever the reason I think those chapters will haunt me for a long time and I won’t be recommending this book to anyone.
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LibraryThing member LARA335
Startling in its detail, character study, and clammy, claustrophobic atmosphere. And for this very reason -its impressive qualities - I have unfairly only given it three stars. It's only 245 pages long but took me an age to read as I didn't want to return to its relentless bleakness..
LibraryThing member lindawwilson
Good book, very suspensful, better thn a "Child in Time", almost as good as "Atonement"
LibraryThing member SirRoger
Wow. I love how McEwan's novels lull you in and take you by surprise. It's kind of like watching an intelligent 'horror' movie, like The Talented Mr. Ripley or something. Excellent writing.
LibraryThing member siafl
8 years before McEwan's Booker-winning Amsterdam was The Innocent, set in another continental European capital. Already there are signs that McEwan by then has entered the brilliant stage of his career. This book has very good plot construction, and once again, becase I hardly knew anything about
This book for me is in many ways similar to Amsterdam and On Chesil Beach (At least that's my impression based on my memories of these two works.) An affair/relationship in memory which, because of fortune or misfortune, happening at a wrong time, ended a little differently than originally desired. My thoughts were that McEwan got better as he passed the decade with his prose. So I found the writing (skills) in his latter works even more sharpened and honed. But this is not to say that The Innocent didn't appeal to me. I think it's just that the poetry in this one is less pronounced.
There's a bit of an Anti-American thing going on at the beginning, but then I think the author has every intention to conclude that that starting impression has no basis. The American character that was unfavourably portrayed turned out to be a fantastic man. And with just this little fact it can be revealed that this book is every bit a spy novel with an incredible twist among all its turns.
And that's why I love McEwan's work. It has everything for anyone who enjoys the work of a real writer. A writer's writer.
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the story, I was in for a surprise. Parts that seem unconnected at the beginning at the end come together nicely and appropriately. And so as I was reading deeper and deeper I found myself enjoying it increasingly.This book for me is in many ways similar to Amsterdam and On Chesil Beach (At least that's my impression based on my memories of these two works.) An affair/relationship in memory which, because of fortune or misfortune, happening at a wrong time, ended a little differently than originally desired. My thoughts were that McEwan got better as he passed the decade with his prose. So I found the writing (skills) in his latter works even more sharpened and honed. But this is not to say that The Innocent didn't appeal to me. I think it's just that the poetry in this one is less pronounced.
There's a bit of an Anti-American thing going on at the beginning, but then I think the author has every intention to conclude that that starting impression has no basis. The American character that was unfavourably portrayed turned out to be a fantastic man. And with just this little fact it can be revealed that this book is every bit a spy novel with an incredible twist among all its turns.
And that's why I love McEwan's work. It has everything for anyone who enjoys the work of a real writer. A writer's writer.
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LibraryThing member maxim.wilson
I read this july 2009 on flight home from Rio de Janiero. I loved his struggle with his bi-racial identity, something missing from The Color of Water . I admired his way with words, often lyrical passages. His desire/imperative to "be a community organiser" spoke volumes not in the text. This tied
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in nicely with a TV doco " Made in Chicago, the making of Barak Obama". Show Less
LibraryThing member dsc73277
This is not a "review", more an explanation of why I only rated it 2.5. I was put off by some of the more shocking incidents. Of course, some might say that great art is supposed to shock?
LibraryThing member nathanhobby
Graham Greene-ish. A 25 year old British man who has lived with his parents up until now is sent to work on a secret tunnel in 1950s Berlin, a joint project between the British and Americans. He falls in love with a divorced German woman who introduces him to sex and love. Their relationship is
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threatened first when he rapes her (having tasted power and wanting more of it) and again when her ex-husband turns up and he feels pressured to be the strong man he has never been. The prose only sometimes achieves the clarity and beauty which make McEwan one of my favourite writers. But I see in this novel interesting roots for later themes or scenes - Leonard rehearses a letter in much the way Robbie does in Atonement; the descriptions of Berlin resonate with those in Black Dogs; the couple have not so a disastrous wedding night as in Chesil Beach, but a disastrous engagement night for completely different reasons. Show Less
LibraryThing member laurscartelli
After my recent visit with a more fantastical and less gritty Ian McEwan in The Daydreamer, I was all too glad to pick up The Innocent and return to what one generally expects from him: beautiful prose, a scientific naturalism and grisly horror treated poetically.
The Innocent takes place in West
But while the realism is present in the history, some of the fictional characters tossed in seem little more than stereotypes. Leonard, whose character arc is certainly the largest, begins as a stereotypical uptight British male who is initially offended by Bob Glass's even more stereotypical American mindset, though Leonard eventually adapts to certain Americanizations. Glass's character is framed by the two Americans Leonard spots from the car on his first visit to the warehouse, tossing a football back and forth, who generate more stereotypical thinking on Leonard's part. Glass remains pretty consistent for most of it. Even his deus-ex-machinesque actions towards the end are somewhat American-comic-book-hero-ish.
While Leonard's stick-figure-ness may be an error of judgement on McEwan's part, the Americans seem to be drawn as such on purpose. About three-quarters of the way through the book, Leonard observes this innocent American quality in the things around him:
They think of everything, he thought, the Americans. They wanted to make things possible, and easy. They wanted to look after you. This pleasant lightweight staircase with the nonslip treads and chain-link banisters, the Coke machines in the corridors, steak and chocolate milk in the canteen. He had seen grown men drinking chocolate milk.
More stylistic in character is Maria, the german divorcee with whom Leonard finds himself in love. Her approach to life is markedly refreshing and allows Leonard to grow out of his pre-constructed shell, into something a little more interesting, a little more daring, and certainly more dangerous.
Generally, with McEwan, there's a naturalistic vein that pulses throughout the narrative and hemorrhages at the climax,spending the rest of the novel trying to repair itself. In Enduring Love, the break comes early, muddling the facts and confusing the main character for most of what follows. In Atonement, it's a continuous, hemophiliac flow that breaks like a cold sweat and a chill at the end. Here, though, McEwan is a bit more economical and somewhat more Shakespearean in his formula - you could almost mark out the five acts with their building, subsiding and ultimate third act climax.
While the formula works, it's a little slow-going; it becomes weighed down by the author trying to inseminate it (sorry) with as many sexual innuendos and metaphors as possible, seemingly in an attempt to get his point across - defying any assertion that anyone is completely innocent. Perhaps in 1990 (just after the fall of the Berlin wall, when land lines were the rule and were easily enough tapped, when DNA evidence was still a new thing, before the internet could tell everyone's secrets), this was a more poignant story, but today its historical relativism isn't very significant and only the baser details* remain truly relevant.
The Innocent takes place in West
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Berlin during the Cold War, prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall. Much like other McEwan novels there is an element of fact that makes his historical fiction seem more realistic. In this case, protagonist Leonard Marnham is an engineer secured by British Intelligence to work with the joint CIA-MI6 forces on Operation Gold, a real project that focused on tapping KGB phone lines underground - you can read about that here.But while the realism is present in the history, some of the fictional characters tossed in seem little more than stereotypes. Leonard, whose character arc is certainly the largest, begins as a stereotypical uptight British male who is initially offended by Bob Glass's even more stereotypical American mindset, though Leonard eventually adapts to certain Americanizations. Glass's character is framed by the two Americans Leonard spots from the car on his first visit to the warehouse, tossing a football back and forth, who generate more stereotypical thinking on Leonard's part. Glass remains pretty consistent for most of it. Even his deus-ex-machinesque actions towards the end are somewhat American-comic-book-hero-ish.
While Leonard's stick-figure-ness may be an error of judgement on McEwan's part, the Americans seem to be drawn as such on purpose. About three-quarters of the way through the book, Leonard observes this innocent American quality in the things around him:
They think of everything, he thought, the Americans. They wanted to make things possible, and easy. They wanted to look after you. This pleasant lightweight staircase with the nonslip treads and chain-link banisters, the Coke machines in the corridors, steak and chocolate milk in the canteen. He had seen grown men drinking chocolate milk.
More stylistic in character is Maria, the german divorcee with whom Leonard finds himself in love. Her approach to life is markedly refreshing and allows Leonard to grow out of his pre-constructed shell, into something a little more interesting, a little more daring, and certainly more dangerous.
Generally, with McEwan, there's a naturalistic vein that pulses throughout the narrative and hemorrhages at the climax,spending the rest of the novel trying to repair itself. In Enduring Love, the break comes early, muddling the facts and confusing the main character for most of what follows. In Atonement, it's a continuous, hemophiliac flow that breaks like a cold sweat and a chill at the end. Here, though, McEwan is a bit more economical and somewhat more Shakespearean in his formula - you could almost mark out the five acts with their building, subsiding and ultimate third act climax.
While the formula works, it's a little slow-going; it becomes weighed down by the author trying to inseminate it (sorry) with as many sexual innuendos and metaphors as possible, seemingly in an attempt to get his point across - defying any assertion that anyone is completely innocent. Perhaps in 1990 (just after the fall of the Berlin wall, when land lines were the rule and were easily enough tapped, when DNA evidence was still a new thing, before the internet could tell everyone's secrets), this was a more poignant story, but today its historical relativism isn't very significant and only the baser details* remain truly relevant.
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LibraryThing member co_coyote
There is no question Ian McEwan is a talented (and often funny) writer. Any writer who can make you feel sympathy for a womanizer (Solar) is well ahead of the game. But, this story is just too outlandish for me. I'll try him again, but I'm hoping for a more believable scenario.
LibraryThing member stro
The first time i tried to read this I had to stop halfway through because I knew something awful was going to happen to the character and i couldn't bear it - empathy overload, far more so than with Enduring Love! A year later I finally had to find out... A sad, moving story; protagonist reminded
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me in a way of Winston Smith. Show Less
LibraryThing member BrianFannin
Not as good as the other McEwan that I've read (though possibly better than Endless Love), but nice all the same. A must if you want some literate cold war espionage.
LibraryThing member anitatally
Ian McEwan is a fantastic writer. This book was very graphic, but I am glad I read it. I am a fan!
LibraryThing member wanderland
Interesting style but often tiresomely lingering. A lot of mind reading. Quick and dramatic switch from intelligence work to murder cover-upper.
LibraryThing member Suzannie1
weird compared to his other novels , not sure if i liked it or not , see other reviews
LibraryThing member NaggedMan
I really enjoyed this book - brilliantly capturing the cold war Berlin as seen and lived by the innocent (very innocent) young protagonist as he falls in love and becomes a man.
LibraryThing member joecanas
Riveting story, masterful writing (as usual)... but icky, icky corpse disposal scene . Ugh.
LibraryThing member NocturnalBlue
McEwan's most suspenseful (even more so than Enduring Love which is also excellent). Fair warning, there are certain scenes (around chapter 18 or so) that are not meant to be read in the middle of the night. Let's just say no one can write gore quite the way McEwan can.
LibraryThing member waldhaus1
A feel good Cold War story. It mainly takes place in the mid 1950s. Out outs a love story, a spy story and to a degree a murder story. It mixed German, American, and British cultures. The young couple, particularly the young man are well portrayed. Perhaps there is some betrayal here. Mainly the
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story OSS one of trying to recover from one war while enduring a Cold War. Show Less
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1990
Physical description
8 inches
ISBN
0385494335 / 9780385494335
Similar in this library
Solar by Ian McEwan