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Set in late 1980s Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Black Dogs is the intimate story of the crumbling of a marriage, as witnessed by an outsider. Jeremy is the son-in-law of Bernard and June Tremaine, whose union and estrangement began almost simultaneously. Seeking to comprehend how their deep love could be defeated by ideological differences Bernard and June cannot reconcile, Jeremy undertakes writing June's memoirs, only to be led back again and again to one terrifying encouner forty years earlier--a moment that, for June, was as devastating and irreversible in its consequences as the changes sweeping Europe in Jeremy's own time. In a finely crafted, compelling examination of evil and grace, Ian McEwan weaves the sinister reality of civiliation's darkest moods--its black dogs--with the tensions that both create love and destroy it.… (more)
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Looking deeper in the text, however, it became apparent to me how deep this story goes. The black dogs directly relate to the horror inflicted on Europe through World War II and the adherence to the belief that political ideologies can change the world for the better, even when the ideologies are responsible for horrible atrocities. There are reactions of withdrawal, both in the wife and in the Polish concentration camp which refuses to admit that Jews were killed there. There are reactions of a political nature that seem to say "if only we try again, we can get it right this time", as seen in the husband and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
A very interesting read for someone like me who grew up in America in the 70s and 80s at the end of the Cold War. Not McEwan's best work, but as an investigation of how the second half of the 20th century affected individuals and their relationships, it was a fascinating and worthy read.
After a somewhat misleading but detailed premise, the novel proper opens as the four-part narrative of a failed marriage. Though we get a detailed portrait of our narrator Jeremy, the tale is clearly about Bernard and June, deeply in love but more deeply divided by political and ideological differences. As the narrative progresses forward (and then, finally, backwards, to the novel's central event), McEwan aim is to reconstruct a failed marriage against the fall of the Soviet Union.
One of the main problems with the tale is that there is simply not enough material to sustain the story, even if the tale is only 150 pages in length. June's obsession with her meeting with the title characters is alluded to early, and McEwan clearly wants us to wonder why it is so life-shaping, but the ultimate resolution is somewhat deflating. The Maire's story is unsettling in a classically McEwan-esque manner, but it fails to carry the weight of June's fear because her final explanation feels wanting.
Also wanting is the development of character outside of June. The opening chapter, with June on her deathbed, is a fascinating insight, one that McEwan successfully builds on in the other three parts. But Bernard is a frustratingly distant character, separated from the more interpersonal affairs of the book because of his obsessive political works. It's an almost too-forced juxtaposition, awkwardly sidled into the work in the same way that the destruction of the Berlin Wall falls conveniently into the work. That moment and the moment of family violence at the end of Part III feel too much like intended set pieces, rather than as fully realized parts of an organic narrative.
In the end, what could have been an intriguing examination is rendered transparent by its constructs. It is a problem inherent in much of McEwan, but one that is occasionally outshone by the power of his descriptive abilities. Here, though, it feels as if he is trying too hard to extend a simple idea outside of the realm of a short story -- rendering the titular Black Dogs less a harbinger of doom than another dark mark on McEwan's already spotted body of work.
31/3/08/
I found it poignant that they clearly cared for each other but were unable to live together. The events that we spend a lot of the book building up to was quite shocking, both in the event and their quite disparate reactions to it. The final portion is quite thought provoking, because of the incident with the black dogs, their plans are changed and the house in France is bought. Does the family owe some of their current happiness to an incident that, to some extent, cause a rift between June & Bernard that persisted for the rest of their lives? We are, each of us, a summation of our life experiences and to change any one of them could change the route through life.
I listened to this and, for once, I think this would have been better read, to enable me to pause and reflect on some of the ideas raised.
"A Crowd is a slow, stupid creature, far less intelligent than any one of its members." (65)
"...'Don't you think the world should be able to accommodate your way of looking at things and Bernard's? Isn't it for the best if some journey inwards while others concern themselves with improving the world? Isn't diversity what makes a civilization?'
The last rhetorical question was one too many for June. The frown of neutral attention disappeared in her hoot of laughter. She could no longer bear to be lying down. She struggled up, successfully this time, while speaking to me in gasps.
'Jeremy, you're a dear old fruit, but you do talk such twaddle. You try too hard to be decent, and have everyone like you and like each other... There!'"
I especially like the "hoot of laughter," which shows the vitality and confidence of this old woman. Part of the function of the passage is to convey the "position" of the book, but to do so in a way that it does not sound like an author at the lectern. The narrator's earnestness is apparent, but his sentimentality does not go unnoticed.
Although I have no real criticism of the book and enjoyed thoroughly my time spend with it, I will say that McEwan is not intellectually daring. He might have offered a new and interesting middle road between mysticism and rationality. But he does not. In fact, he actually avoids that conflict by redefining one as an inward journey and the other as an outward journey. Recast that way, the conflict isn't a conflict at all, but two different and unopposed ways of being. Between mysticism and rationalism, belief in purpose and rejection of purpose, there is a real irresolvable conflict that can't be made to go away by saying "diversity is best."
McEwan realizes this I guess, for the argument continues even after June dies. It goes on the narrator's head as he imagines the fighting pair continuing to talk past each other. It's perhaps too much for me to expect this very good novelist to be a very good philosopher too. He tells a story well.
Teeming with metaphor, its purpose seems to be to provoke thought rather than to have the reader
Jeremy lost his parents when he was a child, and began to have an inordinate amount of interest in the parents of friends, adopting them for his own. When he married, he continued this practice and became close to his in-laws. He takes on the task of writing a memoir of June, his dying mother-in-law. She recounts a pivotal event in her life involving three large, black dogs that threatened her when she was on her honeymoon in France shortly after World War II. Jeremy compares her account with that of his father-in-law, Bernard, and resolves the differences in a philosophical manner. He uses the incident to explain the world view of both, and the memoir becomes a meditation on the conflict between good and evil, rationalism and spirituality, thinking and action.
The novel is short – only 149 pages -- and that may be its principle flaw. McEwan tumbles over the waterfall in the barrel of his version and explanation of the event. I wish there was more meat on these bones to give me a better understanding of how he arrived at his conclusions.
I am glad I read this after his later work, so it has little effect on my opinion of this excellent writer, and I will work my way through his first four novels. 4 stars for the prose.
--Jim, 12/24/09
Jeremy, orphaned as a child and raised half-heartedly by his single mom sister, became very close to his inlaws. This novel is his trying to piece together and understand the reasons for their extended (decades long) separation.
OK--the second half was more interesting.
Jeremy, the narrator, is
The action happens during the time of the collapse of the Berlin wall, and a connection is drawn between the forces that affect change in Europe, and the forces that affect the course of private lives and family histories.
June and Bernard were both fervent Communists when they went on their honeymoon in France in 1946.June’s view of the world changed when she was attacked
The dogs are supposedly a metaphor for the potential for corruption and violence in modern Europe. Underscored when Jeremy, the narrator, and Jenny, June and Bernard's daughter,visit a Polish concentration camp,and when on a trip Berlin Wall Jeremy and Bernard just as the Berlin wall comes crumbling down they are caught up in a mob scene.
However, if I'm brutally honest I find this connection tenuous at best. For me it was just a tale of two people who,despite professing to love each other deeply, find when June becomes disaffected with Communism or at least the Communist party that they have very little in common so decide to live separate lives. June as something of a recluse whereas Bernard becomes a politician and minor celebrity.
Now this is the third of McEwan's books that I've read because they are on the 1001 list and the third that has left me underwhelmed. Perhaps he's just not for me.
Set in the 1980s, the protagonist dips in and out of the past as he tries to piece together the reason for the broken relationship of his in-laws as he toys
At its core is the tale of how the two young lovers were both wedded in their devotion to communism, until the aftermath of WWII unravelled their beliefs. The husband found his answers in science, and when his wife has a frightening encounter with two large black dogs believed to be offspring of those used by the Gestapo, his scientific mind cannot grasp her beliefs in superstition and mysticism.
It's delicate in its handling of the complexities of marriage and of the many significant points which underpin a relationship, but somehow it just didn't do it for me. I wasn't altogether in step with exactly what McEwan was trying to do with the novel.
3 stars - definitely not my favourite McEwan.