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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.
Customer Review: The conflict of responding to conflict...
McEwan again assembles an artful masterpiece of characters and events that the reader cannot help but internalize as though it were a chronicle of his own struggle. Narrated with insight by a son-in-law who recognized the raw embattlement we all encounter when we find ourselves evolving around the love that once defined us. Bernard and June, once the subjects of a passionate love story, find themselves changing as any person would with age and education; but the ongoing change in each, in how the world is seen and how what is seen is responded to, becomes irreconcilable with the other, leaving in the dust of a trail their relationship but not their love or respect for each other. Another exilerating installment from a genuine gift to our language, McEwan again demonstrates what the written word is capable of.
Customer Review: An early gem
There simply is no such thing as a bad -- or mediocre, for that matter -- McEwan book. McEwan uses the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin wall to serve as a historical context to his examination of the lives of June and Bernard Tremaine. While on her honeymoon, June experiences a life-altering event with two black dogs that takes her on a lifelong spiritual path. Her relationship with her husband Bernard, a committed member of the British Communist party, will never be the same. McEwan uses this splintered relationship as a touchpoint for an examination of matters of the soul and matters of the mind. In McEwan's world, the two are capable of co-existing, but barely. We can only surmise that the wall's fall and the resultant diminishment of Communism tips McEwan's hand in terms of where he comes down on this relevant argument and metaphor. As with all of McEwan's books, the action can take place on numerous levels and playing fields. The language, as always, is beautiful; every sentence a gem.


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